The Dress Lodger

Fine copy in the original color-printed, stiff-card wrappers. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Signed by the author. ; 8vo 8 - 9 tall; 291 pages; Description: 291 p. ; 24 cm. Subjects: Sunderland (England) -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction. Summary: Sunderland, 1832. Gustine, a 16 year-old prostitute, is busy earning a living to keep her baby fed. Her baby was born with its heart on the outside of its body, so when she meets a doctor who specializes in anatomy, she resolves to help him find dead bodies to practice on, if he will help her.

Literature & Fiction

HOLMAN, SHERI

Contemporary

London: Sceptre/Hodder and Stoughton, 1999

Fifteen-year-old Gustine is a "dress lodger", a young prostitute who rents a beautiful dress from her landlord to attract a higher class of clientele. Surgeon Henry Chiver is a prisoner of his own past and is looking to start over.
Doctor and dress lodger come together in the filthy, cholera-infected East End of Sunderland. Here, during the worst epidemic since the bubonic plague, Gustine secures bodies for the doctor's school in exchange for medical care for her ailing child. The arrangement is gruesome but profitable for both until Henry's greed and his growing obsession with her child challenge Gustine's loyalty to him. In order to save her child, Gustine must beg for help from her chief enemy -- a malevolent old woman known only as the Eye.
Ribald, irreverent, heartbreaking and horrifying, "The Dress Lodger" is a Dickensian tour de force.

Atlantic Monthly Press

In Sunderland, England, a city quarantined by the cholera epidemic of 1831, a defiant, fifteen-teen-year old beauty in an elegant blue dress makes her way between shadow and lamp light. A potter's assistant by day and dress lodger by night, Gustine sells herself for necessity in a rented gown, scrimping to feed and protect her only love: her fragile baby boy. She holds a glimmer of hope after meeting Dr. Henry Chiver, a prisoner of his own dark past. But in a world where suspicion of medicine runs rampant like a fever, these two lost souls will become irrevocably linked, as each crosses lines between rich and destitute, decorum and abandon, damnation and salvation. By turns tender and horrifying, The Dress Lodger is a captivating historical thriller charged with a distinctly modern voice. . . .

The Dress Lodger (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Genre Fiction

Ballantine Books

It is 1483. Father Felix Fabri has set sail from Germany to Mount Sinai on a pilgrimage to venerate the relics of the spiritual bride he took when he first swore his vows, the martyr Saint Katherine of Alexandria. Joined by a disturbed young woman who claims that Saint Katherine speaks through her, and her older brother whose intentions are never clear, Felix soon finds his expectations for a pure and holy journey crushed. Following a tempestuous sea voyage, Felix's group comes ashore to pay homage and celebrate Katherine's life in Greece and Palestine. Each time they come to worship, though, they find that the remains of Katherine's body are being stolen in bits and pieces; her hand, her ear, and then her tongue are missing from their holy resting places. Desperate to discover the thief and save his saint from such a brutal fate, Felix is thrust into a deep and strange mystery that takes him across the desert and plumbs the depths of his soul. Based on the historical Wanderings of Friar Felix Fabri, this suspenseful and thrilling novel is an irresistible look at how history resonates in the present landscape, and how heaven, through the follies and passions of men, constantly reinvents itself.

A Stolen Tongue

Anchor

THE ROYAL DIARIES is pleased to introduce historical novelist, Sheri Holman, who makes her debut on the list with a captivating story of fourteen-year-old Princess Sondok from seventh-century Korea. During the seventh-century, the land which is now Korea was fraught with political and religious intrigue. The country was split into Three Kingdoms, each fighting for supremacy: Silla, Koguryo, and Paekche. Besides the warring kingdoms, there are three religions in conflict: Shamanism, the ancient female-dominated faith wherein Shamanist priestesses wield great power at court, foretelling the future, performing important national rituals, and healing sickness; Buddhism, the contemplative State religion; and Confucianism, a recent import from powerful China.

Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars (Royal Diaries)

Children's Books

Scholastic. Inc.

Blackstone Pub

Business & Money

Blackstone Audiobooks

As a child growing up in Depression-era rural Virginia, Eddie Alley’s quiet life is rooted in the rumors of his mother’s witchcraft. But when he's visited by a writer and glamorous photographer researching American folklore for the WPA, the spell of his mother’s unorthodox life is violently disrupted, and Eddie is inspired to pursue a future beyond the confines of his dead-end town. He leaves for New York and becomes a television horror-movie presenter beloved for his kitschy comedy. Though expert at softening terror for his young fans, Eddie cannot escape the guilty secrets of his own childhood. When he opens his family’s door to a homeless teenager working as an intern at the TV station, the boy’s presence not only awakens something in Eddie, but also in his twelve-year-old daughter, Wallis, who has begun to feel a strange kinship to her notorious grandmother. As the ghost stories of one generation infiltrate the next, Wallis and Eddie grapple with the sins of the past to repair their misguided attempts at loyalty and redemption. In Witches on the Road Tonight, bestselling author Sheri Holman teases out the dark compulsions and desperate longings that blur the line between love and betrayal.

Witches on the Road Tonight

United States

When Manda Frank conceives eleven babies with the help of fertility treatments, she brings the world's attention to rural Three Chimneys, Virginia. As the news media descends on the town, even bringing presidential candidate Adams Brooke to Manda's hospital bedside, the residents of Three Chimneys celebrate before the cameras. When all eleven children are born alive, Pastor Leland Vaughn rejoices in his belief that the miraculous event will enliven his community. Meanwhile, artisanal cheese-maker Margaret Prickett has devoted herself to campaigning for Brooke, who has promised to instate a sweeping amnesty for family farms that will erase the debt that threatens her own centuries-old farm. At home, tension swells as Margaret's daughter Polly, after suffering through her parents' messy divorce, finds her own rebellious urges expressed in the radical ideas of Mr. March, a young history teacher. At the same time, August Vaughn, Margaret's loyal farm hand, struggles with his feelings for Margaret, taking solace in being a living historian of Thomas Jefferson. As autumn progresses and the sickly Frank babies begin to die, all of Three Chimneys becomes infected with the same disquiet simmering in the Prickett household. In an effort to heal his shaken flock, Pastor Vaughn encourages Margaret and August to recreate the Mammoth Cheese, a 1,235-pound wheel of Cheshire delivered to the newly inaugurated President Thomas Jefferson by his New England supporters. Margaret reluctantly agrees, and soon the whole town is involved in the new project. As Margaret plunges herself into first the Adams Brooke campaign and then the making of the giant cheese, she loses sight of the events unfolding in Polly's life. Polly's crush on Harvey March, her revolutionary-minded history teacher, gradually develops into a dangerous relationship. As the novel progresses, March's words and actions towards Polly become questionable and finally blatantly inappropriate and sinister, soon showing that Polly's suspicions of his affection for her aren't wishful thinking at all. August Vaughn also begins to question his place in Margaret's life. For years, he harbored a love for her that kept him living at home with his parents and working as a laborer on her farm. Now that Margaret's marriage has ended, August admits his feelings for her, and Margaret, overwhelmed by her work on the farm and the increasingly threatening letters from the bank regarding foreclosure on her property, rebuffs him. August distances himself from the Prickett and Vaughn families, buying a piece of land and overseeing the construction of his own, small home. August's parents are hurt by their only son's decision to leave home, especially his father Leland, who struggles with guilt from his involvement in the birth of the Frank Eleven. He begins to question the wisdom of his council in encouraging Manda to carry all eleven embryos to term. The first babies die and the rest suffer in the hospital and or at the new Frank home, which has been left half-finished by Polly's father's construction firm in the wake of dwindling interest in and charity for the Frank family. But even Leland doesn't understand Manda's suffering. A celebrity and town hero while pregnant, the deaths of her children have returned Manda to her status as the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She miserably cares for the six implacable infants, babies with whom she has been unable to bond. As her life descends into increasing chaos, and her older daughter Rose suffers a terrible dog bite from Manda's untrained pack, Manda finds herself overcome by deep despair and even contemplates killing the babies and herself. Finally, the cheese is complete. Leland, optimistic that all of Three Chimneys will benefit from Margaret's project, organizes the trip to Washington D.C. Polly's history class, under the supervision of Mr. March, joins the trip, as does a reluctant August, who despite his father's pleas, has refused to dress as Jefferson for the trip. The cheese has at this point become an ethically questionable endeavor, but Margaret finds herself unable to stop what she has begun. Brooke has used Margaret's family motto to get elected, and Margaret is dismayed by the commercial aspect her gift to Brooke has taken on-the cheese now sports corporate sponsorship and is trailed by the media. Margaret's feels even more defeated when a reporter accompanying the caravan tells her that Brooke's farm amnesty is sure to succumb to a compromise with congress. She also realizes her own feelings for August but is unable to bridge the distance that has grown between them. As Margaret, Polly, August, Leland, and Mr. March travel towards Washington, the tensions threatening their families and all of Three Chimneys builds to a startling conclusion that forces everyone to face the gap between their intentions and their actions. In the vivid world of The Mammoth Cheese, the present is immersed in the ppppppast and the meaning of community is elusive. As the characters struggle to understand their own debts to parents, friends, and neighbors, they learn to assert their independence.

The Mammoth Cheese

GROVE PRESS

A riveting mystery that recalls the work of Umberto Eco and Barry Unsworth, A Stolen Tongue is the captivating debut novel that launched critically acclaimed author Sheri Holman’s literary career.In 1483, Father Felix Fabri sails from Germany to Mount Sinai on a pilgrimage to venerate the relics of Saint Katherine of Alexandria. But at each of the shrines he visits throughout Greece and Palestine, he finds that the remains of Katherine’s body are being stolen piece by piece: her hand, her ear, and then her tongue vanish from their holy resting places. Desperate to discover the thief and save his saint from such appalling desecration, Felix is thrust into a strange mystery that takes him across the desert and plumbs the depths of his soul.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by HOLMAN, SHERI. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by HOLMAN, SHERI

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by HOLMAN, SHERI. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Dress Lodger

The Dress Lodger

The Dress Lodger (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

A Stolen Tongue

Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars (Royal Diaries)

The Dress Lodger

The Dress Lodger

Witches on the Road Tonight

The Mammoth Cheese

A Stolen Tongue