Enoch Valentine has given up finding peace for his past mistakes. He throws everything he has into being the new part-time deputy in Burrton Springs, Kansas while maintaining the foreman position at a local horse ranch. But when trouble stirs on the ranch, he questions whether he' s the right man for either job. Peace has been elusive for most of Gertrude Miller' s life, especially under the oppressiveness of an overbearing mother. She takes matters into her own hands and sends for a potential husband, while also opening her own dress shop. Gertrude hopes to build a future where she' ll find peace and happiness. Will either of them ever be able to find peace?

Originally describing language use and class position, vulgarity became, over the course of the nineteenth century, a word with wider social implications. Variously associated with behavior, the possession of wealth, different races, sexuality and gender, the objects displayed in homes, and ways of thinking and feeling, vulgarity suggested matters of style, taste, and comportment. This collection examines the diverse ramifications of vulgarity in the four areas where it was most discussed in the nineteenth century: language use, changing social spaces, the emerging middle classes, and visual art. Exploring the dynamics of the term as revealed in dictionaries and grammars; Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor; fiction by Dickens, Eliot, Gissing, and Trollope; essays, journalism, art, and art reviews, the contributors bring their formidable analytical skills to bear on this enticing and divisive concept. Taken together, these essays urge readers to consider the implications of vulgarity's troubled history for today's writers, critics, and artists.

The second book in the dark and addictive Woody Creek series from bestselling Australian author Joy Dettman "Dettman writes compulsively readable stories" The Age Spanning a momentous wartime decade, Thorn on the Rose is the spellbinding sequel to Pearl in a Cage It is 1939 and Jenny Morrison, distraught and just fifteen years of age, has fled the tiny logging community of Woody Creek for a new life in the big smoke. But four months later she is back - wiser, with an expensive new wardrobe, and bearing another dark secret... She takes refuge with Gertrude, her dependable granny and Woody Creek's indomitable midwife, and settles into a routine in the ever-expanding and chaotic household. But can she ever put the trauma of her past behind her and realise her dream of becoming a famous singer? Or is she doomed to follow in the footsteps of her tragic and mysterious mother? "You can't fail to enjoy this portrait of rural Australian life in the wartime years with its many sorrows, joys and challenges." Woman's Day Fans of Rosalie Ham's The Dressmaker will love Joy Dettman.

"This book is about the way in which Shakespeare's plays have inspired readers to "talk back" and about some of the forms such talking back can assume. It is also about the way different interpretive communities, including students, read their cultural, political, and moral assumptions into Shakespeare's plays, appropriating and transforming elements of plot, character, and verbal text while challenging what they see as the ideological premises of the plays. Texts that talk back to Shakespeare pose questions, offer alternatives, take liberties, and fill in gaps. Some of the transformations discussed in Talking Back to Shakespeare challenge deeply held assumptions such as, for instance, that Hamlet is a tragic hero and Shylock a stereotypical grasping usurer. Others invent prior or subsequent lives for Shakespeare's characters (women characters in particular) so as to account for their actions and imagine their lives more fully than Shakespeare chooses to do. Very few of these works have received much critical attention, and some are virtually unknown or forgotten." "Rather than a comprehensive study of Shakespeare transformations, Talking Back to Shakespeare is an innovative exploration of the kinship between the kind of talking back that occurs in the classroom and the kind to be found in texts produced by writers who "rewrite" some of Shakespeare's most frequently taught and performed plays. Such re-visions unsettle the cultural authority of the plays and expose the accumulated lore that surrounds them to probing, often irreverent scrutiny." "Much of the talking back comes from marginalized readers: women, like Lillie Wyman, author of Gertrude of Denmark: An Interpretive Romance, and other nineteenth-century women critics, or Jewish writers, like Arnold Wesker, whose play The Merchant transforms the relationship between Antonio and Shylock. Some talking back comes from an international collection of oppositional voices of the 1960s, including Charles Marowitz, Aime Cesaire, Eugene Ionesco, and Joseph Papp. Talking Back to Shakespeare ranges from popular books like the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley to obscure, seldom-read ones like Percy MacKaye's ambitious four-play prequel, The Mystery of Hamlet, King of Denmark. What these published texts share with student journal entries and transformations is the assumption, familiar to postmodern readers, that Shakespeare's plays are essentially unstable, culturally determined constructs capable of acquiring new meanings and new forms. By bringing together these two kinds of "talking back," Rozett challenges the traditional separation between critical and pedagogical inquiry that has until recently dominated English studies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"The Coal Miner"The novel unseals and reveals a few brave shepherds of the coal industry. The saga is a laborious tearjerker, with plenty of room for humorous yarns.' The initial chapter titled, "The Catastrophe," which is a fictitious and tearful description of a tragic disaster that occurred in 1894, near the city of Budapest, Hungary.' A trio of book stars opens an envelope, releasing a small package of ideas to travel to America, via London, England. The sliver of time spent in London combined humor and hysteria.' The journey across the Atlantic Ocean, on a vessel titled, "Goddess Of The Sea," highlighted a triple nuptial, as Double T. Hardluck, Tony Amoto and Charles Washko began tiptoeing through the tulips with their new bribes.' An odyssey to Bethlehem, Pa, to find out why all bathroom supplies suddenly became extinct in Wyoming Valley, Pa.' The introduction of the watermelon to Wyoing Valley, Pa., by Bob Drawinski, a farm boy from Los Angeles, California.' A narrative of the coal miner, and his good pal, the mule.' The tale of "Owie the Bum, coming to the rescue of Swoyersville, Pa., during Christening ceremonies for two streets of the borough.' A singing and dance act takes place. The female performers are Charity Live, Heavenly Darling, and Lois Generalipski. Members of "The Coal Miner's Band" accompany the girls on stage.' A world billiard contest occurs. Two U.S.A. billiard champions arrive in Swoyersville, Pa., to perform and put on a show for the soldiers and coal miners.