Belles on Their Toes

Hugo Hamilton

The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood

"A terrific achievement, thoughtful and compelling, smart and original, beautifully written." --Nick Hornby"Astonishing. . . a landmark in Irish nonfiction. . . a masterpiece." -- Washington PostA deeply moving and critically acclaimed memoir about a young boy growing up in 1950's Dublin with a German mother and fiercely republican Irish father.Born to an Irish father and German mother, Hugo Hamilton and his brother and sister grew up being just about the only children in 1950's Dublin wearing Aran sweaters and Lederhosen. Their father, a Gaelic speaking Irish nationalist, forbid them from talking to their friends in English. And their mother, a soft-spoken immigrant who escaped late 1930s Nazi Germany, baked German cakes and told wistful stories of a country that no longer existed.For Hugo, childhood seemed like an ongoing struggle to understand what it meant to be "one of the speckled people"--his father's phrase to describe "the New Irish, partly from Ireland and partly from somewhere else." A rare and shockingly honest account of a child's attempt to make sense of his family, language and identity, The Speckled People stands among the most fiercely original memoirs to emerge ...

Oscar Wilde

Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

In print since 1948, this is a single-volume collection of Oscar Wilde's texts. It contains his only novel, The Portrait of Dorian Gray as well as his plays, stories, poems, essays and letters. Illustrated with many photographs, the book includes introductions to each section by Wilde's grandon, Merlin Holoand, Owen Dudley Edwards, Declan Kibertd and Terence Brown. A comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Oscar Wilde together with a chronological table of his life and work are also included.

Jason Roberts

A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler

He was known simply as the Blind Traveler. A solitary, sightless adventurer, James Holman (1786-1857) fought the slave trade in Africa, survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in Ceylon, helped chart the Australian outback--and, astonishingly, circumnavigated the globe, becoming one of the greatest wonders of the world he so sagaciously explored. A Sense of the World is a spellbinding and moving rediscovery of one of history's most epic lives--a story to awaken our own senses of awe and wonder.