From wedding bouquets to funeral wreaths, carnations can be seen everywhere in human culture. Their colorful but delicately folded petals have made them one of the foremost decorative flowers, from the gardens of the Ottoman Empire to American Mothers Day bouquets, via Chinese medicines and French Empresses. In this book, Twigs Way explores the extraordinary history of this inimitable flower. The author traces the trials and tribulations of early breeders—compelled by florists’ fascinations for the striped and spotted—which led to delightfully colored (and delightfully named) varieties such as Lustie Gallant and Bleeding Swain. She looks at the symbolism of the red and white—and even green—carnations made famous by Oscar Wilde, and glides through many of the rooms in literature and history that we have filled with the carnation’s glorious scent. Travelling from Europe to China, Way explores how carnations have been used by herbalists the world over as a treatment for ailments to both mind and body, and she looks at the many paintings that have attempted to capture their unique complexities. Lavishly illustrated and full of unexpected delights, this book will—like the carnation itself—charm the mind and invigorate the senses.

Attractive, accurately rendered collection of 30 floral beauties, with brief captions describing what each flower symbolizes. Includes the anemone (anticipation), buttercup (riches), red rose (romantic love), carnation (fidelity), poppy (extravagance), and 25 others. A treat for coloring book fans, flower lovers, and gardening enthusiasts.

Green Carnations, Glas na Gile, compiled and published in 2020, is an anthology of verse from twenty-five contributing LGBT+ poets on the island of Ireland.The book charts the ups and downs of first loves, longer partnered relationships and sexual encounters.If "the heart is a lonely hunter", the poets featured know the terrain.Theirs is a country where the motley of individuality is struggled with and worn. No tiresome sameness in the verse, but, at their best brave lines and voices heard and felt at the raw nerve of human existence, what it means to be human in an LGBT+ context. One that is as old as and older still than the creatorly plains of genesis.The poets are gathered by their first names, or initials, and range in age from the late teens, -some in their final Leaving Certificate Year 2020 - to the thirties. The same-sex Irish Marriage 2015 Referendum passed by a majority of the electorate (celebrated in some poems) is a line in the sand to be lived with, accepted and celebrated.Each poet was requested to contribute a short biography and to introduce the poems. Some poets prefer to use a pseudonym. Some accompany their poems with artwork. All struggle with identity, who they are. Individuality rather than editorial sameness is reflected where possible.Sometimes something of a sharedness of serenity is achieved. More often than not the growing pains, loves, endearments and durabilities that are anyone's in a relationship.The book is essentially a young person's anthology, a sharing among contributors and with readers as all face a common future.

Nothing goes right for Eloise. The one day she wears her new suede boots, it rains cats and dogs. When the subway stops short, she’s always the one thrown into some stranger’s lap. Plus, she’s had more than her share of misfortune in the way of love. In fact, ever since she realized romantic heroes are a thing of the past, she’s decided it’s time for a fresh start. Setting off for England, Eloise is determined to finish her dissertation on that dashing pair of spies, the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian. But what she discovers is something the finest historians have missed: the secret history of the Pink Carnation—the most elusive spy of all time. As she works to unmask this obscure spy, Eloise stumbles across answers to all kinds of questions. Like how did the Pink Carnation save England from Napoleon? What became of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian? And will Eloise Kelly escape her bad luck and find a living, breathing hero all her own?

Longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction • A Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction • A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the James Taite Black Prize for Fiction • A Finalist the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • A Finalist for the Green Carnation Prize • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Los Angeles Times Bestseller Named One of the Best Books of the Year by More Than Fifty Publications, Including: The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times (selected by Dwight Garner), GQ, The Washington Post, Esquire, NPR, Slate, Vulture, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian (London), The Telegraph (London), The Evening Standard (London), The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, The Millions, BuzzFeed, The New Republic (Best Debuts of the Year), Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly (One of the Ten Best Books of the Year) "Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You appeared in early 2016, and is a short first novel by a young writer; still, it was not easily surpassed by anything that appeared later in the year....It is not just first novelists who will be envious of Greenwell's achievement."—James Wood, The New Yorker On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia’s National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he’s forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko’s own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and want. What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love. A conversation between Garth Greenwell and Hanya Yanagihara is included inside the e-book edition.

Mad Long Emotion wants to talk flora to fauna like you. It talks by dancing, as bumblebees do. In its dances, loosestrife shoos humans away, green carnations flirt with handsome men beyond the shade, and “dogbanes though dead bloom.” Meanwhile, in better-discerned motion, numerous species both spiny and spineless prove invasive, from Great Lake lampreys to hydraulic triceratopses. But they’re just looking for better homes. The book concludes with a long poem about distance, desire and the difficulty of combining the two. Lend this book your eyes and nose; mouth its contents to your house plants. The poetry of Mad Long Emotion wants to live forever, and you can make that happen with your face.

In this stunning literary debut, Patrick Flanery delivers a devastating and intimate portrait of post-apartheid South Africa, and the perils of taking sides when the sides are changing around you. Told in shifting perspectives, Absolution is centred on the mysterious character of Clare Wald, a controversial writer of great fame, haunted by the memories of a sister she fears she betrayed to her death and a daughter she fears she abandoned. Clare comes to learn that in this conflict the dead do not stay buried, and the missing return in other forms--such as the small child present in her daughter's last days who has reappeared, posing as Clare's official biographer. Sam Leroux, a South African expatriate returning to Cape Town after many years in New York, gradually earns Clare's trust, his own ghosts emerging from the histories that he and Clare begin to unravel, leading them both along a path in search of reconciliation and forgiveness.

A wealth of inspirational arrangements for many indoor settings and special occasions.

The story of a little girl who takes part in the creation of John Singer Sargent's well-loved painting.