A Class Of Their Own

'A hilarious account of life with the children of the super rich...well written...and very funny indeed' - BOOK OF THE WEEK Daily Mail 'A hilarious, behind-the-scenes memoir of the mad world of the very rich' Daily Telegraph 'Very funny...the book bursts with butlers, helicopters and Damien Hirsts' The Times 'There are so many laughs in this book, you almost forget how upsetting capitalism is' Simon Amstell A naked Russian oligarch is spanking me in his basement. His weapon is a birch branch, the setting his luxurious home sauna. Above us is 30,000 square feet of one of Moscow's most obscene private homes, an original Damien Hirst above the fireplace, a vacuum cleaning system built into the skirting boards. Invisible speakers serenade us with a desolate pan pipe cover of 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'. A light display rotates kaleidoscopically, illuminating the oligarch's genitals in a variety of unexpected hues. Everyone is silent. Then the oligarch's son Nikita looks at me with a mysterious smile. 'Now my mother will bring us honey.' Matt Knott spent over a decade traveling the globe as a private tutor. He has taught Shakespeare in Moscow, times tables in Tuscany, and is still trying to figure out how to explain long division. With brilliant honesty and wit, he takes us inside a world most of us only glimpse speeding past in a luxury SUV. Unfolding across four continents and featuring a colourful cast of butlers, billionaires and yummy mummies, this is a hilarious and touching chronicle of an unforgettable time.

In this major undertaking, civil rights historian Adam Fairclough chronicles the odyssey of black teachers in the South from emancipation in 1865 to integration one hundred years later. A Class of Their Own is indispensable for understanding how blacks and whites interacted after the abolition of slavery, and how black communities coped with the challenges of freedom and oppression.

Miss Harriet Peabody dreams of the day she can open up a shop selling refashioned gowns to independent working women like herself. Unfortunately, when an errand for her millinery shop job goes sadly awry due to a difficult customer, she finds herself out of an income. Mr. Oliver Addleshaw is on the verge of his biggest business deal yet when he learns his potential partner prefers to deal with men who are settled down and wed. When Oliver witnesses his ex not-quite-fiance cause the hapless Harriet to lose her job, he tries to make it up to her by enlisting her help in making a good impression on his business partner. Harriet quickly finds her love of fashion can't make her fashionable. She'll never truly fit into Oliver's world, but just as she's ready to call off the fake relationship, fancy dinners, and elegant balls, a threat from her past forces both Oliver and Harriet to discover that love can come in the most surprising packages.

Each boat has a story to tell and this book features nearly forty profiles of classic/uniqu e boats, drawn from articles written for the Westerly Sun newspaper during the summers of 2014 and 2015. Explore not only the histories of the individual vessels, but of their classes and designers, as well as their relationships to the environs in which they sailed, raced, cruised and, in some case, still operate as working vessels. These stories include the fabled history of the cat boat; the first fiberglass sailing yacht; a NY ferry boat repurposed as a houseboat; the oldest working fishing boat in Stonington, CT; racing rivalries in the Sound; the French love affair with American boat designs; and the Jazz Age era of luxury yachting, among others.

A MOVING FAMILY SAGA TELLING THE STORY OF A SINGLE MOTHER'S STRUGGLE TO BRING UP HER FAMILY IN WAR-TORN LEITH All Rachel Campbell really wants is a better life for herself and her children. But as the Second World War rages throughout Europe, life in Leith gets tougher day by day. Her feckless husband Johnny isn't helping either, so finally Rachel has no choice but to fend for herself and the children through the poverty and dangers of wartime. This is their story, as Rachel struggles to survive and the children grow up with all the joys and disappointments that life brings in difficult times. Based on the real-life wartime experiences of author Millie Gray, In A Class of Their Own brilliantly recreates the atmosphere of the time with all the hardships and struggles as well as the fun, warmth and humour of everyday life.

The pioneer group of the Düsseldorf School The ‘Düsseldorf School’ has become a household name in the art world for one of the most successful and influential strains of modern photography. Coined in the late 1980s, the name refers mainly to the pioneer group of students of the late Bernd Becher, who in 1976 became the first professor for creative photography at a German arts academy. His students included Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, and Thomas Struth, all of them today internationally acclaimed artists in their own right. Whereas ‘Düsseldorf School’ initially was used as a handy term for a group of artists with the same university’s background, it quickly turned into a powerful brand name both in critical and commercial contexts. Despite its welcomed impact on the art scene, the members of the ‘School’ felt rather ambiguous about their perception as a group which turned them into stars but simultaneously risked levelling individual profiles and differences. What exactly connects and distinguishes them aesthetically is for the first time thoroughly explored in Maren Polte’s pioneering study.

"One of the funniest voices in the inspirational genre."--Booklist Lucetta Plum is an actress on the rise in New York City, but is forced to abandon her starring role when a fan's interest turns threatening. Lucetta's widowed friend, Abigail Hart, is delighted at the opportunity to meddle in Lucetta's life and promptly whisks her away to her grandson's estate to hide out. Bram Haverstein may appear to simply be a somewhat eccentric gentleman of means, but a mysterious career and a secret fascination with a certain actress mean there's much more to him than society knows. Lucetta, who has no interest in Abigail's matchmaking machinations, has the best intentions of remaining cordial but coolly distant to Bram. But when she can't ignore the strange and mysterious things going on in his house, it'll take more than good intentions to keep her from trying to discover who Bram is behind the part he plays.

With more than 10,000 species that vary in size, use diverse habitats that extend across latitudes and altitudes, consume a wide variety of food items, differ in how they fly (or not), communicate, and reproduce, and have different life histories, birds exhibit remarkable variation in form (anatomy) and function (physiology). Our understanding of how natural selection has generated this variation as birds evolved and as different species adapted to their unique circumstances has grown considerably in recent years. In In a Class of Their Own: A Detailed Examination of Avian Forms and Functions, this variation is explained in great detail, beginning with an overview of avian evolution and continuing with information about the structure and function of the avian skeleton, muscles, and the various body systems. Other chapters focus on avian locomotion (including flight), migration, navigation, communication, energy balance and thermoregulation, and various aspects of avian reproduction, such as nests and nest building, clutch sizes, and parental care. In a Class of Their Own: A Detailed Examination of Avian Forms and Functions will be must reading for anyone, professional or non-professional, who needs or wants to learn more about birds.