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The Gallery - June

Welcome to THE GALLERY where we invite you to browse some of the beautiful literature we have in stock here in the Plymouth Proprietary Library.

All of these books are available to borrow and you will be pleased to know we don't specify a date for their return, hence our policy of not issuing library fines.

Complimentary coffee, cake and a tour of the Library will be available at all of our Coffee Mornings on the second Saturday of each month for anyone interested in joining. Annual membership is £60 - payable by cheque or cash - with a reduced rate of £30 for under 25's or students.

Jamaca InnJamaica Inn
by Daphne du Maurier

After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan crosses the windswept Cornish moors to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience. There she finds Patience a changed woman, downtrodden by her domineering, vicious husband Joss Merlyn. The inn is a front for a lawless gang of criminals, and Mary is unwillingly dragged into their dangerous world of smuggling and murder. Before long she will be forced to cross her own moral line to save herself.

 

 

WonderlandWonderland
by Brett Westwood & Stephen Moss

'Vibrant, fascinating, poetic - a year in living things: all the things we love, all the things we wish we could, all the little things we step over and never know - the best of British wildlife from two superb naturalists and writers' CHRIS PACKHAM

From blackbirds, beavers and beetles to tawny owls, natterjack toads and lemon slugs. Every day of the year, winter or summer, in every corner of the British Isles, there's plenty to see if you know where - and how - to look.

From encounters with the curious black redstart, which winters on our rocky coasts, to the tiny green snowdrop shoots that are the first sign that spring might be round the corner. And from the blossom-time and dawn choruses of April and May into the abundant noisiness of summer, where days start with hawker dragonflies and drowsy bumblebees and end with glow-worms and ghost moths; to autumn when in the early morning mist of London's Richmond Park male red deer lock horns in competition for a mate.

Nature is always full of surprises - whether it's the strange behaviour of clothes moths or the gruesome larder of the strike. Distilling two lifetimes' knowledge, expert insight and enthusiasm, award-winning authors and passionate naturalists Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss take us through the year, day by day, sharing the unexpected delights that we can experience in our skies, beaches, rivers, fields, forests and back gardens. There are all kinds of adventures waiting on your doorstep, any day of the year, all you need is Wonderland.

 

Moments of Truth

Moments of Truth
by Lorna Sage

Accessible, jargon-free, and with her characteristic clear intelligence, Lorna Sage looks at the ways in which pre-war women writers, some famous, some less well known, invented themselves as authors in the face of the rigid conceptions of feminine creativity which prevailed at the time.

Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, Christina Stead, Djuna Barnes, Violet Trefusis, Jane Bowles, Simone de Beauvoir, Christine Brooke-Rose, Iris Murdoch, Angela Carter.

‘Moments of Truth’ demonstrates Lorna Sage’s characteristic clear intelligence and sheer versatility as a writer, bringing together introductions to much-loved 20th-century classics, fiercely intelligent essays and insightful, free-thinking journalism. A mixture of close reading with a breathtaking sensitivity to nuances, and fascinating biographical exploration, ‘Moments of Truth’ sends you back to discover or rediscover these twelve writers.

 

 

George ElliotGeorge Elliot a Life
by Rosemary Ashton

This richly enjoyable biography of the great Victorian novelist reminds us how truly revolutionary was George Eliot... [Ashton] provides luminously sane readings of the marvellous novels.' A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard

'Excellent... Ashton cites Eliot's achievement in a literary landscape which moves from Scott and George Sand to Dickens, Tennyson and Browning... a fluent, vivid book... it makes one thrill again to the breadth of Eliot's genius and the passionate, vulnerable nature that accompanied her wide-ranging mind.' Jenny Uglow, Independent on Sunday

'An extremely impressive work... the George Eliot who emerges from Professor Ashton's book is a remarkable woman of exceptional integrity whose life expresses the spirit of the Victorian age, even as it goes against the very grain of it.' Susie Boyt, Sunday Express

 

 

Life at the TopLife at the Top
by John Braine

In this sequel to "Room at the Top", Joe Lampton is a well-off man with two children and two cars, but his life is approaching a crisis. In a series of sudden and ironic reversals his whole secure world is broken and he is forced down to the lowest depth he has ever reached.

 

 

Mary BartonMary Barton
by Mrs Gaskell

Published in 1848, MARY BARTON was the first novel of Elizabeth Gaskell, later to become celebrated as the author of CRANFORD, MARY BARTON - a better book than CRANFORD - was written after she has married a Manchester clergyman, and it conbines a typically sturdy romantic plot with striking descriptions of working people and their lives as she had encountered them in northern mills. Despite this grim setting, the book has all this author's well-known charm and considerable power to involve the reader in the lives of her characters. More accessible than George Eliot, less frenzied than Charlotte Bronte, Mrs Gaskell is a novelist whose wit, human warmth and sharp eye for detail bring ordinary experience to vivid life.

 

 

Workhouse GirlThe Workhouse Girl
by Jessica Stirling

To Cassie Armitage and her well-to-do family, Robert Montague seems a perfect suitor: a distinguished preacher with a glamorous past and impressive connections. Only after marriage will trusting and idealistic Cassie discover that Montague is not all that he seems.

Nancy Winfield, born to the workhouse and betrayed by her protectors, is quick to recognize the preacher's evil intentions.

Imprisoned in a dangerous marriage and deceived by her sister, Cassie finds an ally in Nancy, and a friend in widower Allan Hunter, who is a victim of Montague's twisted schemes. Beneath the surface of Cassie's staid existence perverse and deadly passion run deep, threatening a tragedy that only Nancy Winfield's loyalty - and Cassie's courage - can prevent.

 

 

Dickens2The Genius of Dickens
by Michael Slater

Dickens is one of the greatest literary icons in the English-speaking world, who possessed a genius as a communicator as well as a storyteller, and who remains a writer of inexhaustible popular interest, as notable today on screen as on the bookshelf. Michael Slater has spent half a century reading and writing about him - above all enjoying him. In this book he provides a personal insight into the truth of a famous tribute paid to Dickens by a helper on his triumphal public reading tours: 'The more you want out of the Master, the more you'll find in him.'Ranging widely over Dickens' fiction, journalism, letters and speeches, The Genius of Dickens captures the ideas and beliefs, the social and artistic ideals of 'Dickensian values', and the ambition, that inspired and shaped Dickens' prodigious output, offering an authoritative short portrait of Dickens the man and writer. 

 

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