Ava's Man


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With the same emotional generosity and effortlessly compelling storytelling that made All Over But the Shoutin’ a beloved bestseller, Rick Bragg continues his personal history of the Deep South. This time he’s writing about his grandfather Charlie Bundrum, a man who died before Bragg was born but left an indelible imprint on the people who loved him. Drawing on their memories, Bragg reconstructs the life of an unlettered roofer who kept food on his family’s table through the worst of the Great Depression; a moonshiner who drank exactly one pint for every gallon he sold; an unregenerate brawler, who could sit for hours with a baby in the crook of his arm. In telling Charlie’s story, Bragg conjures up the backwoods hamlets of Georgia and Alabama in the years when the roads were still dirt and real men never cussed in front of ladies. A masterly family chronicle and a human portrait so vivid you can smell the cornbread and whiskey, Ava’s Man is unforgettable.




Ava's Men


Book Description

In this compelling rags-to-riches story, Jane Ellen Wayne charts the life and loves of the gorgeous green-eyed beauty, Ava Gardner. Spotted by an MGM scout who saw her photograph in a shop window, Ava's career took off when she was hired by movie mogul Louis B Mayer after a screen test. In this sizzling biography, the role of Ava's Men - including Howard Hughes, Clark Gabel, Robert Taylor, and third husband and love of her life Frank Sinatra - is central to a revealing and candid account of a great star, a sultry sex goddess, hell-raiser, diva and MGM's final screen legend. Shortly after arriving in Hollywood, Ava met and married film star Mickey Rooney. The marriage that lasted a year and a week. Her second husband was band leader Artie Shaw, one of the swing era greats. The marriage was also short-lived. Ava's third and last husband, and great love of her life, was singer Frank Sinatra. They were married in 1951 and divorced in 1956, unable to survive the pressure of their careers and their jealousy of each other. People Magazine classified Frank and Ava's marriage as one of the Romances of the Century.




Daughters of Smoke and Fire


Book Description

The unforgettable, haunting story of a young woman’s perilous fight for freedom and justice for her brother, the first novel published in English by a female Kurdish writer Set primarily in Iran, this extraordinary debut novel weaves 50 years of modern Kurdish history through a story of a family facing oppression and injustices all too familiar to the Kurds. Leila dreams of making films to bring the suppressed stories of her people onto the global stage, but obstacles keep piling up. Her younger brother, Chia, influenced by their father’s past torture, imprisonment, and his deep-seated desire for justice, begins to engage with social and political affairs. But his activism grows increasingly risky and one day he disappears in Tehran. Seeking answers about her brother’s whereabouts, Leila fears the worst and begins a campaign to save him. But when she publishes Chia’s writings online, she finds herself in grave danger as well. Inspired by the life of Kurdish human rights activist Farzad Kamangar and published to coincide with the 10th anniversary of his execution, Daughters of Smoke and Fire is an evocative portrait of the lives and stakes faced by 40 million stateless Kurds. It’s an unflinching but compassionate and powerful story that brilliantly illuminates the meaning of identity and the complex bonds of family. A landmark novel for our troubled world, Daughters of Smoke and Fire is a gripping and important read, perfect for fans of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.




Ava


Book Description

In this steamy romance novel set just as WWI is ending, Ava, a beautiful young woman, and Irish immigrant, initially explores her irresistible and alluring power over men with Alistar, a handsome sailor. Soon Ava learns she is pregnant, but before she can tell Alistar, his ship sets sail. Ava finds herself desperate growing up poor in America as an Irish immigrant during prohibition with little to no support from her family. Struggling to overcome her mistakes while dealing with a dysfunctional old school Irish family Ava later finds herself employed by a wealthy family of builders in Brookline, Massachusetts. The builder's son, Devon, is handsome and sophisticated and sees the beautiful young woman, Ava, irresistible. Fans of steamy historical novels will find themselves emotionally engaged by the twists and turns of Ava’s turbulent journey, as she walks through valleys of great sorrows and the pinnacles of dazzling ecstasy. At the height of ecstasy with Devon, Ava finds that she is pregnant again, and Devon’s estranged wife has returned. Caught in the middle of a romantic love story Ava is shocked to find out her father has arranged her marriage to an older gentleman from England who needs marriage to stay in America. Join Ava in this steamy romance novel as she learns how to care for her babies and use her body to fulfill her needs and overcome the hardships she faces. The backdrop of the roaring 20s showcases the difficulties the young heroine faces as an Irish immigrant growing up poor in America caught in the middle of a romantic love story. See how she battles to maintain a delicate balance between motherhood and independence in an old world that loves to shun. Although Ava’s path is twisted and rife with despair, she finds the strength to stand on her own.




Bunny


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Soon to be a major motion picture "Jon Swift + Witches of Eastwick + Kelly 'Get In Trouble' Link + Mean Girls + Creative Writing Degree Hell! No punches pulled, no hilarities dodged, no meme unmangled! O Bunny you are sooo genius!" —Margaret Atwood, via Twitter "A wild, audacious and ultimately unforgettable novel." —Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times "Awad is a stone-cold genius." —Ann Bauer, The Washington Post The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel from the acclaimed author of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl and Rouge "We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?" Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision. The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination. Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library




Ava Gardner


Book Description

Renowned for her screen performances, down-to-earth personality, and love affair with Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner left an indelible mark on Hollywood history. Her adventurous life story is told through authoritative text and hundreds of photos in Ava: A Life in Movies. Ava is an illustrated tribute to a legendary life. Authors Kendra Bean and Anthony Uzarowski take a closer look at the Academy Award-nominated actress's life and famous screen roles. They also shed new light on the creation and maintenance of her glamorous image, her marriages, and friendships with famous figures such as Ernest Hemingway, John Huston, and Tennessee Williams. From the backwoods of Grabtown, North Carolina to the bullfighting rings of Spain, from the MGM backlot to the Rome of La Dolce Vita, this lavishly illustrated biography takes readers on the exciting journey of a life lived to the fullest and through four decades of film history with an iconic star.




Ava Gardner


Book Description

"The most complete and engrossing biography yet of this exotic Southern girl...Excellent."—Liz Smith She was the sex symbol who dazzled all the other sex symbols. She was the temptress who drove Frank Sinatra to the brink of suicide and haunted him to the end of his life. Ernest Hemingway saved one of her kidney stones as a sacred memento, and Howard Hughes begged her to marry him—but she knocked out his front teeth instead. She was one of the great icons in Hollywood history—star of The Killers, The Barefoot Contessa, and The Night of the Iguana—and one of the few whose actual life was grander and more colorful than any movie. Her jaw-dropping beauty, charismatic presence, and fabulous, scandalous adventures fueled the legend of Ava Gardner—Hollywood's most glamorous, restless and uninhibited star. In this acclaimed first full biography of Gardner, Lee Server recreates—with great style and vivid detail—the actress's life, from her beginnings as a barefoot North Carolina farm girl to her heady days as a Hollywood goddess. He paints the full spectacle of her tumultuous private life—including her string of failed marriages to Mickey Rooney, Sinatra and Artie Shaw—and Gardner's lifelong search for adventure and love. Ava Gardner: "Love is Nothing" is both an exceptional work of biography and a richly entertaining read.




Ava Gardner


Book Description

Ava Gardner was one of the most glamorous and famous stars in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. Her list of films includes The Killers, Showboat and Mogambo, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress, and her co-stars included Clark Gable, Gregory Peck, Burt Lancaster, Humphrey Bogart, Charlton Heston, and Richard Burton - the A-list of male Hollywood stars. Married three times - to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra - the first two lasted only about a year each whilst her marriage to Sinatra lasted several. She had a long-running affair with Howard Hughes, and a briefer one with George C. Scott, among others. In Ava Gardner, she has much to say about her husbands and lovers, and some of her co-stars,all of whom get Gardner's unflinchingly honest treatment. Ava Gardner is irresistibly candid and surprising. She began the book because, as she told Evans, 'it's either write the book or sell the jewels and I'm kinda fond of the jewels.' At the time of their collaboration Gardner was living in London, where she had lived for decades, smoking and drinking heavily. Having suffered a stroke that damaged the left side of her face and her left arm she had trouble sleeping and was often depressed - the glamorous wardrobes replaced by grey. Her story could itself have been depressing except for her wit and wickedness, which are on full display in this book. This book tells the story of her life as she wanted to tell it. Ava Gardner is the autobiography that Ava Gardner began with writer Peter Evans in 1988. She never finished it and decided against publishing it because of its frankness. She later collaborated on a tamer autobiography, which was published at her death in 1990. After Gardner's death, her estate authorised the book to be published much as she and Evans had originally conceived it.




The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender


Book Description

A 2015 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava — in all other ways a normal girl — is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the summer solstice celebration. That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo. First-time author Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and unforgettable mythology of what it means to be born with hearts that are tragically, exquisitely human.




Beneath This Man


Book Description

Book 2 of the #1 New York Times bestselling This Man trilogy. Jesse Ward drowned her with his intensity and blindsided her with his passion, but he kept her away from his dark secrets and broken soul. Leaving him was the only way Ava O'Shea could survive. She should have known that Jesse Ward is impossible to escape--and now he's back in her life, determined to remind her of the sensual pleasures they had shared. Ava is equally determined to get at the truth beneath this man's steely exterior. That means letting herself get close to the Lord of the Manor once more. And it's exactly where Jesse wants her--within touching distance...