|
The Speaker Of Mandarin
''The Speaker of Mandarin'' is a detective novel by British crime writer Ruth Rendell, first published in 1983. It is the 12th novel in her popular Inspector Wexford series. The plot follows the popular Kingsmarkham (a fictional market town in the county of Sussex) policeman as he returns from a holiday to China and investigates the death of another tourist. Synopsis While holidaying in China, Inspector Reginald Wexford was haunted by a couple of mysterious occurrences, namely an old woman with bound feet who appeared to be following him from one city to another, and a man's drowning. On returning home he's tasked with investigating the murder of a tourist and realises that this death relates to his experiences abroad. Reviews The reviewer for ''Kirkus Reviews'' said of the book that it was: "Less tight and polished than '' Death Notes'', with a ho-hum fadeout — but a disarming, fairly irresistible blend of mini-puzzles, solid detection, splendid travel writing, and Wexfor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruth Rendell
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, (; 17 February 1930 – 2 May 2015) was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries. Rendell is best known for creating Chief Inspector Wexford.The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Sixth edition. Ed. by Margaret Drabble. Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 847. . A second string of works was a series of unrelated crime novels that explored the psychological background of criminals and their victims. This theme was developed further in a third series of novels, published under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. Life Rendell was born as Ruth Barbara Grasemann in 1930, in South Woodford, Essex (now Greater London). Her parents were teachers. Her mother, Ebba Kruse, was born in Sweden to Danish parents and brought up in Denmark; her father, Arthur Grasemann, was English. As a result of spending Christmas and other holidays in Scandinavia, Rendell learned Swedish and Danish. Rendell was educated at the Cou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foot Binding
Foot binding, or footbinding, was the Chinese custom of breaking and tightly binding the feet of young girls in order to change their shape and size. Feet altered by footbinding were known as lotus feet, and the shoes made for these feet were known as lotus shoes. In late imperial China, bound feet were considered a status symbol and a mark of feminine beauty. However, footbinding was a painful practice that limited the mobility of women and resulted in lifelong disabilities. The prevalence and practice of footbinding varied over time and by region and social class. The practice may have originated among court dancers during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in 10th-century China, and gradually became popular among the elite during the Song dynasty. Footbinding eventually spread to lower social classes by the Qing dynasty (1636–1912). Manchu emperors attempted to ban the practice in the 17th century, but failed. In some areas, footbinding raised marriage prospects. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hutchinson (publisher) Books
Hutchinson may refer to: Places United States * Hutchinson, Kansas * South Hutchinson, Kansas * Hutchinson, Minnesota * Hutchinson, Pennsylvania * Hutchinson, West Virginia, in Logan County * Hutchinson, Marion County, West Virginia * Hutchinson County, South Dakota * Hutchinson County, Texas * Hutchinson Island (Florida) * Hutchinson Island South, Florida * Hutchinson River, a river in New York * Hutchinson River Parkway, running through Westchester County, New York, and the Bronx * Hutchinson Township, McLeod County, Minnesota Greenland * Hutchinson Glacier South Africa * Hutchinson, Northern Cape People * Hutchinson (surname) Companies *Hutchinson SA, worldwide manufacturer of sealing solutions, insulation, fluid transfer systems and bicycle tires for all industries *Hutchinson (publisher), a publisher of books Other uses *Hutchinson Encyclopedia *, US frigate *Hutchinson's teeth, a sign of congenital syphilis *Hutchinson's ratio, concerning size difference ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Ruth Rendell
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1983 British Novels
The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning of the true Internet). * January 24 – Twenty-five members of the Red Brigades are sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1978 murder of Italian politician Aldo Moro. * January 25 ** High-ranking Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia. ** IRAS is launched from Vandenberg AFB, to conduct the world's first all-sky infrared survey from space. February * February 2 – Giovanni Vigliotto goes on trial on charges of polygamy involving 105 women. * February 3 – Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Fraser is granted a double dissolution of both houses of parliament, for elections on March 5, 1983. As Fraser is being granted the dissolution, Bill Hayden resigns as leader of the Australian Labor Party, and in the subsequent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tour Guide
A tour guide (U.S.) or a tourist guide (European) is a person who provides assistance, information on cultural, historical and contemporary heritage to people on organized sightseeing and individual clients at educational establishments, religious and historical sites such as; museums, and at various venues of tourist attraction resorts. Tour guides also take clients on outdoor guided trips. These trips include hiking, whitewater rafting, mountaineering, alpine climbing, rock climbing, ski and snowboarding in the backcountry, fishing, and biking. History In 18th-century Japan, a traveler could pay for a tour guide or consult guide books such as Kaibara Ekken's ''Keijō Shōran'' (The Excellent Views of Kyoto). Description In Europe The CEN (European Committee for Standardization) definition for "tourist guide" – part of the work by CEN on definitions for terminology within the tourism industry – is a "person who guides visitors in the language of their choice a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orientalism
In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. These depictions are usually done by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. In particular, Orientalist painting, depicting more specifically the Middle East, was one of the many specialisms of 19th-century academic art, and the literature of Western countries took a similar interest in Oriental themes. Since the publication of Edward Said's ''Orientalism (book), Orientalism'' in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term "Orientalism" to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies. In Said's analysis, the West Essentialism, essentializes these societies as static and undeveloped—thereby fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted, and reproduced in the service of Imperialism, imperial power. Implicit in this fabrication, writes Said, is the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery ''The Mousetrap'', which has been performed in the West End since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. ''Guinness World Records'' lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. Christie was born into a wealthy upper middle class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ghost Story
A ghost story is any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them."Ghost Stories" in Margaret Drabble (ed.), ''Oxford Companion to English Literature''. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006. (p. 404-5). The "ghost" may appear of its own accord or be summoned by magic. Linked to the ghost is the idea of a "haunting", where a supernatural entity is tied to a place, object or person. Ghost stories are commonly examples of ghostlore. Colloquially, the term "ghost story" can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense, the ghost story has been developed as a short story format, within genre fiction. It is a form of supernatural fiction and specifically of weird fiction, and is often a horror story. While ghost stories are often explicitly meant to scare, they have been written to serve all sorts of purposes, from comedy to morality tales. Ghosts often appear in the narrative as s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mystery Fiction
Mystery is a genre fiction, fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains wiktionary:mysterious, mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective (such as Sherlock Holmes), who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism. Mystery fiction can involve a supernatural mystery in which the solution does not have to be logical and even in which there is no crime involved. This usage was common in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blogger (service)
Blogger is an American online content management system founded in 1999 which enables multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. Pyra Labs developed it before being acquired by Google in 2003. Google hosts the blogs, which can be accessed through a subdomain of blogspot.com. Blogs can also be accessed from a user-owned Domain name, custom domain (such as www.example.com) by using Domain Name System, DNS facilities to direct a domain to Google's servers. A user can have up to 100 blogs or websites per account. Google Blogger also enabled users to publish blogs and websites to their own web hosting server via File Transfer Protocol, FTP until May 1, 2010. All such blogs and websites had to be redirected to a blogspot.com subdomain or point their own domain to Google's servers via Domain Name System, DNS. Google Blogger has a wide international user base and is available in more than 60 languages, despite its decline in popularity in the United States. History Pyra Labs launched ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers' literature. ''Kirkus Reviews'', published on the first and 15th of each month; previews books before their publication. ''Kirkus'' reviews over 10,000 titles per year. History Virginia Kirkus was hired by Harper & Brothers to establish a children's book department in 1926. The department was eliminated as an economic measure in 1932 (for about a year), so Kirkus left and soon established her own book review service. Initially, she arranged to get galley proofs of "20 or so" books in advance of their publication; almost 80 years later, the service was receiving hundreds of books weekly and reviewing about 100. Initially titled ''Bulletin'' by Kirkus' Bookshop Service from 1933 to 1954, the title was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
