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The Pillsburys of Minnesota
by Lori Sturdevant George S. PillsburyThe Pillsburys of Minnesota "Pillsbury" is a household word in many parts of the world, but in Minnesota it has carried a special import ever since the arrival of John S. Pillsbury, his brother George, and nephews Charles and Fred at the Falls of st. Anthony in the mid-nineteenth century. Here Star Tribune columnist Lori Sturdevant chronicles the family's pioneering role in making Minneapolis the milling capitol of the world. she explores the career of Minnesota governor "Honest John "Pillsbury, and also highlights the instrumental part he played in the growth of the University of Minnesota. Alfred Pillsbury's impact on the Minneapolis Institue of Arts, Philip's remarkable success at reviving a moribund milling giant through the introduction of new food products and George's efforts to fashion a more inclusive Republican Party, are only a few of the many strands woven into the Pillsbury story. From mining camps and insurance companies to arts organizations and charitable concerns, the family's imprint on Minnesota runs deep and wide. Book jacket.
The Twelve Chairs (Northwestern World Classics)
by Evgeny Petrov Ilya Ilf Anne O. FisherWinner, 2012 Northern California Book Award for Fiction in Translation More faithful to the original text and its deeply resonant humor, this new translation of The Twelve Chairs brings Ilf and Petrov’s Russian classic fully to life. The novel’s iconic hero, Ostap Bender, an unemployed con artist living by his wits, joins forces with Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman who has returned to his hometown to look for a cache of missing jewels hidden in chairs that have been appropriated by the Soviet authorities. The search for the chairs takes them from the provinces of Moscow to the wilds of the Transcaucasus mountains. On their quest they encounter a variety of characters, from opportunistic Soviet bureaucrats to aging survivors of the old propertied classes, each one more selfish, venal, and bungling than the last. A brilliant satire of the early years of the Soviet Union, as well as the inspiration for a Mel Brooks film, The Twelve Chairs retains its universal appeal.
American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic
by Nancy K. BristowThis readable and compelling account explains the role of race, gender and class, promotion of physical fitness and public education, and America's public health strategy during the influenza epidemics in 1918, 1919, 1920, and 1922. Bristow's work distinguishes itself with her emphasis on influenza epidemics beyond 1918-1919, the roles of physicians and nurses, the importance of public health nursing, and the personal revelation that she lost great-grandparents due to influenza.
Art on Fire
by Hilary SloinArt on Fire is the apparent biography of subversive painter Francesca deSilva, the founding foremother of "pseudorealism," who lived hard and died young. But in the tradition of Vladimir Nabokov's acclaimed novel Pale Fire, it's a fiction from start to finish. It opens with Francesca's early life. We learn about her childhood love, the chess genius Lisa Sinsong, as well as her rivalry with her brilliant sister Isabella, who publishes an acclaimed volume of poetry at the age of twelve. She compensates for the failings of her less than attentive parents by turning to her grandmother who is loyal and adoring until she learns Francesca is a lesbian, when she rejects her. Francesca flees to a ramshackle cabin in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, working weekends at the flea market. She breaks into the gloomy basement of a house, where she begins her life as a painter. Much to her confusion and even dismay, fame comes quickly. Interspersed with Francesca's narrative are thirteen critical "essays" on the paintings of Francesca deSilva by critics, academics, and psychologists-essays that are razor-sharp satires on art, lesbian life, and the academic world, puncturing pretentiousness with every paragraph. Art on Fire is a darkly comic, pitch-perfect, and fearless satire on the very art of biography itself. Art on Fire is the latest winner of the Bywater Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the Heekin Foundation Award, the Dana Awards, and the Story Oaks Prize. It was mistakenly awarded the nonfiction prize in the Amherst Book and Plow Competition.
Demons are Forever (Elite Operatives #5)
by Kim Baldwin Xenia AlexiouBehind closed doors, everyone suffers from some kind of demon. Veteran Elite Operative Landis "Chase" Coolidge's latest mission requires every bit of her considerable tracking skills because she has to locate a colleague kidnapped by a brilliant scientist responsible for the deaths of millions. Former op Phantom is along for the ride, desperate to find her missing lover. By day, Heather Snyder works in the New York fashion industry. But her secret life as a high-class call girl thrusts her into the middle of a global black market organ harvesting ring and draws the interest of the EOO. No stranger to the world of call girls, Chase revels in her latest assignment, until she discovers that Heather is the one woman who can change her roguish ways.
Gone at 3: The Untold Story of the Worst School Disaster in American History
by David M. Brown Michael WereschaginBased on scores of interviews and an intimate understanding of a community torn by tragedy, Gone at 3:17 is the definitive study of the 1937 New London school explosion. This engrossing narrative of sorrow and survival burrows deep inside one of the greatest disasters in American history.
Hide and Snake Murder (Shay O'Hanlon #2)
by Jessie ChandlerBook two in the riotous caper series starring Shay O'Hanlon and her trouble-prone pals. When Shay O'Hanlon's ill-mannered friend Baz steals a stuffed snake from a wealthy businessman, he wasn't expecting it to be filled with money. Nor was he expecting his aunt Agnes to take it with her on vacation to the Big Easy. With trigger-happy thugs in hot pursuit, Shay leads her friends on a rowdy rescue mission from Minneapolis to New Orleans and back. Along the way, a bungled burglary puts the gang in a drug cartel's cross hairs, and a beautiful professor offers the only way out. But can Shay and the gang trust her with their lives?
Ill Will (Micky Knight Mystery #7)
by J. M. RedmannFirst, do no harm. But as New Orleans PI Micky Knight discovers, not every health care provider follows that dictum. She stumbles into a tangle of the true believers to the criminally callous, who use the suffering of others for their twisted ends. In a city slowly rebuilding after Katrina, one of the most devastated areas is health care, and the gaps in service are wide enough for the snake oil salesmen--and the snakes themselves--to crawl through. First, her investigation is driven by anger, but then it becomes personal as someone very close to Micky uses her cancer diagnosis to go where Micky cannot, into the heart of the evil where only the ill are allowed. Micky is her only lifeline out. Can Micky save her in time to get to the medical treatment she desperately needs to survive? This is the seventh Micky Knight mystery.
Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire, America's Deadliest Rock Concert
by John BarylickOn February 20, 2003, the deadliest rock concert in U.S. history took place at a roadhouse called The Station in West Warwick, Rhode Island. That night, in the few minutes it takes to play a hard-rock standard, the fate of many of the unsuspecting nightclub patrons was determined with awful certainty. The blaze was ignited when pyrotechnics set off by Great White, a 1980s heavy-metal band, lit flammable polyurethane “egg crate” foam sound insulation on the club’s walls. In less than 10 minutes, 96 people were dead and 200 more were injured, many catastrophically. The final death toll topped out, three months later, at the eerily unlikely round number of 100. The story of the fire, its causes, and its legal and human aftermath is one of lives put at risk by petty economic decisions―by a band, club owners, promoters, building inspectors, and product manufacturers. Any one of those decisions, made differently, might have averted the tragedy. Together, however, they reached a fatal critical mass. Killer Show is the first comprehensive exploration of the chain of events leading up to the fire, the conflagration itself, and the painstaking search for evidence to hold the guilty to account and obtain justice for the victims. Anyone who has entered an entertainment venue and wondered, “Could I get out of here in a hurry?” will identify with concertgoers at The Station. Fans of disaster nonfiction and forensic thrillers will find ample elements of both genres in Killer Show.
Love by the Numbers
by Karin KallmakerAs a behavioral scientist, Professor Nicole Hathaway's work strips away the foolish mystique that surrounds the human mating dance. When her academic tome is treated as a viral love manual" her ecstatic publisher books her to appear all over the U. S. and Europe. Worse yet, her quiet, managed life has been shattered by a series of incompetent assistants. And she's certain this Lily Smith creature isn't going to be any less a burden than the last assistant they sent her. Or the one before that. Or before that. . . Lillian Linden-Smith needs this job. With a relentless TV lawyer and public mob still out for her blood for crimes committed by her American royalty" parents, getting out of the country is her only hope for anonymity. If that means cleaning up and presenting an antisocial know-it-all Ph. D. for bookstores, clubs and lectures, fine. Dr. Hathaway may have succeeded in driving away all the others, but not this time. From their first meeting the sparks fly, and each is thinking: She has no idea who she's dealing with. It's hate at first sight in this love adventure from the author of Above Temptation, Roller Coaster and dozens of other best-selling, award-winning novels.
My Boys and Girls Are in There: The 1937 New London School Explosion
by Ron RozelleOn March 18, 1937, a spark ignited a vast pool of natural gas that had collected beneath the school building in New London, a tiny community in East Texas. The resulting explosion leveled the four-year-old structure and resulted in a death toll of more than three hundred—most of them children. To this day, it is the worst school disaster in the history of the United States. The tragedy and its aftermath were the first big stories covered by Walter Cronkite, then a young wire service reporter stationed in Dallas. He would later say that no war story he ever covered—during World War II or Vietnam—was as heart-wrenching. In the weeks following the tragedy, a factfinding committee sought to determine who was to blame. What soon became apparent was that the New London school district had, with almost all local businesses and residents, tapped into pipelines carrying unrefined gas from the plentiful oil fields of the area. It was technically illegal, but natural gas was in abundance in the “Oil Patch.” The jerry-rigged conduits leaked the odorless “green” gas that would destroy the school. A long-term effect of the disaster was the shared guilt experienced—for the rest of their lives—by most of the survivors. There is, perhaps, not a better example than Bill Thompson, who was in his fifth grade English class and “in the mood to flirt” with Billie Sue Hall, who was sitting two seats away. Thompson asked another girl to trade seats with him. She agreed—and was killed in the explosion, while Thompson and Hall both survived and lived long lives, never quite coming to terms with their good fortune. My Boys and Girls Are in There: The 1937 New London School Explosion is a meticulous, candid account by veteran educator and experienced author Ron Rozelle. Unfolding with the narrative pace of a novel, the story woven by Rozelle combines the anguished words of eyewitnesses with telling details from the historical and legal record. Released to coincide with the seventy- fifth anniversary of the New London School disaster, My Boys and Girls Are in There paints an intensely human portrait of this horrific event.
Rest for the Wicked (Jane Lawless #20)
by Ellen HartDeAndre Moore came to Minneapolis from St. Louis with a purpose, but things aren't going as he planned. When it becomes clear he's in way over his head, DeAndre can think of only one person to call for help - his Uncle Nolan's business partner, newly licensed private investigator Jane Lawless. However, by the time Jane listens to his voice mail, she's hearing a voice from beyond the grave - DeAndre left the message only minutes before he was knifed to death outside a gentlemen's club. Soon his murder isn't the only one. With Nolan in the hospital, Jane sets out to find out who killed DeAndre, how his death is connected with the others, and what he was doing in Minneapolis in the first place. Rest for the Wicked is another outstanding addition to Ellen Hart's award-winning mystery series.
The Last Nude
by Ellis AveryInspired by real events in Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka's history, "The Last Nude" is a tour de force of historical imagination. Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives.
Daphne Du Maurier and Her Sisters: The Hidden Lives of Piffy, Bird, and Bing
by Jane DunnCelebrated novelist Daphne Du Maurier and her sisters, eclipsed by her fame, are revealed in all their surprising complexity in this riveting new biography. The middle sister in a famous artistic dynasty, Daphne du Maurier is one of the master storytellers of our time, author of 'Rebecca,' 'Jamaica Inn,' 'My Cousin Rachel,' and short stories, 'Don't Look Now' and the terrifying 'The Birds,' among many. Her stories were made memorable by the iconic films they inspired, three of them classic Hitchcock chillers. But her sisters Angela and Jeanne, a writer and an artist of talent, had creative and romantic lives even more bold and unconventional than Daphne's own. In this group biography they are considered side by side, as they were in life, three sisters who grew up during the 20th century in the glamorous hothouse of a theatrical family dominated by a charismatic and powerful father. This family dynamic reveals the hidden lives of Piffy, Bird & Bing, full of social non-conformity, love, rivalry and compulsive make-believe, their lives as psychologically complex as a Daphne du Maurier novel.
Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD
by Martin AstonFACING THE OTHERWAY: THE STORY OF 4AD is the first comprehensive account of the iconic record label. Drawing on over a hundred interviews with the label’s menagerie of artists and staff, music writer and 4AD aficionado Martin Aston follows the course of the label’s defining years; initially populated by the likes of Bauhaus, The Birthday Party, Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance, each band resembled a new genre on its own, before 4AD embarked on a new era with a wealth of equally startling American signings, including Throwing Muses, Pixies and The Breeders. Yet for every artistic triumph, there was a backlash. Behind the scenes, an accumulation of feuds and enforced commercial compromises in the wake of alternative music’s invasion of the mainstream left 4AD adrift and Watts-Russell a broken man, soon to sever all ties with the music industry, including his beloved label. This definitive history explains why 4AD has been called the greatest independent label of all time, one of the most influential, and certainly the most collectable. The story of 4AD is an unparalleled drama from a pivotal phase in independent music culture.
High Desert (Kate Delafield Mysteries #9)
by Katherine V. ForrestIn this long-awaited new installment of the legendary Kate Delafield mystery series, Kate is forced to confront her most formidable opponent: herself. Five months into mandated retirement from LAPD, her long term on-again off-again relationship with Aimee Grant off again, hopelessly dependent on the only substance that can drown her pain over Aimee and the illness of her best friend, lost without her police career, beset by terrifying dreams, Kate Delafield is in a world of trouble. Into this world walks Captain Carolina Walcott of the LAPD, with a request that Kate quietly and secretly try to locate Kate's former police partner, Joe Cameron, who has vanished. She also offers Kate a business card#151;the name on it a woman from Kate's past who may be able offer a lifeline back to the self Kate once was. Even as she deals with a shocking and inexplicable homicide, Kate simultaneously pursues a trail of evidence toward Cameron that leads her into the high desert. Here in the high desert she will find challenges to the truth of everything she ever believed in as a principled police officer. Here in the high desert she must decide what it is she still believes: about her past, her present, her future.
Letters Never Sent
by Sandra MoranThree women, united by love and kinship, struggle to conform to the social norms of the times in which they lived. In 1931, Katherine Henderson leaves behind her small town in Kansas and the marriage proposal of a local boy to live on her own and work at the Sears & Roebuck glove counter in Chicago. There she meets Annie--a bold, outspoken feminist who challenges Katherine's idea of who she thinks she is and what she thinks she wants in life. In 1997, Katherine's daughter, Joan, travels to Lawrence, Kansas, to clean out her estranged mother's house. In an old suitcase she finds a wooden box containing trinkets and a packet of sealed letters to a person identified only by a first initial. Joan reads the unsent letters and discovers a woman completely different from the aloof and unyielding mother of her youth--a woman who had loved deeply and lost that love to circumstances beyond her control. Now Joan just has to find the strength to use the healing power of empathy and forgiveness to live the life she's always wanted to live.
Nevada
by Imogen BinnieNevada is the darkly comedic story of Maria Griffiths, a young trans woman living in New York City and trying to stay true to her punk values while working retail. When she finds out her girlfriend has lied to her, the world she thought she'd carefully built for herself begins to unravel, and Maria sets out on a journey that will most certainly change her forever.
Taken by the Wind (Jane Lawless Mysteries #21)
by Ellen HartPI and restaurateur Jane Lawless must track down two missing teenagers. Although Eric and Andrew have been trying to keep up a semblance of normal life, they know their thirteen-year-old son Jack has been having a tough time of it since they separated. They've been concerned, but now they're terrified--Jack has run away from home. It happened once before, just after the separation, but then it was only a matter of hours before Eric found him. This time, Jack disappeared with his cousin, and the two of them haven't been seen for more than twenty-four hours. Desperate, Eric and Andrew call on private investigator Jane Lawless, a friend of Andrew's from years ago. Despite the fact that her business partner, A. J. Nolan, is now in a wheelchair and struggling with depression, Jane agrees to help out. But after examining Eric and Andrew's home, Jane's first impression of the case isn't good--in fact, she's not convinced the boys ran away at all. She thinks they may have been abducted. . . or worse. Taken by the Wind, the latest riveting mystery from award-winning author Ellen Hart, is a race against the clock for Jane and the terrified parent of two missing boys.
The Fainting Room
by Sarah Pemberton StrongRay Shepard is a wealthy architect who has mystified his friends by marrying Evelyn, a woman who works at a nail salon. Evelyn, in turn, hides a secret past about her former life in the circus, her ex-husband's mysterious death, and the colorful tattoos she carefully conceals under her clothes. When Evelyn starts to cave under the pressure of living in Ray's rarified world, she suggests they take in Ingrid, a sixteen-year-old girl with blue hair, a pet iguana, and no place to stay for the summer. As Evelyn and Ray both make her their confidante, drawing her into the heart of what threatens their marriage, Ingrid increasingly adopts the noir alter ego of "detective Slade"--fedora and all--in order to solve the mysteries that engulf all three characters.
The Gemini Deception (Elite Operatives #6)
by Kim Baldwin Xenia AlexiouAgent Harper "Shield" Kennedy's specialty within the Elite Operatives Organization is security, although she's long lost any gratification from babysitting most VIPs. However, her new assignment--to safeguard the U. S. president--will prove to be the biggest challenge of her career. Shield's mission to protect the first female chief executive is complicated by threats to her own life when she begins to question the president's orders. Loner Ryden Wagner is content with her life as a florist until she becomes a pawn in a political deception involving the highest office in the land. Trapped in a dangerous game where one false move could cost Ryden her life, she has to rely solely on the president's new bodyguard. As an attraction between the two women grows, so does the urgency for answers, but will the truth bring them together or tear them apart? Sixth in the romantic intrigue series: Elite Operatives
The Shoal of Time (Micky Knight Mystery #8)
by J. M. RedmannMichele "Micky" Knight, a New Orleans PI, meets an out-of-town team of investigators who are working a human trafficking case. They want someone local to show them around. It sounds easy, and a woman with smiling green eyes is asking. But it stays easy only if Micky stops asking questions-and she's never been good at that. What starts out as a tourist tour of the underside of New Orleans turns into a risky game of cat and mouse, and twists even further as Micky is caught between the good guys and the bad guys, each willing to do whatever it takes-including getting rid of an inconvenient PI-to achieve their ends. Who can she trust? And who's trying to kill her?
Capable of Honor (Advise and Consent #3)
by Allen DruryFirst published in 1966. It is one of the most fundamental questions facing America today: How justifiably, or irresponsibly, do the volatile and unbiased American media—press, television and radio—attempt to interfere with, and control, the political process and the foreign policy of the nation? In a hotly fought Presidential primary, the news media fractures along ideological lines, supporting and distorting the candidates’ records, manipulating the news rather than covering it. Capable of Honor, the third novel in the grand, bestselling Advise and Consent saga, is a compelling blockbuster that shines a harsh and revealing spotlight on how the media shapes the news, guides public opinion, creates policy—and tries to shape history itself. FROM THE MASTER OF SPELLBINDING POLITICAL FICTION, AUTHOR OF ADVISE AND CONSENT.
Nudge
by Sandra MoranNew York advertising executive and lifelong atheist Sarah Sheppard is highly successful, in line for a partnership, and feeling on top of the world. When she's visited by a mysterious client who offers her a job to write and market a comprehensive addition to the world's religious texts, she thinks it's an elaborate joke and turns him down. But God works in mysterious ways and she quickly finds she has no choice but to take the assignment. Isolated at a remote estate in upstate New York, Sarah joins a group of scholars and theologians to compile The Addendum, but soon discovers that nothing and no one are what they appear to be. As more questions than answers mount up, Sarah has to decide whether to deny her natural skepticism or embrace that illusive idea of faith before she's nudged onto a path of no return.
Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights
by Katha PollittA powerful argument for abortion as a moral right and social good by a noted feminist and longtime columnist for the nation. Forty years after the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, "abortion" is still a word that is said with outright hostility by many, despite the fact that one in three American women will have terminated at least one pregnancy by menopause. Even those who support a woman's right to an abortion often qualify their support by saying abortion is a "bad thing," an "agonizing decision," making the medical procedure so remote and radioactive that it takes it out of the world of the everyday, turning an act that is normal and necessary into something shameful and secretive. Meanwhile, with each passing day, the rights upheld by the Supreme Court are being systematically eroded by state laws designed to end abortion outright. In this urgent, controversial book, Katha Pollitt reframes abortion as a common part of a woman's reproductive life, one that should be accepted as a moral right with positive social implications. In Pro, Pollitt takes on the personhood argument, reaffirms the priority of a woman's life and health, and discusses why terminating a pregnancy can be a force for good for women, families, and society. It is time, Pollitt argues, that we reclaim the lives and the rights of women and mothers.