Other People's Houses


Book Description

'First published 54 years ago and yet feels as timely as any book I've read this year' Observer Nine months after the Nazi occupation of Austria, 600 Jewish Children assembled at Vienna station to board the first of the Kindertransports bound for Britain. Among them was 10 year old Lore Segal. For the next seven years, she lived as a refugee in other people's houses, moving from the Orthodox Levines in Liverpool, to the staunchly working class Hoopers in Kent, to the genteel Miss Douglas and her sister in Guildford. Few understood the terrors she had fled, or the crushing responsibility of trying to help her parents gain a visa. Amazingly she succeeds and two years later her parents arrive; their visa allows them to work as domestic servants - a humiliation for which they must be grateful. In Other People's Houses Segal evokes with deep compassion, clarity and calm the experience of a child uprooted from a loving home to become stranded among strangers.




The Smell of Other People's Houses


Book Description

“Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock’s Alaska is beautiful and wholly unfamiliar…. A thrilling, arresting debut.” —Gayle Forman, New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay and I Was Here “[A] singular debut. . . . [Hitchcock] weav[es] the alternating voices of four young people into a seamless and continually surprising story of risk, love, redemption, catastrophe, and sacrifice.” —The Wall Street Journal This deeply moving and authentic debut set in 1970s Alaska is for fans of Rainbow Rowell, Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, and Benjamin Alire Saenz. Intertwining stories of love, tragedy, wild luck, and salvation on the edge of America’s Last Frontier introduce a writer of rare talent. Ruth has a secret that she can’t hide forever. Dora wonders if she can ever truly escape where she comes from, even when good luck strikes. Alyce is trying to reconcile her desire to dance, with the life she’s always known on her family’s fishing boat. Hank and his brothers decide it’s safer to run away than to stay home—until one of them ends up in terrible danger. Four very different lives are about to become entangled. This unforgettable William C. Morris Award finalist is about people who try to save each other—and how sometimes, when they least expect it, they succeed. Praise: William C. Morris Finalist Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award for Young Adult Fiction Tayshas Reading List—Top 10 List New York Public Library’s Best 50 Books for Teens Chicago Public Library, Best of the Best List Shelf Awareness, Best Children’s & Teen Books of the Year Nominated to the Oklahoma Sequoya Book Award Master List Nominated to the Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award “Hitchcock’s debut resonates with the timeless quality of a classic. This is a fascinating character study—a poetic interweaving of rural isolation and coming-of-age.” —John Corey Whaley, award-winning author of Where Things Come Back and Highly Illogical Behavior “As an Alaskan herself, Bonnie Sue Hitchcock is able to bring alive this town, and this group of poor teens and their families that live there.” —Bustle




Other People's Houses


Book Description

'A dark, twisting tale of guilt and obsession which will leave you gasping' Petronella McGovern, author of Six Minutes The stunningly tense, page-turning top 10 bestseller for all fans of The Woman in the Window and The Girl on the Train. The perfect house. The perfect family. Too good to be true. Kate Webb still grieves over the loss of her young son. Ten years on, she spends her weekends hungover, attending open houses on Sydney's wealthy north shore and imagining the lives of the people who live there. Then Kate visits the Harding house - the perfect house with, it seems, the perfect family. A photograph captures a kind-looking man, a beautiful woman she knew at university, and a boy - a boy that for one heartbreaking moment she believes is her own son. When her curiosity turns to obsession, she uncovers the cracks that lie beneath a glossy facade of perfection, sordid truths she could never have imagined. But is it her imagination? As events start to spiral dangerously out of control, could the real threat come from Kate herself? 'At times sad and moving [and] the twists come fast. This promising debut novel would be a good recommendation for fans of thrillers and is a confirmed quick and entertaining holiday read.' Books + Publishing 'A clever premise and a troubled narrator set this page-turner up beautifully. I really enjoyed the ride.' Sara Foster 'Taut, smart and immensely satisfying. I was addicted from the first page to the last.' Nicola Moriarty




Other People's Houses


Book Description

The clearest explanation yet of how the financial crisis of 2008 developed and why it could happen again In the wake of the financial meltdown in 2008, many claimed that it had been inevitable, that no one saw it coming, and that subprime borrowers were to blame. This accessible, thoroughly researched book is Jennifer Taub’s response to such unfounded claims. Drawing on wide-ranging experience as a corporate lawyer, investment firm counsel, and scholar of business law and financial market regulation, Taub chronicles how government officials helped bankers inflate the toxic-mortgage-backed housing bubble, then after the bubble burst ignored the plight of millions of homeowners suddenly facing foreclosure. Focusing new light on the similarities between the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s and the financial crisis in 2008, Taub reveals that in both cases the same reckless banks, operating under different names, received government bailouts, while the same lax regulators overlooked fraud and abuse. Furthermore, in 2013 the situation is essentially unchanged. The author asserts that the 2008 crisis was not just similar to the S&L scandal, it was a severe relapse of the same underlying disease. And despite modest regulatory reforms, the disease remains uncured: top banks remain too big to manage, too big to regulate, and too big to fail.




Other Houses


Book Description

Lily works as a cleaner. She moves through houses in inner-city Melbourne, unseen, scrubbing away the daily residue of other people's privilege. Her partner Janks works the line in a local food factory. With every pay check they inch further away from their former world of poverty and addiction. Lily and Janks are determined that their daughter Jewelee will have a different life. She'll have a career, not a dead-end job. She'll have savings, not debt. But precarious lives are easily upended. One wrong move throws the family into a situation in which the lines between right and wrong, hope and disappointment, are blurred. Other Houses is a masterful and tender story about people who live from payday to payday. Acutely observed and lyrical, Paddy O'Reilly's novel paints a haunting picture of class, aspiration and the boundaries we will cross for love.




The Garden of Small Beginnings


Book Description

“A quirky, funny, and deeply thoughtful book”* that’s “filled with characters you’ll love and wish you lived next door to in real life”** from the author of The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. Lilian Girvan has been a single mother for three years—ever since her husband died in a car accident. One mental breakdown and some random suicidal thoughts later, she’s just starting to get the hang of this widow thing. She can now get her two girls to school, show up to work, and watch TV like a pro. The only problem is she’s becoming overwhelmed with being underwhelmed. At least her textbook illustrating job has some perks—like actually being called upon to draw whale genitalia. Oh, and there’s that vegetable-gardening class her boss signed her up for. Apparently, being the chosen illustrator for a series of boutique vegetable guides means getting your hands dirty, literally. Wallowing around in compost on a Saturday morning can’t be much worse than wallowing around in pajamas and self-pity. After recruiting her kids and insanely supportive sister to join her, Lilian shows up at the Los Angeles botanical garden feeling out of her element. But what she’ll soon discover—with the help of a patient instructor and a quirky group of gardeners—is that into every life a little sun must shine, whether you want it to or not... READERS GUIDE INCLUDED *HelloGiggles **Bustle




Other People's Houses


Book Description

In Other People’s Houses publishing legend Hilary McPhee exchanges one hemisphere for another. Fleeing the aftermath of a failed marriage, she embarks on a writing project in the Middle East, for a member of the Hashemite royal family, a man she greatly respects. Here she finds herself faced with different kinds of exile, new kinds of banishment. From apartments in Cortona and Amman and an attic in London, McPhee watches other women managing magnificently alone as she flounders through the mire of Extreme Loneliness. Other People’s Houses is a brutally honest memoir, funny, sad, full of insights into worlds to which she was given privileged access, and of the friendships which sustained her. And ultimately, of course, this is the story of returning home, of picking up the pieces, and facing the music as her house and her life takes on new shapes.




If You Lived Here


Book Description

Features detailed, bas-relief collage spreads of dwellings in other world regions and historical times to explain how different people live and have lived, from a village house in South Africa to a floating green house in the Netherlands.




May I Come In?


Book Description

New York magazine’s interiors editor shares some of her most memorable house profiles in this stunning and inspiring visual tour. For May I Come In?, design editor extraordinaire Wendy Goodman visits seventy homes that express their owners’ spirit and passions. In this pantheon, imagination and originality hold sway: Artists and eccentrics are the equals of aristocrats and the mandarins of design. Alba Clemente’s closet is a Renaissance theater; Amy Sedaris built a playroom (but not for children); Andrew Solomon houses his guests in an igloo; Richard Avedon’s private walls were bulletin boards; Kathy Ruttenberg’s house is an animal kingdom; Jay Maisel called a former bank with seventy-two rooms home. Every room has a story to tell and a purpose for being. A self-described design hunter, Goodman spent thirty years seeking extraordinary living spaces. In her long career, she has found three things to be true. The first is that curiosity and never giving up will get you everywhere. The second is what Diana Vreeland stated best when she wrote, “Few things are more fascinating than the opportunity to see how other people live during private hours.” The third is that houses never lie. These principles underscore her search for individuality, human interest, and authenticity in design. May I Come In? is profusely illustrated with superb images by leading interior photographers, as well as Goodman’s own snapshots and memorabilia related to her quests. It is an irresistible visual record of the art of living by one of its most astute observers. “Page after page reveals interiors that practically vibrate with charisma, while others wax a poetic minimalism that, despite a lack of things, overwhelm with grace.” —Vogue “When it comes to the New York design scene, Wendy Goodman is positively an institution.” —Town & Country




People in Glass Houses


Book Description

Only those who keep their wit and affections about them will survive the mass conditioning of the Organization, where confusion solemnly rules and conformity is king. As in our world itself, humanity prevails in the courage, love, and laughter of singular spirits--of men and women for whom life is an adventure no Organization can quell, and whose souls remain their own.