Lara

‘Riveting, tragic tale’ New Yorker ‘Anna Pasternak has produced an irresistible account of joy, suffering and passion’ Financial Times The heartbreaking story of the passionate love affair between Boris Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya – the tragic true story that inspired Doctor Zhivago.

"Lara traces the two ancestral strands of a girl called Lara who grows up in London in the sixties and seventies. Her father, Taiwo, is Nigerian and her mother, Ellen, is English and it goes into both sides of her family history. On Taiwo's side it follows his grandfather's journey from slavery in Brazil in the eighteenth century, to freedom in the Brazilian Quarter of Lagos, Nigeria. It follows Taiwo's childhood in Lagos when Nigeria was a British colony, his journey to Britain to study in 1949 and his eventual meeting and marriage, to a white Englishwoman called Ellen. The book also traces Ellen's childhood in London during the war years, and her mother Edith's poor working class childhood in London at the turn of the century. Finally, all strands come together in Lara who begins her own odyssey as she grows up a mixed-race child in an exclusively white area of London." -- Provided by publisher.

Few Mexican musicians in the twentieth century achieved as much notoriety or had such an international impact as the popular singer and songwriter Agustín Lara (1897-1970). Widely known as "el flaco de oro" ("the Golden Skinny"), this remarkably thin fellow was prolific across the genres of bolero, ballad, and folk. His most beloved "Granada", a song so enduring that it has been covered by the likes of Mario Lanza, Frank Sinatra, and Placido Domingo, is today a standard in the vocal repertory. However, there exists very little biographical literature on Lara in English. In Agustín Lara: A Cultural Biography, author Andrew Wood's informed and informative placement of Lara's work in a broader cultural context presents a rich and comprehensive reading of the life of this significant musical figure. Lara's career as a media celebrity as well as musician provides an excellent window on Mexican society in the mid-twentieth century and on popular culture in Latin America. Wood also delves into Lara's music itself, bringing to light how the composer's work unites a number of important currents in Latin music of his day, particularly the bolero. With close musicological focus and in-depth cultural analysis riding alongside the biographical narrative, Agustin Lara: A Cultural Biography is a welcome read to aficionados and performers of Latin American musics, as well as a valuable addition to the study of modern Mexican music and Latin American popular culture as a whole.

In 1914 Russia, Lara is being groomed by her father to be the next kennel steward for the Count's borzoi dogs unless her mother bears a son, but her visions, although suppressed by her father, seem to suggest she has a special bond with the dogs.

Eli Schneider hates Germans as hard as anyone can hate. And for good reason. Then he falls in love with one of them. LARA'S SHADOW is told against the backdrop of post-World War II Germany and the tensest moments of the Cold War. Eli is a young lieutenant in the U.S. Army, a Jew expected to defend the perpetrators of the Holocaust. While he struggles to protect his aging alcoholic company commander from a mutinous junior officer, he meets fraulein Lara Kohler. He initially pursues her just for sex, but it's her quirky personality and fascinating mind that ensnare him. In a country filled with former Nazis, there are bound to be secrets. He uncovers one layer of Lara's secrets after another until he must ask how much he can be expected to forgive. And how much responsibility she must carry? Lara's Shadow is a love story full of perplexities that strain the limits of atonement and forgiveness. It probes the mixture of good with evil, and the visitation of parents' guilt on their children.

"There. Now if you even think about telling my dad about the kitten, I'll tell on you first. I bet he'll be a lot more upset that you kissed his daughter than about some tiny kitty." Dad and I have been on our own for years. We've faced everything head on and have traveled aimlessly in search of anywhere that felt like home. I liked this abnormal routine of ours. Until one day, Dad announces that a woman he's been seeing long distance is now his wife. Not only is she moving in with us, but she's bringing her son along. Derek, my new stepbrother, is...hot. He is temptation I don't need right now. But the struggle to play house with my new family is tested after one blackmail kiss. The first night in my new house--complete with brand new stepdad and stepsister--had me restless. I wandered the woods behind the new place and that's when everything derailed. Lara pops out of the shadows with a secret kitten. Terrified that I'll snitch to her dad, she does something I never saw coming. Trouble is, that teasing blackmail kiss quickly turns into more. Then I get a traveling job offer I can't refuse. Can I convince this blackmailing beauty to risk it all and join me? Lara's Blackmail Kiss is part of Max Watson's Bubble Bath Romance collection. Each standalone short story is intended to be read in one sitting--in a hot and steamy bubble bath! Each book features steamy romance with an HEA.

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author and master of romance Bertrice Small welcomes you to the magical, sensual World of Hetar. For Lara, a half faerie, half human, her beauty is a blessing and a curse. Sold into a Pleasure House by her father, she commits herself to a lifetime of servitude. But even in a place where pleasure is not censured but encouraged, her otherworldly beauty proves too much for her suitors. When Lara escapes, she is introduced to a new way of life, and an incredible man who opens her eyes to the growing unrest among their people…and the extraordinary destiny that awaits her. Lara will journey the depths of desire and despair to find a love that will last an eternity—a love that will change Hetar forever.

"I am a work in progress, just like everyone else." Although the Dea Vitae cult has been evicted from Thalia Island, Lara J. Clarke and her grandfather's eco-utopia are still in peril. Rupert's ongoing lymphoma treatment in Vancouver deposits Lara at Thalia's helm-with no idea how to navigate the rough waters. And though Finan is back from the mainland after two tense weeks of silence, the sting of his unscheduled departure lingers. Beyond the grind of running her own "planet"-while privately grieving the loss of her beloved grandfather and worrying if the cancer will take Number Two-Lara must contend with the reappearance of Jacinta Ramirez, a fugitive Clarke Innovations has been shielding all these years. Jacinta unveils disturbing secrets that reshape the history Lara's been fed about her late mother's past-and how much that past threatens to derail their cumulative future. When overwhelming stress sends Lara to the bottom of the whisky bottle, Finan gently reminds her that slipping into old habits won't fix what's broken. As she tries to pull herself together, a tragedy strikes that brings her and Finan close again, but with a series of cryptic clues arriving on the island, the mystery of Dea Vitae and its sought-after treasure deepens, with menacing consequences. Lara and Finan must work with investigators, and a few unsavory players, to dismantle the sinister machinations of Dea Vitae before it destroys their blossoming romance-and the sanctity of Thalia Island herself. ***The Welcome to Planet Lara series is written like an episodic drama. Books One and Two end in cliff-hangers (with storylines resolved in Book Three). Please note that Planet Lara: Tempest includes medical scenes involving reproductive complications that some readers might find triggering.***