Village Of The Lost Girls

'Gripping and atmospheric' - Sunday Times A breath-taking missing persons thriller set under the menacing peaks of the Pyrenees Five years after their disappearance, the village of Monteperdido still mourns the loss of Ana and Lucia, two eleven-year-old friends who left school one afternoon and were never seen again. Now, Ana reappears unexpectedly inside a crashed car, wounded but alive. The case reopens and a race against time begins to discover who was behind the girls' kidnapping. Most importantly, where is Lucia and is she still alive? Inspector Sara Campos and her boss Santiago Bain, from Madrid's head office, are forced to work with the local police. Five years ago fatal mistakes were made in the investigation conducted after the girls first vanished, and this mustn't happen again. But Monteperdido has rules of its own. 'Addictive, atmospheric and haunting, one of the best books you'll read this year' - Jo Spain, internationally bestselling author of The Confession

Three friends, each on the brink of a quarter-life crisis, embark on a year-long backpacking adventure around the world in The Lost Girls. “A triumphant journey about losing yourself, finding yourself and coming home again. Hitch yourself to their ride: you’ll embark on a transformative journey of your own.” —New York Times bestselling author Allison Winn Scotch With their thirtieth birthdays looming, Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett, and Amanda Pressner are feeling the pressure to hit certain milestones—score the big promotion, find a soul mate, have 2.2 kids. Instead, they make a pact to quit their high-pressure New York City media jobs and leave behind their friends, boyfriends, and everything familiar to set out on a journey in search of inspiration and direction. Traveling 60,000 miles across four continents, Jen, Holly, and Amanda push themselves far outside their comfort zones to embrace every adventure. Ultimately, theirs is a story of true friendship—a bond forged by sharing beds and backpacks, enduring exotic illnesses, trekking across mountains, and standing by one another through heartaches, whirlwind romances, and everything in the world in between. “A real-life fairy tale for anyone who’s ever wanted to chuck it all and see the world with a best friend on each arm.” —Cathy Alter, author of Up for Renewal “Three cheers to The Lost Girls for showing us, with good humor and graceful prose, the beauty and importance of leading life astray.” —New York Times bestselling author Franz Wisner

The Lost Girls analyses a number of British writers between 1850 and 1930 for whom the myth of Demeter’s loss and eventual recovery of her cherished daughter Kore-Persephone, swept off in violent and catastrophic captivity by Dis, God of the Dead, had both huge personal and aesthetic significance. This book, in addition to scrutinising canonical and less well-known texts by male authors such as Thomas Hardy, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, also focuses on unjustly neglected women writers – Mary Webb and Mary Butts – who utilised occult tropes to relocate themselves culturally, and especially in Butts’s case to recover and restore a forgotten legacy, the myth of matriarchal origins. These novelists are placed in relation not only to one another but also to Victorian archaeologists and especially to Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928), one of the first women to distinguish herself in the history of British Classical scholarship and whose anthropological approach to the study of early Greek art and religion both influenced – and became transformed by – the literature. Rather than offering a teleological argument that moves lock-step through the decades, The Lost Girls proposes chapters that detail specific engagements with Demeter-Persephone through which to register distinct literary-cultural shifts in uses of the myth and new insights into the work of particular writers.

And, in concentrating on a single story, "La salamandra," Elizabeth Rhodes brings together many of the constants.

Soon to be a Netflix documentary One of Slate’s Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years A literary account of the lives and presumed serial killings of five “Craigslist” prostitutes, whose bodies were found on the same Long Island beach in 2010. Based on the New York Magazine cover story. Shannan wanted acceptance. Maureen wanted a solution. Megan wanted love. Melissa wanted adventure. Amber wanted to be saved. Over the course of three years, each of these young women vanished without a trace: Maureen in 2007, Melissa and Megan in 2009, and Amber and Shannan in 2010. All but one of their bodies was discovered on Gilgo Beach, Long Island, an unsettled, overgrown seven-mile stretch of shoreline on the string of barrier islands along South Oyster Bay. Sharing the same profile—all were in their twenties, all but one was under five feet tall, and all were prostitutes who advertised on Craigslist—the police concluded they were all the victims of one murderer, the Long Island serial killer—the most skillful and accomplished serial killer in New York since the “Son of Sam,” David Berkowitz. But as intrepid young reporter Robert Kolker discovered, the truth about these women went far deeper than common assumptions. The victims weren’t outcasts; they weren’t kidnapped or enslaved. All came from a slice of America ignored by politicians and the media: the poor, often rural and white parts of the country hit hard by economics, where limited opportunities force people to make hard choices—choices that lead them to places like Gilgo Beach. Working closely with the women’s families, Lost Girls tells the stories of their deaths and their lives, offering a searing portrait of crime and circumstance that goes to the heart of modern America itself.

In Seneca Village, a thriving neighborhood of African Americans and recent immigrants in the middle of New York City in the 1850s, friends Kayla and Sooncy face separation when the city announces that by eminent domain it plans to take their land to build Central Park.