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Orchid Girl

Author : Anna Christy

Publisher : Lulu.com

Page : 252 pages

File Size : 10,12 MB

Release : 2012-04-12

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1471684822

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Book Description

Step into the mind of Anna, a young woman who breaks down in depression while studying at Oxford. Back with her mother in Brighton she embarks on a journey for meaning while visiting doctors and therapists who all have different takes on how to cure her, while her drive to become a fashion model keeps her going despite body obsession and eating fixations. This is a story about navigating through a symbiotic child-parent relationship, coming to terms with beauty and the healing power of time and psychoanalysis. What does it matter to look good, if you don't feel it? "I start seeing emptiness as a big colourless hole. I can either fill it with something or I can lose myself in a vacuum of depression. Maybe the only cure against falling in is filling."



The Orchid Girls

Author : Lesley Sanderson

Publisher : Bookouture

Page : 406 pages

File Size : 39,30 MB

Release : 2018-11-13

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1786815796

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Book Description

‘By far the best book I have read in 2018!... A gripping, brilliant, have-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat-in-suspense psychological thriller! From the very first page I was enthralled and hooked... Kept me guessing... The ending will knock you square off of your feet!... Amazing 5 star read.' Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars 'Now we are bound forever,' she says, her eyes determined. 'I will never tell anyone, I swear. This is between you and me. Now you swear too.' They called them the Orchid Girls. Grace. Molly. Charlotte. One of them is in love. One of them is a liar. One of them is dead. On a jagged Dorset cliff, wind whipping their hair, waves crashing on the rocks below, three friends became two when Charlotte’s body was pulled out of the sea. Fifteen years later Grace and Molly are worlds apart. Grace has a glittering career and a loving husband. Molly is a lonely, unemployed alcoholic. Grace has everything to lose. Molly has nothing. They have moved on from the tragic accident that shadowed their childhood. But somewhere lies a photograph waiting to be unearthed – waiting to reveal a secret that one of the Orchid Girls is desperate to keep hidden... The Orchid Girls is a breathless, gripping and twisty story of love, obsession and dark, shocking secrets. Fans of KL Slater, The Wife Between Us and The Girl on the Train – read this one with the lights on… Readers absolutely love The Orchid Girls: ‘Loved this. A gripping thriller full of secrets and lies.’ Laura Marshall, author of Friend Request ‘I loved this book!! I was hooked from the first page and highly recommend… Absolutely twisted and amazing!!’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘Amazing… A compelling tale of secrets, lies, manipulation, obsession, first love, addiction, denial, friendships and relationships… Had me hooked in and totally enthralled from the very first page… Keeps the reader guessing… Highly recommended.’ Niki’s Life of Crime, 5 stars ‘Wow. I’m speechless… Enthralling story… My, my, my you have to read it… The first one read by Lesley Sanderson and it won’t be the last! Kept me wanting more!!!!!’ Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars ‘Excellent read! Just when I thought I knew what was going on, bam, a twist!... The characters are complex and richly detailed. This is a book that will keep you guessing till the climatic ending… Well written with a superb storyline... If you like psychological suspense then you will love this book.’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘I just finished The Orchid Girls and what a crazy, messed-up ride! I was hooked from first few pages and it only got more intense!... D R A M A and secrets and twisted lies on lies on lies… And the end made me gasp with twisty delight… Delighted because a final twist was delivered with a thunderous boom!!!... This one is gonna be hot!... Five stars!!!!!’ Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars ‘WOW… WOW. ONE. CRAZY. RIDE!... A thriller that had me wrapped up in everything about this book! The characters were cray cray I literally was screaming at some of them in my head… I can’t wait to read more from Lesley!’ Steph and Chris’s Book Review ‘Wow! This book had me up late, flipping pages and needing to know everything and everyone that was involved…. Thrilling, chilling and absolutely unputdownable! Will be highly recommending!’ Chapter Chatter Pub, 5 stars ‘Managed to finish this book in a couple of sittings!’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘Fabulous… Really difficult to put down!’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘A gripping psychological thriller... but it is also so much more. It's evocative, engaging, and utterly enthralling.’ The Bandwagon, 5 stars ‘Really gripped me and I was nearly late for work as I was desperate to finish it!’ Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars [not enough space on KDP from here on in!] ‘Had me hooked from the start… The author does a very good job at keeping the reader guessing and speculating about the shocking truth.’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘I was hooked… It's a great psychological thriller that will have you guessing… I just loved it… Amazing book.’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘The story drew me in from the very first page… I loved it.’ Beauty Balm, 5 stars ‘This was so good!... I just flew through it, and ended up finishing the whole book in two sittings. I absolutely love books that keep me thinking about them even after I've finished reading them, and this one has really stayed with me… A fast, nail-biting read.’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘First class… A thrilling multi-faceted story.’ Goodreads Reviewer



Orchid Muse: A History of Obsession in Fifteen Flowers

Author : Erica Hannickel

Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company

Page : 384 pages

File Size : 32,23 MB

Release : 2022-12-20

Category : Nature

ISBN : 0393867293

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Book Description

Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A kaleidoscopic journey into the world of nature’s most tantalizing flower, and the lives it has inspired. The epitome of floral beauty, orchids have long fostered works of art, tales of adventure, and scientific discovery. Tenacious plant hunters have traversed continents to collect rare specimens; naturalists and shoguns have marveled at orchids’ seductive architecture; royalty and the smart set have adorned themselves with their allure. In Orchid Muse, historian and home grower Erica Hannickel gathers these bold tales of the orchid-smitten throughout history, while providing tips on cultivating the extraordinary flowers she features. Consider Empress Eugenie and Queen Victoria, the two most powerful women in nineteenth-century Europe, who shared a passion for Coelogyne cristata, with its cascading, fragrant white blooms. John Roebling, builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, cultivated thousands of orchids and introduced captivating hybrids. Edmond Albius, an enslaved youth on an island off the coast of Madagascar, was the first person to hand-pollinate Vanilla planifolia, leading to vanilla’s global boom. Artist Frida Kahlo was drawn to the lavender petals of Cattleya gigas and immortalized the flower’s wilting form in a harrowing self-portrait, while more recently Margaret Mee painted the orchids she discovered in the Amazon to advocate for their conservation. The story of orchidomania is one that spans the globe, transporting readers from the glories of the palace gardens of Chinese Empress Cixi to a seedy dime museum in Gilded Age New York’s Tenderloin, from hazardous jungles to the greenhouses and bookshelves of Victorian collectors. Lush and inviting, with radiant full-color illustrations throughout, Orchid Muse is the ultimate celebration of our enduring fascination with these beguiling flowers.



The Orchid and the Dandelion

Author : W. Thomas Boyce MD

Publisher : Vintage

Page : 305 pages

File Size : 10,67 MB

Release : 2019-01-29

Category : Education

ISBN : 1101946571

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Book Description

"Based on groundbreaking research that has the power to change the lives of countless children--and the adults who love them." --Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts. A book that offers hope and a pathway to success for parents, teachers, psychologists, and child development experts coping with difficult children. In Tom Boyce's extraordinary new book, he explores the "dandelion" child (hardy, resilient, healthy), able to survive and flourish under most circumstances, and the "orchid" child (sensitive, susceptible, fragile), who, given the right support, can thrive as much as, if not more than, other children. Boyce writes of his pathfinding research as a developmental pediatrician working with troubled children in child-development research for almost four decades, and explores his major discovery that reveals how genetic make-up and environment shape behavior. He writes that certain variant genes can increase a person's susceptibility to depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and antisocial, sociopathic, or violent behaviors. But rather than seeing this "risk" gene as a liability, Boyce, through his daring research, has recast the way we think of human frailty, and has shown that while these "bad" genes can create problems, they can also, in the right setting and the right environment, result in producing children who not only do better than before but far exceed their peers. Orchid children, Boyce makes clear, are not failed dandelions; they are a different category of child, with special sensitivities and strengths, and need to be nurtured and taught in special ways. And in The Orchid and the Dandelion, Boyce shows us how to understand these children for their unique sensibilities, their considerable challenges, their remarkable gifts.



The Orchid Thief

Author : Susan Orlean

Publisher : Ballantine Books

Page : 322 pages

File Size : 45,33 MB

Release : 2011-07-20

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 0307795292

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Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the reader—will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion. In this new edition, coming fifteen years after its initial publication and twenty years after she first met the “orchid thief,” Orlean revisits this unforgettable world, and the route by which it was brought to the screen in the film Adaptation, in a new retrospective essay. Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. Praise for The Orchid Thief “Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy . . . The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean’s] gifts in full bloom.”—The New York Times Book Review “Fascinating . . . an engrossing journey [full] of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing.”—Los Angeles Times “Orlean’s snapshot-vivid, pitch-perfect prose . . . is fast becoming one of our national treasures.”—The Washington Post Book World “Orlean’s gifts [are] her ear for the self-skewing dialogue, her eye for the incongruous, convincing detail, and her Didion-like deftness in description.”—Boston Sunday Globe “A swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great.”—The Wall Street Journal



Empress Orchid

Author : Anchee Min

Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Page : 369 pages

File Size : 41,97 MB

Release : 2004

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 0618562036

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Book Description

From a master of the historical novel, Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the heart of the Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young concubine who becomes China's last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of a country girl who seized power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enemies, she alone seems capable of holding the country together. In this "absorbing companion piece to her novel Becoming Madame Mao" (New York Times), readers and reading groups will once again be transported by Min's lavish evocation of the Forbidden City in its last days of imperial glory and by her brilliant portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman who survived, and ultimately dominated, a male world.



The Forbidden Orchid

Author : Sharon Biggs Waller

Publisher : Penguin

Page : 416 pages

File Size : 39,31 MB

Release : 2016-03-08

Category : Young Adult Fiction

ISBN : 0698187970

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Book Description

The adventures of a British girl in China, hunting for the orchid that will save her family. Staid, responsible Elodie Buchanan is the eldest of ten sisters growing up in a small English market town in 1861. The girls barely know their father, a plant hunter usually off adventuring through China, more myth than man. Then disaster strikes: Mr. Buchanan reneges on his contract to collect an extremely rare and valuable orchid. He will be thrown into debtors’ prison while his daughters are sent to the orphanage and the workhouse. Elodie can’t stand by and see her family destroyed, so she persuades her father to return to China once more to try to hunt down the flower—only this time, despite everything she knows about her place in society, Elodie goes with him. She has never before left her village, but what starts as fear turns to wonder as she adapts to seafaring life aboard the tea clipper The Osprey, and later to the new sights, dangers, and romance of China. She comes to find that both the world and her place in it are so much bigger than she’d ever dreamed. But now, even if she can find the orchid, how can she ever go back to being the staid, responsible Elodie that everybody needs?



Wounds

Author : Nathan Ballingrud

Publisher : Gallery / Saga Press

Page : 288 pages

File Size : 17,98 MB

Release : 2019-04-09

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1534449922

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Book Description

“[Ballingrud's] evocative and strangely beautiful.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Nathan Ballingrud is one of my favorite contemporary authors and any time he’s got a new book out I run to the front of the line. His work is elegant and troublingly, wonderfully disturbing.”—Victor LaValle, award–winning author of The Changeling “Nathan Ballingrud's brilliant fiction brims with imagination, integrity (I do not use that term lightly), and an authentic world-weary dread that bores directly into your heart. With Wounds you'll gladly follow Nathan to Hell and (maybe) back.”—Paul Tremblay, award-winning author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts “Nathan Ballingrud is one of my favorite short fiction writers.” —Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation and Borne “Stretch[es] the boundaries of the genre by employing these grand, horrific worlds. “The Butcher’s Table” reminds me of the first time I read Clive Barker’s “In the Hills, the Cities.” It’s horrifying, but there’s beauty.” —The New York Times “In only two slender collections, Nathan Ballingrud has emerged as one of the field’s most accomplished short story writers.” —The Washington Post “Ballingrud’s work isn’t like any other.”—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing “One of the most disquieting and memorable short story collections to come out this year.”—The New York Review of Books “Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell is without a doubt one of the best, most accomplished horror collections in recent memory.”—Hellnotes “Wounds will no doubt be remembered as one of the most disquieting and memorable short story collections to come out this year.”—New York Journal of Books “There’s enough nightmare fuel here to inspire weeks of insomnia — all told with an even hand with a penchant for precise storytelling. How else do you chart the furthest reaches of the uncanny?”—Tobias Carroll, Vol. 1 Brooklyn A gripping collection of six stories of terror—including the novella “The Visible Filth,” the basis for the upcoming major motion picture—by Shirley Jackson Award–winning author Nathan Ballingrud, hailed as a major new voice by Jeff VanderMeer, Paul Tremblay, and Carmen Maria Machado—“one of the most heavyweight horror authors out there” (The Verge). In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his “piercing and merciless” (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that haunt our lives—both real and imagined: “What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition” (Los Angeles Review of Books). Now, in Wounds, Ballingrud follows up with an even more confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in “The Visible Filth” to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table,” Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.



Dirty Wings

Author : Sarah McCarry

Publisher : Macmillan

Page : 289 pages

File Size : 14,23 MB

Release : 2014-07-15

Category : Juvenile Fiction

ISBN : 1250049385

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Book Description

In this gorgeous retelling of the Persephone myth, McCarry presents the story of Cass and MaiaNthe mothers from "All Our Pretty Songs"Nand how their fates became intertwined.