Lipstick Brigade


Book Description

Lipstick Brigade tells the dynamic, inspiring-and until now, untold-story of Washington's World War II "Government Girls," recruited from every corner of the nation to staff the offices of America's central command post. Sometimes called white-collar Rosie the Riveters, this clerical corps over 100,000 strong became federal stenographers, typists, code breakers, analysts, and spies. Filled with firsthand accounts and extensive primary research, Lipstick Brigade brings World War II-era Washington to life. Despite its romanticized image, the nation's wartime capital was gritty, carnal, frustrating, and sometimes deadly. From Sister Carrie to Carrie Bradshaw, the adventures of young, single women working in the big city have captured the public's imagination. Lipstick Brigade explores the captivating, surprising, and often moving stories of how these real-life adventurers confronted the challenges of war and transformed the usually sedate capital into a rollicking boomtown.




The Angel


Book Description

Enquiry agents Grand & Batchelor are called upon to investigate the suspicious death of Charles Dickens in this “arch and witty” Victorian mystery novel (Publishers Weekly). June, 1870. The world-famous author Charles Dickens has been found dead in his summer house where he had been hard at work on his final, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Did he die of natural causes or is there something more sinister behind his sudden demise? George Sala, Dickens’ biographer, is convinced his friend was murdered—and he has hired Matthew Grand and James Batchelor to prove it. The investigative team find themselves chasing a plot as intricate as the fictions penned by the deceased. And questions quickly mount: Did the celebrated author’s unconventional private life lead to his death? Who is the mysterious woman who appears at his funeral? And most urgently, can they bring an end to the mystery before it brings an end to them? “Good fun, gentle humor, historic detail, plenty of twists, and a likable pair of heroes make this a book well worth reading.” —Booklist “A plunge into the delightfully cutthroat publishing scene of Victorian London, where all loudly mourn Dickens while privately saying that the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood definitely wasn’t his best.” —Publishers Weekly




Washington


Book Description

Breathing life into the men and women who struggled to help the city realize its full potential, he introduces us to the mercurial French artist who created an ornate plan for the city 'en grande'; members of the nearly forgotten anti-Catholic political party who halted construction of the Washington monument for a quarter century; and the cadre of congressmen who maintained segregation and blocked the city's progress for decades. In the twentieth century Washington's Mall and streets would witness a Ku Klux Klan march, the violent end to the encampment of World War I 'Bonus Army' veterans, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the painful rebuilding of the city in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination.




FUBAR


Book Description

"F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition takes a frank look at the slang used by men on the ground and shows how they managed to retain their sense of humor, black though it may have been."--Page 4 of cover




The Killing Code


Book Description

A historical mystery about a girl who risks everything to track down a vicious serial killer—for fans of The Enigma Game and Last Night at the Telegraph Club. Virginia, 1943: World War II is raging in Europe and on the Pacific front when Kit Sutherland is recruited to help the war effort as a codebreaker at Arlington Hall, a former girls’ college now serving as the site of a secret US Signal Intelligence facility. But Kit is soon involved in another kind of fight: government girls are being brutally murdered in Washington DC, and when Kit stumbles onto a bloody homicide scene, she is drawn into the hunt for the killer. To find the man responsible for the gruesome murders and bring him to justice, Kit joins forces with other female codebreakers at Arlington Hall—gossip queen Dottie Crockford, sharp-tongued intelligence maven Moya Kershaw, and cleverly resourceful Violet DuLac from the segregated codebreaking unit. But as the girls begin to work together and develop friendships—and romance—that they never expected, two things begin to come clear: the murderer they’re hunting is closing in on them…and Kit is hiding a dangerous secret.




The Thoughtful Dresser


Book Description

“You can’t have depths without surfaces,” says Linda Grant in her lively and provocative new book, The thoughtful Dresser, a thinking woman’s guide to what we wear. For centuries, an interest in clothes has been dismissed as the trivial pursuit of vain, empty-headed women. Yet, clothes matter, whether you are interested in fashion or not, because how we choose to dress defines who we are. How we look and what we wear tells a story. Some stories are simple, like the teenager trying to fit in, or the woman turning fifty renouncing invisibility. Some are profound, like that of the immigrant who arrives in a new country and works to blend in by changing the way she dresses, or of the woman whose hat saved her life in Nazi Germany. The Thoughtful Dresser celebrates the pleasure of adornment and is an elegant meditation on our relationship with what we wear and the significance of clothes as the most intimate but also public expressions of our identity.




Sixteenth Street NW


Book Description

DeFerrari and Sefton have created a highly illustrated architectural "biography" of one of DC's most important boulevards. This north-south artery-which runs from the White House, through DC, and to the Maryland border-is as central to the cityscape as it is to DC's history and culture.




Roll Back the World


Book Description

Named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best 100 Indie Books of 2023 “Intricate and affecting, Kasdan’s debut finds hope in the saddest of stories.” —Kirkus Reviews STARRED REVIEW Relating her older sister’s struggle, Kasdan excavates its connections to family history and provides a poignant look at a mid-century Jewish family, especially during WWII and the Cold War. As she relates this history to her sister’s life, she realizes how writing consoles both Rachel and her, and how it also connects them. Ultimately, Roll Back the World is a profound testament to the power of writing to heal.




FUBAR F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition


Book Description

The soldier slang of World War II was as colourful as it was evocative. It could be insulting, pessimistic, witty, and even defeatist. From 'spam bashers' to 'passion wagons' and 'roof pigs' to 'Hell's Ladies,' the World War II fighting man was never short of words to describe the people and events in his life. F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition takes a frank look at the British, Commonwealth, American, German, Japanese and Russian slang used by the men on the ground, and shows how, even in the heat of battle, they somehow managed to retain their sense of humour, black though it might have been.




Has Anyone Seen My Toes?


Book Description

From the bestselling author of Thank You for Smoking and Make Russia Great Again comes a comic tour de force, the story of one man’s “lively and funny” (New York Journal of Books) journey through lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, an aging screenwriter is holed up in a coastal South Carolina town with his beloved second wife, Peaches. He’s been binge-eating for a year and developed a notable rapport with the local fast-food chain Hippo King. He struggles to work—on a ludicrous screenplay about a Nazi attempt to kidnap FDR and, naturally, an article for Etymology Today on English words of Carthaginian origin. He’s told Peaches so often about the origins of the word mayonnaise that she’s developed an aversion to using the condiment. He thinks he has Covid. His wife thinks he is losing his mind. In short, your typical pandemic worries. Things were going from bad to worse even before his doctor suggested a battery of brain tests. He knows what that means: dementia! But even in these scary times, there are plenty of things to do to distract him. His iPhone is fat-shaming him. He’s. been trying to read Proust and thinks the French novelist missed his true calling as a parfumier. And he’s discovered nefarious Russian influence on the local coroner’s face. Why is Putin so keen to control who decides who died peacefully and who by foul play in Pimento County. Could it be the local military base? Has Anyone Seen My Toes? is a “laugh-out-loud” (Publishers Weekly) romp through a time that has been anything but funny.