The House on Telegraph Hill


Book Description

The doors of the house inhabited by the Jack Wilson family on Telegraph Hill lead to a terrible secret. Within those walls, Charles S. Wilson and his sisters suffered heartbreaking physical and mental abuse at the hands of their own parents. Mother Mame was a well-known caretaker in the community, but she also brought strangers into the house and force-fed them until they were sick. Their father Jack, better known as the town drunk, threw Wilson around like a rag doll for the amusement of his drunken friends. And then there were Annabelle and Abigail, Wilson's beloved sisters, whose neglected and tortured lives ended all too soon. A story of survival, The House on Telegraph Hill, details the abuse Wilson suffered and sheds light, not only on his own demoralizing experience, but also on the epidemic of child abuse. His brutally honest stories reveal all of the disguises, sugar-coatings, and lies that abusers heap on their victims. By recounting his dreadful upbringing along with his lifelong struggles, Wilson is finally pushing his story to the forefront to help educate others about the horrors and complexities of child abuse.







Death on Telegraph Hill


Book Description

"Tallman offers an entertaining mystery . . . will appeal to fans of Anne Perry and Rhys Bowen"--"Library Journal." San Francisco, 1882. When her brother is hit by a bullet, a crusading young lawyer discovers more murder and mayhem on Telegraph Hill.




House on Telegraph Hill


Book Description




The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill


Book Description

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is the inspiring story of how one man found his life’s work—and true love—among a gang of wild parrots roosting in one of America’s most picturesque urban settings. Mark Bittner was down on his luck. He’d gone to San Francisco at the age of twenty-one to take a stab at a music career, but he hadn’t had much success. After many years as an odd-jobber in the area, he accepted work as a housekeeper for an elderly woman. The gig came with a rent-free studio apartment on the city’s famed Telegraph Hill, which had somehow become home to a flock of brilliantly colored wild parrots. In this unforgettable story, Bittner recounts how he became fascinated by the birds and made up his mind to get to know them and gain their trust. He succeeds to such a degree that he becomes the local wild parrot expert and a tourist attraction. People can’t help gawking at the man who, during daily feedings, stands with parrots perched along both arms and atop his head. When a documentary filmmaker comes along to capture the phenomenon on film, the story takes a surprising turn, and Bittner’s life truly takes flight.




Telegraph Hill


Book Description

In Telegraph Hill, private detective Ray Infantino searches for a missing girl named Tania. The case takes him to San Francisco, the city he abandoned years ago after his fiance was murdered. Thrust into his old city haunts, Ray finds that Tania may not be lost at all. Tania saw a murder; and a criminal gang, the Black Fist Triad, wants to make sure she never sees anything again.




House on Telegraph Hill


Book Description

"It seemed incredible that anyone so frail and lovely as Anya could be put on trial for murder. But even her lawyer believed her guilty, though he remembered with a pang what he'd felt when he first looked in her eyes: 'Boy, they knocked the props out from under me. They had the remembrance of hell and the promise of heaven in them, and I thought, Why does a woman with her potentialities have to louse things up by knocking off her husband? She might at least have been a little more subtle about it.' But perhaps she had been -- the alibi, when it came, was diabolically clever, and possibly even legitmate! ... This unusual, pulsing story of suspense and murder is the source of the new movie of the same name, starring Valentina Cortesa [sic] and William Lundigan." --




Telegraph Avenue


Book Description

New York Times Bestseller “A genuinely moving story about race and class, parenting and marriage. . . Chabon is inarguably one of the greatest prose stylists of all time." — Benjamin Percy, Esquire New York Times bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon has transported readers to wonderful places: to New York City during the Golden Age of comic books (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay); to an imaginary Jewish homeland in Sitka, Alaska (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union); to discover The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Now he takes us to Telegraph Avenue in a big-hearted and exhilarating novel that explores the profoundly intertwined lives of two Oakland, California families, one black and one white. In Telegraph Avenue, Chabon lovingly creates a world grounded in pop culture—Kung Fu, ’70s Blaxploitation films, vinyl LPs, jazz and soul music—and delivers a bravura epic of friendship, race, and secret histories. As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there—longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, a pair of semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart—half tavern, half temple—stands Brokeland. When ex–NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in America, announces plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complications to the couples' already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged and the love of fifteen-year-old Julius Jaffe's life.




Juana Briones of Nineteenth-century California


Book Description

Juana Briones de Miranda lived an unusual life. She was one of the first residents of what is now San Francisco, then named Yebra Buena (Good Herb), reportedly after a medicinal tea she concocted. She was among the few women in California of her time to own property in her own name, and she proved to be a skilled farmer, rancher, and businesswoman. In retelling her story, McDonnell also retells the history of nineteenth-century California from the perspective of this surprising woman. -- P. [4] of Cover.




Last Night at the Telegraph Club


Book Description

Winner of the National Book Award A New York Times Bestseller "The queer romance we’ve been waiting for.”—Ms. Magazine Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible. But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day. (Cover image may vary.)