The Virgin Cure

Author : Ami McKay
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 006219416X
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Virgin Cure written by Ami McKay and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From #1 international bestselling author Ami McKay comes The Virgin Cure, the story of a young girl abandoned and forced to fend for herself in the poverty and treachery of post-Civil War New York City. McKay, whose debut novel The Birth House made headlines around the world, returns with a resonant tale inspired by her own great-great-grandmother’s experiences as a pioneer of women’s medicine in nineteenth-century New York. One summer night in Lower Manhattan in 1871, twelve-year-old Moth is pulled from her bed and sold as a servant to a finely dressed woman. Knowing that her mother is so close while she is locked away in servitude, Moth bides her time until she can escape, only to find her old home deserted and her mother gone without a trace. Moth must struggle to survive alone in the murky world of the Bowery, a wild and lawless enclave filled with thieves, beggars, sideshow freaks, and prostitutes. She eventually meets Miss Everett, the proprietress of an "Infant School," a brothel that caters to gentlemen who pay dearly for "willing and clean" companions—desirable young virgins like Moth. She also finds friendship with Dr. Sadie, a female physician struggling against the powerful forces of injustice. The doctor hopes to protect Moth from falling prey to a terrible myth known as the "virgin cure"—the tragic belief that deflowering a "fresh maid" can cleanse the blood and heal men afflicted with syphilis—which has destroyed the lives of other Bowery girls. Ignored by society and unprotected by the law, Moth dreams of independence. But there's a high price to pay for freedom, and no one knows that better than a girl from Chrystie Street. In a powerful novel that recalls the evocative fiction Anita Shreve, Annie Proulx, and Joanne Harris, Ami McKay brings to light the story of early, forward-thinking social warriors, creating a narrative that readers will find inspiring, poignant, adventure-filled, and utterly unforgettable.

Author : Ami McKay
Publisher : Vintage Canada
ISBN 13 : 0307371441
Total Pages : 410 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Birth House written by Ami McKay and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-04-24 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be born in five generations of Rares. As a child in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing. Dora becomes Miss B.’s apprentice, and together they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labours, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives. Filled with details as compelling as they are surprising, The Birth House is an unforgettable tale of the struggles women have faced to have control of their own bodies and to keep the best parts of tradition alive in the world of modern medicine.

Author : Ami McKay
Publisher : Knopf Canada
ISBN 13 : 0307374092
Total Pages : 331 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Virgin Cure written by Ami McKay and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following in the footsteps of The Birth House, her powerful debut novel, The Virgin Cure secures Ami McKay's place as one of our most beguiling storytellers. (Not that it has to… that is pretty much taken care of!) "I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart." So begins The Virgin Cure, a novel set in the tenements of lower Manhattan in the year 1871. As a young child, Moth's father smiled, tipped his hat and walked away from his wife and daughter forever, and Moth has never stopped imagining that one day they may be reunited – despite knowing in her heart what he chose over them. Her hard mother is barely making a living with her fortune-telling, sometimes for well-heeled clients, yet Moth is all too aware of how she really pays the rent. Life would be so much better, Moth knows, if fortune had gone the other way - if only she'd had the luxury of a good family and some station in life. The young Moth spends her days wandering the streets of her own and better neighbourhoods, imagining what days are like for the wealthy women whose grand yet forbidding gardens she slips through when no one's looking. Yet every night Moth must return to the disease- and grief-ridden tenements she calls home. The summer Moth turns twelve, her mother puts a halt to her explorations by selling her boots to a local vendor, convinced that Moth was planning to run away. Wanting to make the most of her every asset, she also sells Moth to a wealthy woman as a servant, with no intention of ever seeing her again. These betrayals lead Moth to the wild, murky world of the Bowery, filled with house-thieves, pickpockets, beggars, sideshow freaks and prostitutes, but also a locale frequented by New York's social elite. Their patronage supports the shadowy undersphere, where businesses can flourish if they truly understand the importance of wealth and social standing - and of keeping secrets. In that world Moth meets Miss Everett, the owner of a brothel simply known as an "infant school." There Moth finds the orderly solace she has always wanted, and begins to imagine herself embarking upon a new path. Yet salvation does not come without its price: Miss Everett caters to gentlemen who pay dearly for companions who are "willing and clean," and the most desirable of them all are young virgins like Moth. That's not the worst of the situation, though. In a time and place where mysterious illnesses ravage those who haven't been cautious, no matter their social station, diseased men yearn for a "virgin cure" - thinking that deflowering a "fresh maid" can heal the incurable and tainted. Through the friendship of Dr. Sadie, a female physician who works to help young women like her, Moth learns to question and observe the world around her. Moth's new friends are falling prey to fates both expected and forced upon them, yet she knows the law will not protect her, and that polite society ignores her. Still she dreams of answering to no one but herself. There's a high price for such independence, though, and no one knows that better than a girl from Chrystie Street.

Author : Ami McKay
Publisher : Knopf Canada
ISBN 13 : 0307366782
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Witches of New York written by Ami McKay and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved, bestselling author of The Birth House and The Virgin Cure is back with her most beguiling novel yet, luring us deep inside the lives of a trio of remarkable young women navigating the glitz and grotesqueries of Gilded-Age New York by any means possible, including witchcraft... The year is 1880. Two hundred years after the trials in Salem, Adelaide Thom (Moth from The Virgin Cure) has left her life in the sideshow to open a tea shop with another young woman who feels it's finally safe enough to describe herself as a witch: a former medical student and gardien de sorts (keeper of spells), Eleanor St. Clair. Together they cater to Manhattan's high society ladies, specializing in cures, palmistry and potions--and in guarding the secrets of their clients. All is well until one bright September afternoon, when an enchanting young woman named Beatrice Dunn arrives at their door seeking employment. Beatrice soon becomes indispensable as Eleanor's apprentice, but her new life with the witches is marred by strange occurrences. She sees things no one else can see. She hears voices no one else can hear. Objects appear out of thin air, as if gifts from the dead. Has she been touched by magic or is she simply losing her mind? Eleanor wants to tread lightly and respect the magic manifest in the girl, but Adelaide sees a business opportunity. Working with Dr. Quinn Brody, a talented alienist, she submits Beatrice to a series of tests to see if she truly can talk to spirits. Amidst the witches' tug-of-war over what's best for her, Beatrice disappears, leaving them to wonder whether it was by choice or by force. As Adelaide and Eleanor begin the desperate search for Beatrice, they're confronted by accusations and spectres from their own pasts. In a time when women were corseted, confined and committed for merely speaking their minds, were any of them safe?

Author : Wesley Straton
Publisher : Flatiron Books
ISBN 13 : 1250809096
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Bartender's Cure written by Wesley Straton and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Compelling... [A] sure-bet read-alike for Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter.” --Booklist A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK by BuzzFeed, Goodreads, Electric Lit, New York Post, LitHub, BookRiot, and Library Journal A fiercely relatable coming-of-age debut novel about an aspiring bartender at the perfect Brooklyn neighborhood bar Samantha definitely does not want to be a bartender. But after a breakup and breakdown in San Francisco, she decides to defer law school for a year to move to New York, crashing on her best friend’s couch. When she is offered a job at Joe’s Apothecary, a beloved neighborhood bar in Brooklyn, she tells herself it’s only temporary. As Sam learns more about bartending and gets to know the service industry lifers and loyal regulars at Joe’s, she is increasingly seduced by her new job. She finds acceptance in her tight-knit community and even begins a new relationship. But as the year draws to a close, destructive cycles from her past threaten to consume her again. Sam is increasingly pulled between the life she thought she wanted and the possibility of a different kind of future. How much is she willing to let go of to finally belong? Filled with cocktail recipes and bartending tips and tricks, this captivating, utterly original debut will quench your thirst.

Author : Hanne Blank
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1596910119
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Virgin written by Hanne Blank and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-03-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative social history examines the history of virginity and of noted virgins in Western culture, describing the unique fascination civilization has had for virginity from a social, political, economic, philosophical, medical, and legal standpoint. Reprint.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 18 pages
Book Rating : 4.4L/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Water Cure written by and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Ami McKay
Publisher : Knopf Canada
ISBN 13 : 0735275661
Total Pages : 114 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Half Spent Was the Night written by Ami McKay and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beloved author Ami McKay is back, bringing us a magical follow-up in the tradition of Victorian winter tales to her mesmerizing bestseller, The Witches of New York. During the nights between Christmas and New Year's, the witches of New York--Adelaide Thom, Eleanor St. Clair and the youngest, Beatrice Dunn--gather before the fire to tell ghost stories and perform traditional Yuletide divinations. (Did you know that roasting chestnuts was once used to foretell one's fate?) As the witches roast chestnuts and melt lead to see their fate, a series of odd messengers land on their doorstep bearing invitations for a New Year's Eve masquerade hosted by a woman they've never met. Gossip, dreams and portents follow, leading the witches to question the woman's motives. Is she as benevolent as she seems or is she laying a trap? And so, as Gilded-Age New York prepares to ring in the new year, the witches don their finery and head for the ball, on the hunt for answers that might well be the end of them.

Author : Nancy Pickard
Publisher : Ballantine Books
ISBN 13 : 0345471008
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Virgin of Small Plains written by Nancy Pickard and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Engrossing . . . beautifully written and carefully crafted . . . [a] work that explores the healing power of truth.”—The Boston Globe For seventeen years, a rural community in Kansas has faithfully tended the grave of an anonymous teenage girl christened the Virgin of Small Plains. And some claim that, perhaps owing to the girl’s intervention, strange miracles and unexplainable healings have occurred. Slowly, word of the legend spreads. But what really happened in that snow-covered field almost two decades ago, when the girl’s naked, frozen body was found? Why did young Mitch Newquist disappear the day after the shocking discovery, leaving behind his distraught girlfriend, Abby Reynolds, and their best friend, Rex Shellenberger? Now Mitch has returned to Small Plains, reigniting simmering tensions and awakening secrets. Never having resolved her feelings for Mitch, Abby is determined to uncover the startling truth about his departure. The three former friends must confront the ever-unfolding consequences of the night that forever changed their lives—and the life of their small town. Praise for The Virgin of Small Plains “Nancy Pickard . . . has evolved into a writer of substantial literary power. . . . [She] has fashioned a novel that accurately reflects the secrets and silences locked deep within the hearts of all small-town Midwesterners.”—The Denver Post “Tantalizing . . . Pickard writes with insight and compassion about an unresolved crime that continues to haunt a farming community.”—The New York Times Book Review “A class act . . . Pickard has a talent for adding depth to a story that conveys a sense of place and history.”—Orlando Sentinel “Crisply written, this new novel about loss of faith, trust, and innocence is utterly absorbing.”—Tucson Citizen

Author : Helen King
Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 0415226627
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Disease of Virgins written by Helen King and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a compelling study of the origins and history of the disease. Following the continuity of the disease from its classical roots up, this study questions the nature of the disease and the relationship between illness and body image.