Our Nig, or, Sketches from the life of a free black in a two-story white house, North

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Babette Smith

New edition of the bestselling history that traces the chequered story of 100 women transported together in 1829 to Sydney. Includes new information on the women and treatment of convicts, and new illustrations.Intrigued to discover a convict ancestor in her family tree, Babette Smith decided to investigate her life and the lives of the 99 women who were transported with her on the ship Princess Royal in 1829.Piece by piece she reveals the story of her ancestor the indomitable Susannah Watson who, trapped in the crowded filthy slums of Nottingham, stole because she could not bear to see her children starving'. Separated forever from her husband and four children, she was transported to Australia for 14 years. She endured the convict system at its worst, yet emerged triumphant to die in her bed aged 83 singing Rock of Ages'.Babette Smith reconstructs the lives of the women from the Princess Royal from fragments of information in shipping lists, official records, newspapers and court transcripts. Her research overturns stereotypes of women convicts as drunken whores and criminals. Caught in an England convulsed by change, they become the unwitting and unwilling pioneers of a new land. Many proved to be resourceful and resilient, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by a new society.First published two decades ago, A Cargo of Women became a bestseller and remains one of the most valuable accounts of convict life in Australia. This new edition includes further information about the women from the Princess Royal and new illustrations.Smith comes as close as any historian has come to reconstructing the complex experience of a convict woman an absorbing story.'Kay Daniels, Australian Historical Studies

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E.R. Braithwaite

A black teacher from British Guiana describes how he overcame the hostility and prejudices of his students in a London slum school.

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Nina Harrington

The nation's favorite writer and explorer Kyle Munroe has swapped the wilds of Nepal for the grand English country house of Lulu Hamilton. The renegade Adonis needs Lulu's help to publish her famous mother's diaries, but this unconventional assistant won't play ball. She wants to keep her mom's memories private.Lulu isn't happy about stepping back in time, and rumor has it sparks are flying!

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Sebastian Faulks

A worthy successor to Birdsong' Alain de BottonIn 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young scottish woman, goes to Occupied France on a dual mission: to run an apparently simple errand for a British special oeprations group and to search for her lover, an English airman who has gone missing in action. In the small town of Lavaurette, Sebastian Faulks presents a microcosm of France and its agony in 'the black years'. Here is the full range of collaboration, from the tacit to the enthusistic, as well as examples of extraordinary courage and altruism. Through the local resistance chief Julien, Charlotte meets his father, a Jewish painter whose inspiration has failed him.In a series of shocking narrative climaxes in which the full extent of French collusion in the Nazi holocaust is delineated, Faulks brings the story to a resolution of redemptive love. In the delicacy of its writing, the intimacy of its characterisation and its powerful narrative scenes of harrowing public events, Charlotte Gray is a worthy successor to Birdsong.