![]() ![]() Their “big reveal” and a shakeup on The Rich and Ruthless add up to a cliff-hanger that begs for a sequel. ![]() But it’s the Mississippi family and friends whom Calysta left behind-and who keep her secrets-who emerge as the most compelling cast. It’s a dizzying mess that soap devotees will gladly devour. The subplots and entanglements of characters both on the fictional soap and among its preening cast-including a clever cameo by soap fan Isabella Rossellini-keep all the players on edge as they teeter between doom and salvation. She came in with a fiery personality that kept faithful viewers watching. But Calysta is also dodging the dirty laundry that a felonious producer threatens to air, cast mates who want to sabotage her career, and the fallout from a torrid affair. A fictional character on CBS’s The Young and The Restless portrayed by one of daytime TV’s hottest black women on the tube, Victoria Rowell. Gorgeous, talented African-American actress Calysta Jeffries returns to fictional soap The Rich and Ruthless after a stint in rehab to discover that she’ll be sharing the spotlight with her equally talented and beautiful 18-year-old daughter, Ivy. ![]() Dishing dirt on the shrinking landscape of daytime drama and its venal, back-stabbing, and drug-abusing stars, Rowell cheerfully gnaws the hand that once fed her in this soap opera within a soap opera. You don’t have to be a fan of Rowell’s former star vehicle, the CBS sudser The Young and the Restless, to relish the actress-turned-writer’s giddy sequel to Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva. New York Times bestselling author and beloved actress Victoria Rowell delivers another hilarious novel and shocking send-up of the soap opera. ![]()
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![]() ![]() The haves and have-nots of Covid, Black Lives Matter, the storming of the Capitol – “there was deep, deep unrest in the country” – we watch it all unfold through Lucy’s disconcerted eyes. For a writer who excels at enclosed, benumbed spaces (think of the hospital room in the first Lucy novel), as well as all the quirks and uncertainties of intimacy, the whole concept is a gift.Īnd, all right, most people did not have an empty beach house in which to hide during the pandemic, but Strout knows that: this is an acutely socially aware novel with a wide political sweep. As William drives her off to Maine, we are immediately returned to the drama of those early dark unvaccinated days when frightened people, happily or not, were confined at close quarters for an unknown quantity of time. Of course, a large part of the fascination lies in the fact that this isn’t just Lucy’s recent past but our own too. ![]() Indeed it’s a truly monumental piece of work – one that you can’t help feeling deserves a less mischievously banal title (can you imagine a male writer calling a book Lucy By the Sea?). Strout isn’t the first writer to go there, but she certainly makes magnificent and thrilling use of it in this, her most nuanced – and intensely moving – Lucy Barton novel yet. The disarming situation described at the opening of Elizabeth Strout’s new novel might seem fantastical, the stuff of a million post-apocalyptic movies, were it not for the fact that every single one of us has recently lived through it. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Isabel is frequently if not nearly always mistaken in her judgments of other people and their problems. Clearly the problem is with her fiancé, not with the other woman. Reasonably, her fiancé should correct his own behavior towards the other woman, but Isabel convinces herself and him to let her confront her rival. For example, in The Charming Quirks of Others, Isabel cannot stop herself from meddling even in her fiancé\’s sticky situation with another woman. ![]() She\’s a philosopher and constantly making decisions using her set of supposedly objectively moral beliefs, but the more I read of her various dilemmas and inquests, the more I realize that, far from making most decisions on ethical/moral bases, she just does what she wants! She can talk herself into a philosophical position for following her emotions almost every time she confronts a dilemma. Nevertheless, after reading 7 books of the series, I realized something about her was rankling me. ![]() ![]() ![]() Twenty-year-old Peter, when threatened with incarceration in a mental institution for his faith, refused to let Grace fight for his release. You will also come to know some of the heroes of the faith: What eventually attracted them to Jesus? How did Grace effectively share the gospel with atheists and people of different faiths? These are some of Grace's Chinese friends you will meet in Dragon Ride. ![]() "Grace, you can't be serious! You actually believe God exists?" In the kick-off meeting of a discussion group Grace was leading for atheist university students, Carol burst out laughing. Is Jesus powerful enough to protect me from them?" "If I believe in Jesus, the gods I worship are going to retaliate. Leah, an idol-worshipper, longed to become a Christian, but she was afraid. The first time Doris, an orthodox Buddhist, heard about Jesus, she whispered to Grace, "Don't tell anyone that Jesus died for us. ![]() ![]() The Comforts of Bath, Rowlandson, The Pump Room, 1798 ![]() In 1678 a single woman named Celia Fiennes journeyed to Bath and wrote in her journal: Please enjoy the reviews of Jane’s contemporaries and predecessors: In honor of Austenprose’s coverage of Northanger Abbey for the month of October, I have gathered observations about the Pump Room that were placed online from periodicals and journals of Jane Austen’s time. ![]() Gentle readers, before you continue please be aware that this post features a series of vignettes and memories from people who wrote their recollections about the historic Pump Room in Bath, so prominently mentioned in Northanger Abbey during Catherine Morland’s visits there with her benefactors, the Allens. Allen as they sat down near the great clock, after parading the room till they were tired “and how pleasant it would be if we had any acquaintance here.” Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey Chapter IV ![]() “What a delightful place Bath is,” said Mrs. ![]() Every creature in Bath, except himself, was to be seen in the room at different periods of the fashionable hours crowds of people were every moment passing in and out, up the steps and down people whom nobody cared about, and nobody wanted to see and he only was absent. Tilney there before the morning were over, and ready to meet him with a smile – but no smile was demanded – Mr. With more than usual eagerness did Catherine hasten to the Pump-room the next day, secure within herself of seeing Mr. ![]() ![]() “He played some to us and we suddenly thought, Wow, we’re actually there-inside the investigation,” Cooper tells Vanity Fair. ![]() It wasn’t until Cooper discovered that Summers still had the audio from those incredible interviews that her perspective changed. ![]() ( Vanity Fair excerpted the republished biography here earlier this year.) Summers interviewed some 650 people for the book. Which was why filmmaker Emma Cooper ( The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann) initially balked when author Anthony Summers asked the British filmmaker to peruse his best-selling 1985 biography of Monroe, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Sixty years after Marilyn Monroe’s death, there isn’t much new to say about the icon or her tragic passing at age 36-as scandalous as the sex symbol’s final days were. ![]() ![]() ![]() Their quest is indirectly supported by the City's Authority, which is unable to stop the Safeguard from opposing them. The Net Terminal Genes appear to be the key to halting the unhindered, chaotic expansion of the Megastructure, as well as a way of stopping the murderous robot horde known as the Safeguard from destroying all of humanity.Īlong the way, Killy meets and joins forces with a resourceful engineer named Cibo. The City is inhabited by scattered human and transhuman tribes as well as hostile cyborgs known as Silicon Creatures. The City is an immense volume of artificial structure, separated into massive "floors" by nearly-impenetrable barriers known as " Megastructure". ![]() ![]() He is searching for Net Terminal Gene, a (possibly) extinct genetic marker that allows humans to access the " Netsphere", a sort of computerized control network for The City. Killy, a silent loner possessing an incredibly powerful weapon known as a Gravitational Beam Emitter, wanders a vast technological world known as " The City". ![]() ![]() ![]() We locate factors as she does, as well as likewise I believed that was done efficiently. I believed it would certainly concentrate a great deal a lot more on the world structure of the dystopian elements like many very first magazines in a collection do, yet instead it concentrates far more on the characters, as well as specifically simply exactly how the key character discovers what has really happened as well as what it needs to reside in this world. There is an interesting composing layout, kind of inconsistent I assume is the greatest implies to define it, when the story begins the significant character has actually spent almost a year in a ridiculous asylum, so she queries whatever, including her extremely own ideas, along with this definitely makes it unique. This was not what I was preparing for in any way. ![]() I had actually seen this around a great deal as well as a great deal of people had really recommended it, yet it had not been truly high up on my TBR listing, as well as I just maintained placing if off. ![]() ![]() ![]() Several examples of stories that appear to be from trusted sources are shown and the problems with these stories are discussed.ĭaheley and Mohan look at some of the fake news stories that appeared around the time of the 2016 US election campaigns that were shared on social media. ![]() The main drivers of money-making, influencing readers’ opinions and satire are explored with a look at stories about high profile people. They show how deliberately misleading stories are often presented as real news stories and unpicks some of the reasons why fake news exists. In a conversation with senior broadcast journalist Megha Mohan, she separates genuine and fake news. She looks at what fake news is and gives pupils a guide to determining which stories are fake and which can be relied on. Reporter Tina Daheley looks at the way Fake News is presented and examines the problems of trusting online news stories. ![]() ![]() The full-color illustrations, however, capture that ancient aura wonderfully well. ![]() Unfortunately, the telling lacks the feel of the ancient poetry the cadences of oral tradition with its repetition and vivid description needn't have been sacrificed. Though padding the Shamhat role seems more than a little anachronistic, the dramatic choices usually work well, setting up the rivalry/friendship that propels the rest of the epic (to be continued in two future volumes). Granted, there are several versions of the story, but the reteller does not note that this is a rather free adaptation of the "standard" text. There are alterations (e.g., Shamhat is no longer a courtesan who seduces Enkidu, but a city favorite who falls in love with him, Gilgamesh no longer subdues Enkidu but falls off a wall and is saved by him) as well as additions and deletions. He returns with her to the city, where he fights Gilgamesh and the two men become best friends. Gilgamesh sends a temple woman, Shamhat, to lure Enkidu from the wilderness. ![]() ![]() The people cry to the gods for relief, which comes in the form of a wild man named Enkidu. ![]() The god-king Gilgamesh rules oppressively over the city of Uruk. Grade 3-6- This picture book account of the first part of the ancient epic retains the main characters and events of the story that is Mesopotamia's claim to literary fame. ![]() |