Bernarda Alba is a widow & her five daughters are incarcerated in mourning along with her One by one they make a bid for freedom with tragic consequences Lorca's tale depicts the repression of women within Catholic Spain in the years before the war The House of Bernarda Alba is Lorca's last & possibly finest play completed shortly before he was murdered by Nationalist sympathisers at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Inspired by real characters & described by the author as 'a true record of village life' it is a tragic tale of frustration & explosive passions in a household of women rulled by a tyrannical mother Edited with invaluable student notes
- a must for students of Spanish drama
...

Morgan Mc Carthy's THE HOUSE OF BIRDS is a beautiful & bewitching story of love war & second chances that will be adored by readers of Kate Morton Virginia Baily & Lucinda Riley Oliver has spent years trying to convince himself that he's suited to a life of money making in the city & that he doesn't miss a childhood spent in pursuit of mystery when he cycled around the cobbled lanes of Oxford exploring its most intriguing corners When his girlfriend Kate inherits a derelict house
- & a fierce family feud
- she's determined to strip it sell it & move on For Oliver though the house has an allure & amongst the shelves of discarded leather bound & gilded volumes he discovers one that conceals a hidden diary from the 1920s So begins a quest to discover the identity of the author Sophia Louis It is a portrait of war & marriage isolation & longing & a story that will shape the future of the abandoned house
- & of Oliver
- forever



...

Houses in literature have captured readers' imaginations for centuries from Gothic castles to Georgian stately homes Bloomsbury townhouses & high-rise penthouses Step on to a tour of real & imagined houses that great English writers have used to reflect the themes of their novels houses that became like characters themselves embodiments of the social & historical currents of their time Phyllis Richardson takes us on a journey through history to discover how authors' personal experiences in their homes helped to shape the imaginative dwellings that have become icons of English literature Virginia Woolf's love of Talland House in Cornwall is palpable in To the Lighthouse just as London's Bloomsbury is ever-present in Mrs Dalloway EM Forster's childhood home at Rook's Nest mirrors the idyllic charm of Howards End Evelyn Waugh plotted Charles Ryder's return to Brideshead while a guest at Madresfield Jane Austen was no stranger to a manor house or a good ballroom & Horace Walpole's little Gothic castle' in Twickenham inspired him to write the first English Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto But the English country house from the idyllic to the unloved is also viewed through a modern lens
- Kazuo Ishiguro's Darlington Hall Ian Mc Ewan's Tallis House Alan Hollinghurts's Two Acres Using historic sources authors' biographies letters news accounts & the novels themselves The House of Fiction presents some of the most influential houses in Britain through the stories they inspired while offering candid glimpses of the writers who brought them to life
...

THE HOUSE OF FOUR is the brand new Istanbul crime thriller featuring Inspector Ikmen 'the Morse of Istanbul' (Daily Telegraph) from Barbara Nadel Perfect for fans of Donna Leon Everyone in the Istanbul neighbourhood of Moda knows the Devil's House A crumbling Ottoman mansion & once the home of a princess it is a place associated with ill fortune The princess's four children now in old age still live in separate apartments on different floors & are rumoured never to speak to each other Then one of them is found dead stabbed through the heart & it is discovered that the other three siblings have met an identical fate There is no sign of forced entry or burglary & all evidence must be gained from letters & diaries but as Inspector Ikmen digs into their past it becomes clear they have been harbouring a secret Meanwhile a young couple are arrested for a series of seemingly random killings on the streets of Istanbul They claim to have been squatting in the Devil's House But this fiendish mystery is far from over & it will take Inspector Ikmen to the darkest & most devilish depths of this ancient city ...

On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution & the Soviet experiment Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War & Peace Grossman's Life & Fate & Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago Yuri Slezkine's gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials & their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin's purges A vivid account of the personal & public lives of Bolshevik true believers the book begins with their conversion to Communism & ends with their children's loss of faith & the fall of the Soviet Union Completed in 1931 the House of Government later known as the House on the Embankment was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin The largest residential building in Europe it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater & a library to a tennis court & a shooting range Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building's residents lived in their apartments & ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House & led one by one to prison or their deaths Drawing on letters diaries & interviews & featuring hundreds of rare photographs The House of Government weaves together biography literary criticism architectural history & fascinating new theories of revolutions millennial prophecies & reigns of terror The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that like the Soviet Union itself became a haunted house forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared ...

A gritty & gorgeous debut that follows a cast of gay & transgender club kids navigating the Harlem ballroom scene of the 1980s & '90s inspired by the real House of Xtravaganza made famous by the seminal documentary Paris Is Burning It's 1980 in New York City & nowhere is the city's glamour & energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ballroom scene where seventeen-year-old Angel first comes into her own Burned by her traumatic past Angel is new to the drag world & has a yearning to help create a family for those without When she falls in love with Hector a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza the first-ever all-Latino house in the ballroom circuit Into the house come Venus a whip-smart trans girl who dreams of finding a rich man to take care of her; Juanito a quiet boy who loves fabrics & design; & Daniel a butch queen who accidentally saves Venus' life The Xtravaganzas must learn to navigate sex work addiction & persistent abuse leaning on each other as bulwarks against a world that resists them All are ambitious resilient & determined to control their own fates even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences Told in a voice that brims with wit rage tenderness & fierce yearning The House of Impossible Beauties is a tragic story of love family & the dynamism of the human spirit ...

Please note this is a region B Blu-ray & will require a region B or region free Blu-ray player in order to play Seeking shelter from a storm abandoned young cat Thunder sneaks into a mysterious mansion owned by retired magician Lawrence aka " The Illustrious Lorenzo" Lawrence shares his fairy-tale world with many animals & a dazzling array of automatons & gizmos capable of whipping up breakfast while rolling out a spectacular song-&-dance routine He soon makes Thunder feel welcome but Jack the rabbit & Maggie the mouse start plotting to get him kicked out When Lawrence ends up in the hospital his nephew tries to trick him into selling the house But its ragtag inhabitants develop a spooky strategy to defend their home They turn their house into a haunted mansion using Thunder as their secret weapon ...

Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 or region Free DVD Player in order to play Seeking shelter from a storm abandoned young cat Thunder sneaks into a mysterious mansion owned by retired magician Lawrence aka " The Illustrious Lorenzo" Lawrence shares his fairy-tale world with many animals & a dazzling array of automatons & gizmos capable of whipping up breakfast while rolling out a spectacular song-&-dance routine He soon makes Thunder feel welcome but Jack the rabbit & Maggie the mouse start plotting to get him kicked out When Lawrence ends up in the hospital his nephew tries to trick him into selling the house But its ragtag inhabitants develop a spooky strategy to defend their home They turn their house into a haunted mansion using Thunder as their secret weapon ...

Introduction & Notes by Janet Beer Manchester Metropolitan University The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart aged 29 beautiful impoverished & in need of a rich husband to safeguard her place in the social elite & to support her expensive habits
- her clothes her charities & her gambling Unwilling to marry without both love & money Lily becomes vulnerable to the kind of gossip & slander which attach to a girl who has been on the marriage market for too long Wharton charts the course of Lily's life providing along the way a wider picture of a society in transition a rapidly changing New York where the old certainties of manners morals & family have disappeared & the individual has become an expendable commodity The House of Mirth was published in October 1905 to widespread critical acclaim It became an instant bestseller & is regarded today as one of Edith Wharton's most accomplished & compelling social satires
...

The Penguin English Library Edition of The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton' It was characteristic of her that she always roused speculation that her simplest acts seemed the result of far-reaching intentions'A searing shocking tale of women as consumer items in a man's world The House of Mirth sees Lily Bart beautiful & charming living among the wealthy families of New York but reluctant to finally commit herself to a husband In her search for freedom & the happiness she feels she deserves Lily is ultimately ruined by scandal Edith Wharton's shattering novel created controversy on its publication in 1905 with its scathing portrayal of the world's wealthy & the prison that marriage can become The Penguin English Library
- 100 editions of the best fiction in English from the eighteenth century & the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War
...