Books by Carol Birch
Sandburg Out Loud: A Selection of Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories, Poetry, and Folksongs Collected in the American Songbag
by Carl Sandburg, Carol Birch, Angela Lloyd, Bill Harley
Presents a selection of the American writer's works, including poems, selections from "The Rootabaga Stories," and music and songs from Sandburg's "The American Songbag."
Copies
No copies available.
Jamrach's Menagerie: A Novel
by Carol Birch
Nineteenth-century London comes vividly alive in this story a street urchin named Jaffy Brown. After a close call with an escaped tiger, Jaffy goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals. As the years pass, Mr. Jamrach recruits Jaffy and another boy named Tim to capture a fabled dragon during the course of an epic three-year whaling expedition in the East Indies. But when a violent storm sinks the ship, Jaffy and Tim are forced to confront their relationship to the natural world and the wildness it contains. Jamrach’s Menagerie is a truly gripping novel about friendship, sacrifice, and survival.
Copies
No copies available.
Jamrach's Menagerie: A Novel
by Carol Birch
SHORTLISTED for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction
A thrilling and powerful novel about a young boy lured to sea by the promise of adventure and reward, with echoes of Great Expectations, Moby-Dick, and The Voyage of the Narwhal.
Jamrach’s Menagerie tells the story of a nineteenth-century street urchin named Jaffy Brown. Following an incident with an escaped tiger, Jaffy goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals, alongside Tim, a good but sometimes spitefully competitive boy. Thus begins a long, close friendship fraught with ambiguity and rivalry.
Mr. Jamrach recruits the two boys to capture a fabled dragon during the course of a three-year whaling expedition. Onboard, Jaffy and Tim enjoy the rough brotherhood of sailors and the brutal art of whale hunting. They even succeed in catching the reptilian beast.
But when the ship’s whaling venture falls short of expectations, the crew begins to regard the dragon—seething with feral power in its cage—as bad luck, a feeling that is cruelly reinforced when a violent storm sinks the ship.
Drifting across an increasingly hallucinatory ocean, the survivors, including Jaffy and Tim, are forced to confront their own place in the animal kingdom. Masterfully told, wildly atmospheric, and thundering with tension, Jamrach’s Menagerie is a truly haunting novel about friendship, sacrifice, and survival.
Copies
No copies available.
Orphans of the Carnival: A Novel
by Carol Birch
From the Booker short-listed author of Jamrach's Menagerie comes the extraordinary, moving, and unsettling tale of a woman, branded a freak from birth, who becomes an international sensation but longs for genuine human connection
London had the best freaks, always had. The Egyptian Hall, the Promenade of Wonders, the Siamese twins, pinheads, midgets, cannibals, giants, living skeletons, the fat, the hairy, the legless, the armless, the noseless, London had seen it all. In the Hall of Ugliness the competition was stiff. But noone had ever seen anything quite like Julia . . .
Pronounced by the most eminent physician of the day to be "a true hybrid wherein the nature of woman presides over that of the brute," Julia Pastrana stood apart from the other carnival acts. She was fluent in English, French and Spanish, an accomplished musician with an exquisite singing voice, equally at ease riding horseback and turning pirouettes—but all anyone noticed was her utterly unusual face. Alternately vilified and celebrated, Julia toured through New Orleans, New York, London, Berlin, Vienna, and Moscow, often hobknobbing with high society as she made her fame and fortune.
Beneath the flashy lights and thunderous applause lies a bright, compassionate young woman who only wants people to see beyond her hairy visage—and perhaps, the chance for love. When Julia visits a mysterious shaman in the back alleys of New Orleans, he gives her a potion and says that she'll find a man within the year. Sure enough, Julia soon meets Theodore Lent, a boyishly charming showman who catapults Julia onto the global stage. As they travel the world, the two fall into an easy intimacy, but the question of whether Theo truly cares for Julia or if his management is just a gentler form of exploitation lingers heavily with every kind word and soft embrace.
Stunningly written and deeply compelling, Orphans of the Carnival is a haunting examination of how we define ourselves and, ultimately, of what it means to be human.
Copies
No copies available.
Orphans of the Carnival: A Novel
by Carol Birch
In this stunning work of historical fiction, the Booker Prize–nominated author of Jamrach’s Menagerie reimagines the incredible true story of Julia Pastrana, a woman branded a freak at birth. Although she was pronounced by the most eminent physician of the day to be “a true hybrid wherein the nature of woman presides over that of the brute,” Julia was fluent in English, French, and Spanish, and an accomplished musician with an exquisite singing voice. Alternately vilified and celebrated, all she wanted was for people to see beyond her hairy visage—and perhaps, the chance for love. When Julia meets a charming showman who catapults her onto the global stage, she believes that she has found true happiness at last. But the question of whether her lover truly cares for her—or if his management is just a new form of exploitation—lingers heavily. A deeply moving novel, in Orphans of the Carnival Carol Birch has crafted a haunting examination of how we define ourselves and, ultimately, of what it means to be human.
Copies
No copies available.
Lonely Planet Better than Fiction: True Travel Tales from Great Fiction Writers (Lonely Planet Travel Literature)
by Frances Mayes, Isabel Allende, Joyce Carol Oates, DBC Pierre, Marina Lewycka, Bryce Courtenay, Peter Matthiessen, Alexander McCall Smith, Jan Morris, Pico Iyer, Chris Pavone, Carol Birch, Don George, M. J. Hyland, Nikki Gemmell, Kurt Andersen, Keri Hulme, Steven Amsterdam, Charles Finch, Lloyd Jones, Téa Obreht, Peter Ho Davies, Stephen Kelman, Joe Yogerst, Steven Hall, Stefan Merrill Block, Suzanne Joinson, Sophie Cunningham, Keija Parssinen, Tom Carson, Mark Dapin, Aliya Whitely, Arnold Zable
"...a brilliant collection of travel stories...threaded with great warmth, as readers are invited to travel in the company of these famous authors and experience their passions and revelations." BOOKSELLER + PUBLISHER
We asked some of the world's most acclaimed fiction authors, including Isabel Allende, Peter Matthiessen, Alexander McCall Smith, Joyce Carol Oates, Tea Obreht and DBC Pierre, to describe their greatest non-fictional journeys. The 32 stories collected in Lonely Planet's Better than Fiction touch on everything from disorientation and revelation to disillusion and redemption.
However, these real-life tales all share one common characteristic: a passion for the precious gift that travel confers, from its unexpected but inevitably enriching lessons about other peoples and places, to the truths it reveals about ourselves. By turns funny, poignant and thought-provoking, you'll be transported from Azerbaijan to Vietnam, via Iceland, India, Samoa, Scotland, Antarctica, Alaska, Argentina, Nicaragua, Rome, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and beyond.
Edited by travel writer Don George.
Also available:
Lonely Planet Better than Fiction 2
About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, on mobile, video and in 14 languages, 12 international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more.
TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category
'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times
'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)
Copies
No copies available.
Who Says?: Essays on Pivotal Issues in Contemporary Storytelling (American Storytelling)
by Carol Birch, Melissa A. Heckler
Winner of Storytelling World Award & Anne Izard Storytellers' Choice Award
Contemporary storytelling has its roots in the oral and literary traditions. Performances are often judged according to the aesthetics of print, theater, or music – even television and film. In the last two decades, the storytelling movement has gained momentum, both as an educational tool and as engaging form of entertainment.
But the revival is so young that there is no common vocabulary for discussing it. What are the aesthetics of storytelling? These ten essays provide models to think with. Most of the contributors are storytellers; they are also anthropologists, writers, folklorists, musicians, and teachers and librarians. Provocative, challenging, and robust, these essays address critical issues in an increasingly potent movement.
Copies
No copies available.