The Dream House


Book Description

A farmhouse is being reproduced a dozen times, with slight variations, throughout a valley. Three small graves have been dug in the front garden, the middle one lying empty. A woman in a wheelchair sorts through boxes while her husband clambers around the old demolished buildings, wondering where the animals have gone. A young woman – called ‘the barren one’ behind her back – dreams of love, while an ageing headmaster contemplates the end of his life. At the entrance to the long dirt driveway, a car appears and pauses – pointed towards the house like a silver bullet, ticking with heat. So begins The Dream House, Craig Higginson’s riveting and unforgettable novel set in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal. Written with dark wit, a stark poetic style and extraordinary tenderness, this is a story about the state of a nation and a deep meditation on memory, ageing, meaning, family, love and loss. This updated 2016 edition contains new content, with Craig Higginson exploring the background to The Dream House, his varied experiences in a farmhouse in KwaZulu-Natal and the subsequent and poignant motivations for this moving novel.




In the Dream House


Book Description

A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope—the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman—through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships. Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.




Notes from the Dream House


Book Description

Notes from the Dream House is a 'best of' selection of reviews by the celebrated Observer film critic Philip French. Spanning half the history of cinema, his reviews cover a great variety of films, from westerns and gangsters to art movies and musicals – the hits and the misses, the good, the bad and the ugly. French takes on films as disparate as The Gospel According to St Matthew and Ted, The Remains of the Day and Caligula. His reviews are personal, witty, and sharply perceptive. Time and again he reveals not only an encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema but also an erudition, an enthusiasm, and a boundless curiosity. Taken together, they form an illuminating commen¬tary on modern culture; but above all they are a distillation of one man's lifelong love of cinema, a worthy memorial to one of the most respected and beloved of modern critics.




Dream House


Book Description

Recognizable to millions as a symbol of the American presidency, the White House was first an American home. From 1800 until 1960, it kept pace with changing ideals of the American house and garden. That ended when Jacqueline Kennedy redecorated the White House as a museum to upper-class taste. Today the Obamas are pulling it back to its role as an American home. This book looks at the president's house in the context of American house design and decoration. Hundreds of historic photographs, plans, and drawings compare it to other American houses, gardens, and interiors, showing the White House as it changed through decades of interior renovation, rebuilding, and landscaping.--From publisher description.




Someone Builds the Dream


Book Description

Buildings, bridges, and books don't exist without the workers who are often invisible in the final product, as this joyous and profound picture book reveals from acclaimed author of The Christmas Boot Lisa Wheeler and New York Times bestselling illustrator of Love Loren Long All across this great big world, jobs are getting done by many hands in many lands. It takes much more than ONE. Gorgeously written and illustrated, this is an eye-opening exploration of the many types of work that go into building our world--from the making of a bridge to a wind farm, an amusement park, and even the very picture book that you are reading. An architect may dream up the plans for a house, but someone has to actually work the saws and pound the nails. This book is a thank-you to the skilled women and men who work tirelessly to see our dreams brought to life.




Firefly Lane


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah comes a powerful novel of love, loss, and the magic of friendship. . . . now a #1 Netflix series! In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable. So begins Kristin Hannah's magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives. From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness. Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn't know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she'll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she'll envy her famous best friend. . . . For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship---jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test. Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone's Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it's the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It's about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you---and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you'll never forget . . . one you'll want to pass on to your best friend.




The Dream House


Book Description

Pre-order the brand new Rachel Hore novel, The Hidden Years, coming soon. From the million-copy Sunday Times bestseller comes a gripping and moving story about one woman's move to the house of her dreams. Everyone has a dream of their perfect house - in the heart of the countryside, or perhaps a stately residence in the middle of a wonderful city? For Kate Hutchinson, the move to Suffolk from the tiny, noisy London terrace she shares with her husband Simon and their two young children was almost enough to make her dreams come true. Space, peace, a measured, rural pace of life have a far greater pull for Kate than the constantly overflowing in-tray on her desk at work. Moving in with her mother-in-law must surely be only a temporary measure before the estate agent's details of the perfect house fall through the letterbox. But when Kate, out walking one evening, stumbles upon the house of her dreams, a beautiful place, full of memories, it is tantalizingly out of her reach. Its owner is the frail elderly Agnes, whose story - as it unravels - echoes so much of Kate's own. And Kate comes to realize how uncertain and unsettling even a life built on dreams can be - wherever you are, at whatever time you are living and whoever you are with. Praise for Rachel Hore's novels: ‘A tour de force. Rachel's Paris is rich, romantic, exotic and mysterious’ JUDY FINNIGAN ‘An elegiac tale of wartime love and secrets’ Telegraph ‘A richly emotional story, suspenseful and romantic, but unflinching in its portrayal of the dreadful reality and legacy of war’ Book of the Week, Sunday Mirror 'Pitched perfectly for a holiday read' Guardian 'Engrossing, pleasantly surprising and throughly readable' SANTA MONTEFIORE 'A beautifully written and magical novel about life, love and family' CATHY KELLY




My Dream Home


Book Description

Whether decorating your first home, renovating your old home, or just daydreaming, if you are like us, you are constantly looking for, and finding, inspiration everywhere for your dream home. Collect all your ideas and printouts and save them in one place with this large format blank journal. Use this journal to: Create vision and mood board spreads. Organize your inspirations in one place. Large format pages offer plenty of space to develop your ideas and inspiration spreads. Blank pages allow you to create your vision boards any way you like - attach cutouts, printouts or other media, draw, doodle or make notes. Crisp white paper for use with most art media, such as pencils, pens and gel pens. Ideal for gluing and taping. A chic matte finish soft cover makes this journal lightweight and easy to carry.




Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House


Book Description

Mr. Blandings and his wife buy an old farmhouse, unaware of the costly and unforseen repercussions of their decision.




The House on Mango Street


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in Chicago • Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. “Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage...and seduces with precise, spare prose, creat[ing] unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” —The New York Times Book Review The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting." Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you're from.