#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world. Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else. The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic. Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms. Praise for Empty Mansions “An amazing story of profligate wealth . . . an outsized tale of rags-to-riches prosperity.”—The New York Times “An evocative and rollicking read, part social history, part hothouse mystery, part grand guignol.”—The Daily Beast “Fascinating . . . [a] haunting true-life tale.”—People “One of those incredible stories that you didn’t even know existed. It filled a void.”—Jon Stewart, The Daily Show “Thrilling . . . deliciously scandalous.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Ann Moura, the author of the popular Green Witchcraft series, is back with a new, one-of-a-kind spellbook on lunar magic. This is the only guidebook available that uses Mansions of the Moon correspondences to empower Esbat rituals and spellwork. The moon goes through twenty-eight distinct "mansions," or sections of the sky, as it travels through the twelve signs of the zodiac. Each mansion is appropriate for certain types of magic, as described in ceremonial magic books, such as Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy or Barrett's The Magus. Now this esoteric information is available to Witches, complete with suggested workings for both the waxing and the waning lunar phase in each mansion. Moura provides the tools, the instruction, and examples of how to utilize the Mansions of the Moon to add depth and potency to your spells and rituals. More than one hundred workings are presented, including candle spells, charm bags, meditations, magical oils, talismans, amulets, incense, teas, and much more.

This eBook edition has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Green Mansions is an exotic romance about a traveler to the Guyana jungle of southeastern Venezuela and his encounter with a forest dwelling girl. Abel, a young man of wealth, fails at a revolution in Venezuela, near the end of the 19th century, and flees Caracas into the uncharted forests of Guayana. Surviving fever, failing at journal-keeping and gold hunting, he settles in an Indian village to waste away his life. After some exploring, Abel discovers an enchanting forest where he hears a strange bird-like singing. His Indian friends avoid the forest because of its evil spirit-protector, "the Daughter of the Didi." Persisting in the search, Abel finally finds Rima the Bird Girl. She has dark hair, a smock of spider webs, and can communicate with birds in an unknown tongue. When she shields a coral snake, Abel is bitten and falls unconscious.

This is a Christmas story. The mansion of the title is Weightman Mansion. It is not in the most fashionable area of town but it is evident that whoever owns it has money. It is a short story with a strong moral and uses the two main characters, Harold Weightman the son of Mr. Weightman, and the patriarch himself. They are used to point up the difference between what would now be called 'virtue signaling' and doing good with genuine and sincere intent.

"Hungry? Check the Green Book. Tired? Check the Green Book. Sick? Check the Green Book." In the late 1930s when segregation was legal and Black Americans couldn't visit every establishment or travel everywhere they wanted to safely, a New Yorker named Victor Hugo Green decided to do something about it. Green wrote and published a guide that listed places where his fellow Black Americans could be safe in New York City. The guide sold like hot cakes! Soon customers started asking Green to make a guide to help them travel and vacation safely across the nation too. With the help of his mail carrier co-workers and the African American business community, Green's guide allowed millions of African Americans to travel safely and enjoy traveling across the nation. In the first picture book about the creation and distribution of The Green Book, author Keila Dawson and illustrator Alleanna Harris tell the story of the man behind it and how this travel guide opened the road for a safer, more equitable America.

First published in 1904, this novel is a poignant meditation on the loss of wilderness, the dream of a return to nature, and the bitter reality of the encounter between savage and civilized man.

Green Mansions, novel by W.H. Hudson, published in 1904. An exotic romance set in the jungles of South America, the story is narrated by a man named Abel who as a young man had lived among the aboriginal people. He tells of Rima, a strange birdlike woman with whom he falls in love.