Portrait Of An Unknown Woman Download Ebook PDF Epub Online

Perfect for fans of ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, this is a remarkable love story with a background of religious and political turmoil in Tudor England.

In this dazzling story of art and illusion, secrets and schemes, who is to be trusted - and what is real? From the internationally acclaimed author of Optic Nerve, a New York Times Notable Book 2019 'A writer who feels immediately important' Observer At a hotel in Buenos Aires, a woman checks in under a pseudonym. She wears a black fur shawl and has no luggage. She is alone. Over the coming days and nights, she tells a story, which begins with a secret shared in a local bath house, revealing art forgery and fraud on a dazzling scale. At its heart is an enigmatic genius who for years forged portraits of the city's elite, before disappearing without trace. It is a story of influence and intrigue, in which nothing is as it seems. We're not to expect 'names, numbers or dates', she cautions, but a more subtle kind of reckoning... Told in a mordant, irresistible voice and full of sharp surprises, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a captivating enquiry into what we mean by 'authenticity', in life as in art. At once poised and capricious, elegant and bold, it is a thrilling exploration of the relationships between what is lived, what is told, what is remembered, and what is real. Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead

"In this delightful autofiction―the first book by Gainza, an Argentine art critic, to appear in English―a woman delivers pithy assessments of world–class painters along with glimpses of her life, braiding the two into an illuminating whole." ―The New York Times Book Review, Notable Book of the Year and Editors' Choice The narrator of Optic Nerve is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her. In these pages, El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo’s bodies. The mystery of Rothko’s refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator’s husband receives chemotherapy. Alfred de Dreux visits Géricault’s workshop; Gustave Courbet’s devilish seascapes incite viewers “to have sex, or to eat an apple”; Picasso organizes a cruel banquet in Rousseau’s honor . . . All of these fascinating episodes in art history interact with the narrator’s life in Buenos Aires―her family and work; her loves and losses; her infatuations and disappointments. The effect is of a character refracted by environment, composed by the canvases she studies. Seductive and capricious, Optic Nerve marks the English–language debut of a major Argentinian writer. It is a book that captures, like no other, the mysterious connections between a work of art and the person who perceives it.

A mysterious woman is suspected of murder at the 1889 Paris Expo in this historical novel of “gorgeous prose” by the author of The Chess Garden (Kirkus Reviews). Paris, 1889. When the body of an unknown woman appears on the banks of the Seine, it is put on display at the morgue behind Notre Dame, according to protocol. Though the woman is never identified, her eerie beauty is so captivating that a death mask is made of her face. The mask would become one of the most famous curios of the twentieth century. Set during the final days of 1889’s Exposition Universelle, Brooks Hansen’s fascinating novel speculates on who this mysterious woman was. Disgraced former Gendarme Henri Brassard is returning to Paris, determined to reclaim his place in La Force. When he crosses paths with a suspicious woman in a gypsy wagon, he suspects her of a brutal crime. Tracking her through the city, Brassard observes from the shadows as she winds her way into the orbit of several savory and unsavory characters—an artist, an impresario, a madame, a countess—each of whom sees in her a chance for profit or redemption; any one of whom may therefore be responsible for her sudden and unexplained disappearance. Brassard’s chase will lead him on a grand tour of nineteenth-century Paris, from its highest spires to its darkest catacombs. By the end, he will learn the stunning truth of the unknown woman’s identity, but not before unearthing the equally disturbing truth about himself.

Spy turned art restorer Gabriel Allon finds himself accused of murder in this New York Times bestseller from Daniel Silva. An Israeli spy by trade and art restorer by preference, Gabriel Allon arrives in Zurich to restore the work of an Old Master for a millionaire banker—and finds himself standing in blood and framed for the man’s murder. While trying to clear his name, Allon is swept into a spiraling chain of events involving Nazi art theft, a decades-old suicide, and a dark and bloody trail of killings—some of them his own. The spy world Allon thought he had left behind has come back to haunt him. And he will have to fight for his life—against an assassin he himself helped train.

Thomas Hardy (2nd June 1840 – 11th January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. He was influenced by Romanticism and it has been reflected in his novels and poetry. He was criticised by the victorian society on the issue of the declining status of rural people in Britain. He was basically a poet. Initially he started writing poems. But he gained fame after his novels, such as – Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Caster bridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Two of his novels, ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ and ‘Far from the Madding Crowd, were listed in top 50 on the BBC survey- The Big Road.The story of ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ revolves around a 16 year old very simple girl, named Tess Durbeyfield, who is the eldest daughter of John and Joan Durbeyfield. Since the family suffers acute financial crisis, so they approach the d’Urbervilles family who are holding huge land and having lot of money. There Tess meets Alec d’Urberville, who finds himself attracted to Tess. When Tess started working as a caretaker of Alec’s blind mother’s poultry farm, Alec gets an opportunity to rape her. After that there are many ups and down in Tess’ life. She meets Mr. Crick for another job. She also meets one more fellow Angel Clare, who is a travelling farmer’s apprentice. They marry each other. But after knowing her story, again there is a turn in Tess’ life. How she manages all such situation, how she meets all the financial aspects, lot of things happen with Tess. Even Alec and Angel both start searching for Tess. So, the story has become very interesting, full of climax. How Tess meets Alec or Angel? Whether she gets involved with any of these two again? There are so many presumptions. Readers will surely enjoy the story, full of suspense and never expected ups & downs in the life of all the characters. At last, how Angel helps Tess and her family is the climax. Go ahead and must grab the book.A must read book for self development and how to be a good leader.

Through the story of a portrait of a woman in a silk dress, historian Zara Anishanslin embarks on a fascinating journey, exploring and refining debates about the cultural history of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. While most scholarship on commodities focuses either on labor and production or on consumption and use, Anishanslin unifies both, examining the worlds of four identifiable people who produced, wore, and represented this object: a London weaver, one of early modern Britain’s few women silk designers, a Philadelphia merchant’s wife, and a New England painter. Blending macro and micro history with nuanced gender analysis, Anishanslin shows how making, buying, and using goods in the British Atlantic created an object-based community that tied its inhabitants together, while also allowing for different views of the Empire. Investigating a range of subjects including self-fashioning, identity, natural history, politics, and trade, Anishanslin makes major contributions both to the study of material culture and to our ongoing conversation about how to write history.

In Rome one January afternoon in 1943, a young German woman is on her way to listen to a Bach concert at the Lutheran church. The war is for her little more than a daydream, until she realizes that her husband might never return. Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, winner of the prestigious Georg Büchner prize, is a mesmerizing psychological portrait of the human need to safeguard innocence and integrity at any cost—even at the risk of excluding reality. More than just the story of this single woman, it is a compelling and credible description of a typical young German woman during the Nazi era.

Gheeraert's portrait of Elizabeth I is one of the most famous paintings of the 'Virgin Queen'. This book addresses the life and work of this innovative artist who painted some of the most important figures of his age, defining the public image of the monarchy under Elizabeth I and James I.

These four Stefan Zweig stories, newly translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell, are among his most celebrated and compelling work. The titular tale is a devastating depiction of unrequited love, which inspired a classic Hollywood film, directed by Max Ophüls and starring Joane Fontaine. Elsewhere in the collection, a young man mistakes the girl he loves for her sister, two erstwhile lovers meet after an age spent apart, and a married woman repays a debt of gratitude to her childhood sweetheart. Expertly paced, laced with the acutely accurate psychological detail and empathy that are Zweig's trademarks, this is a powerful addition to Pushkin's growing collection of his work. From the Trade Paperback edition.

#1 New York Times Bestseller #1 USA Today Bestseller #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller A Kirkus Best Book of 2018 A Real Book Spy Best Thriller of 2018 From Daniel Silva, the #1 New York Times–bestselling author, comes a modern masterpiece of espionage, love, and betrayal She was his best-kept secret … In an isolated village in the mountains of Andalusia, a mysterious Frenchwoman begins work on a dangerous memoir. It is the story of a man she once loved in the Beirut of old, and a child taken from her in treason’s name. The woman is the keeper of the Kremlin’s most closely guarded secret. Long ago, the KGB inserted a mole into the heart of the West—a mole who stands on the doorstep of ultimate power. Only one man can unravel the conspiracy: Gabriel Allon, the legendary art restorer and assassin who serves as the chief of Israel’s vaunted secret intelligence service. Gabriel has battled the dark forces of the new Russia before, at great personal cost. Now he and the Russians will engage in a final epic showdown, with the fate of the postwar global order hanging in the balance. Gabriel is lured into the hunt for the traitor after his most important asset inside Russian intelligence is brutally assassinated while trying to defect in Vienna. His quest for the truth will lead him backward in time, to the twentieth century’s greatest act of treason, and, finally, to a spellbinding climax along the banks of the Potomac River outside Washington that will leave readers breathless. Fast as a bullet, hauntingly beautiful, and filled with stunning double-crosses and twists of plot, The Other Woman is a tour de force that proves once again that “of all those writing spy novels today, Daniel Silva is quite simply the best” (Kansas City Star).

Cited by the Nobel Prize committee as the “crown” of Heinrich Böll’s work, the gripping story of Group Portrait With Lady unspools like a suspenseful documentary. Via a series of tense interviews, an unnamed narrator uncovers the story—past and present—of one of Böll’s most intriguing characters, the enigmatic Leni Pfeiffer, a struggling war widow. At the center of her struggle is her effort to prevent the demolition of her Cologne apartment building, a fight in which she is joined by a motley group of neighbors. Along with her illegitimate son, Lev, she becomes the nexus of a countercultural group rebelling against Germany’s dehumanizing past under the Nazis ... and what looks to be an equally dehumanizing future under capitalism.

Completing the trilogy that includes her bestselling novels Daughter of Fortune and The House of the Spirits, Portrait in Sepia is a stunning novel about memory and family secrets Set at the end of the nineteenth century, Portrait in Sepia is a richly imagined historical novel featuring the colorful and intrepid del Valle family. The protagonist, Aurora del Valle, suffers a brutal trauma that shapes her character and erases from her mind all recollections of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, she grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribe the lives of women at that time, but tormented by horrible nightmares. When she is forced to recognize her betrayal by the man she loves, and to cope with the resulting solitude, she decides to explore the mystery of her past.

#1 New York Times Bestseller • #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller From Daniel Silva, the internationally acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author, comes a riveting new thriller featuring art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon. It was nearly one a.m. by the time he crawled into bed. Chiara was reading a novel, oblivious to the television, which was muted. On the screen was a live shot of St. Peter’s Basilica. Gabriel raised the volume and learned that an old friend had died … Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into Venice for a much-needed holiday with his wife and two young children. But when Pope Paul VII dies suddenly, Gabriel is summoned to Rome by the Holy Father’s loyal private secretary, Archbishop Luigi Donati. A billion Catholic faithful have been told that the pope died of a heart attack. Donati, however, has two good reasons to suspect his master was murdered. The Swiss Guard who was standing watch outside the papal apartments the night of the pope’s death is missing. So, too, is the letter the Holy Father was writing during the final hours of his life. A letter that was addressed to Gabriel. While researching in the Vatican Secret Archives, I came upon a most remarkable book … The book is a long-suppressed gospel that calls into question the accuracy of the New Testament’s depiction of one of the most portentous events in human history. For that reason alone, the Order of St. Helena will stop at nothing to keep it out of Gabriel’s hands. A shadowy Catholic society with ties to the European far right, the Order is plotting to seize control of the papacy. And it is only the beginning. As the cardinals gather in Rome for the start of the conclave, Gabriel sets out on a desperate search for proof of the Order’s conspiracy, and for a long-lost gospel with the power to put an end to two thousand years of murderous hatred. His quest will take him from the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, to a monastery in Assisi, to the hidden depths of the Secret Archives, and finally to the Sistine Chapel, where he will witness an event no outsider has ever before seen—the sacred passing of the Keys of St. Peter to a newly elected pope. Swiftly paced and elegantly rendered, The Order will hold readers spellbound, from its opening passages to its breathtaking final twist of plot. It is a novel of friendship and faith in a perilous and uncertain world. And it is still more proof that Daniel Silva is his generation’s finest writer of suspense and international intrigue.

Blending fiction with fact, The Unlikely Spy finds eccentric Commander Alfred Vicary attempting to identify and locate a Nazi 'sleeper'. The book moves from Lisbon to London, culminating in a chase across England and a twist-packed climax.

#1 New York Times Bestseller “The pace of “The Cellist” never slackens as its action volleys from Zurich to Tel Aviv to Paris and beyond. Mr. Silva tells his story with zest, wit and superb timing, and he engineers enough surprises to startle even the most attentive reader.“—Wall Street Journal From Daniel Silva, the internationally acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author, comes a timely and explosive new thriller featuring art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon. Viktor Orlov had a longstanding appointment with death. Once Russia’s richest man, he now resides in splendid exile in London, where he has waged a tireless crusade against the authoritarian kleptocrats who have seized control of the Kremlin. His mansion in Chelsea’s exclusive Cheyne Walk is one of the most heavily protected private dwellings in London. Yet somehow, on a rainy summer evening, in the midst of a global pandemic, Russia’s vengeful president finally manages to cross Orlov’s name off his kill list. Before him was the receiver from his landline telephone, a half-drunk glass of red wine, and a stack of documents.… The documents are contaminated with a deadly nerve agent. The Metropolitan Police determine that they were delivered to Orlov’s home by one of his employees, a prominent investigative reporter from the anti-Kremlin Moskovskaya Gazeta. And when the reporter slips from London hours after the killing, MI6 concludes she is a Moscow Center assassin who has cunningly penetrated Orlov’s formidable defenses. But Gabriel Allon, who owes his very life to Viktor Orlov, believes his friends in British intelligence are dangerously mistaken. His desperate search for the truth will take him from London to Amsterdam and eventually to Geneva, where a private intelligence service controlled by a childhood friend of the Russian president is using KGB-style “active measures” to undermine the West from within. Known as the Haydn Group, the unit is plotting an unspeakable act of violence that will plunge an already divided America into chaos and leave Russia unchallenged. Only Gabriel Allon, with the help of a brilliant young woman employed by the world’s dirtiest bank, can stop it. Elegant and sophisticated, provocative and daring, The Cellist explores one of the preeminent threats facing the West today—the corrupting influence of dirty money wielded by a revanchist and reckless Russia. It is at once a novel of hope and a stark warning about the fragile state of democracy. And it proves once again why Daniel Silva is regarded as his generation’s finest writer of suspense and international intrigue.

Set in late fourteenth century England, Vanora Bennett's rich, dramatic new novel presents an England uncannily like our own.

The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880-81 and then as a book in 1881. It is one of James's most popular long novels and is regarded by critics as one of his finest.

The book "" The Book of Fair Women, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies and hence the text is clear and readable.

A vivid and passionate account of the Chechen conflict, here updated for the paperback edition.Crying Wolf is the story of the one million Chechens who, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, found themselves cast as the enemy of the new Russian state. Compelled to assert their freedom and individualism, they faced the huge Russian army in a one-sided war which destroyed their land, their homes and their families. This updated account also covers the role of Vladimir Putin in the continuing struggle. 'Reads like a gripping epic novel - at times bursting with action, at times maudlin and romantic. Her heartfelt descriptions of Soviet racism and the moral bankruptcy of post-Communist Russia are among the most powerful I have ever come across.' Daily Telegraph 'Bennett's passion for her subject is unquestionable, and she has a sharp eye for detail and colour.' Sunday Times