Motel Nirvana (Dreaming of the New Age in the American Desert)

McGrath, Melanie

Religion & Spirituality

Flamingo

LONG EXILE

History

Americas

Harper-perennial

The sequel to the bestselling Silvertown, which tells the story of Aunt Daisy, and all the other Aunt Daisys – the locals of the old East End.
For more than a century, ‘hopping’ was the main event in the East End calendar – an annual expedition of over 200,000 East Enders out to the Kentish countryside to look for casual work picking hops and stripping bines.
Aunt Daisy was one of those day trippers. For her, the train ride from London Bridge to Faversham was a kind of magic that she always passed in a rush of sensation. To be away from the tight hustle of the city and lose herself in the open spaces and pollen mists of the Kentish summer provided her with a succour that would last her through the long winters back in London. Her delicate demeanour had never really suited the smutty terraces of the East End; rather she considered herself a countrywoman who just so happened to be stranded in the city.
Married young and yet not unhappily to Harold Baker, a closet homosexual who would never consummate their union, at some early point she wrote an escape clause into her life that shielded her from her life's difficult realities. It was this resolve, a kind of armour born out by her dreamy nature, that more than anything else marked Aunt Daisy out as an East Ender.
Thoughtful, moving and beautifully rendered, Hopping captures the essence of ordinary family lives often obscured from history during an extraordinary period in London's past. Regardless of era or circumstance, chartering the shift of the East End from a hive of poverty whose dimmed population toiled daily at the docks, to a Blitzed-out community that defiantly rose to confront the brutalities of World War II, through to the gamble and risk emanating from behind the glass and steel towers of today's Canary Wharf, Hopping stands as testament to the true East Ender disposition – an agility of spirit to endure your lot and get by.

Hopping

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Fourth Estate

Xsilvertown Works

A British woman traveling the American Southwest surveying the range of the New Age movement describes meetings with UFOlogists, angels, inner children, and nature worshippers

Motel Nirvana: Dreaming of the New Age in the American Desert

New Age & Spirituality

Picador USA

Pica Books

Charting the real life fate of the East End Crommelin family from the turn of the century to modern times, HOPPING explores the bonds that hold families fast to one another. Depicting a time when people made much of simple pleasures, kept each other's confidences, however unwelcome, and held loyalty to one's own as paramount, it is set against the backdrop of a disappearing East End landscape soon to be erased by war and the all-consuming social change that followed, perfectly capturing the essence of ordinary family lives during an extraordinary period in London's past.

Reference

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Magna Large Print Books

The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic

In 1952, the Canadian government forcibly relocated three dozen Inuit from their flourishing home on the Hudson Bay to the barren, arctic landscape of Ellesmere Island, the most northerly landmass on the planet. Among this group was Josephie Flaherty, the unrecognized, half-Inuit son of filmmaker Robert Flaherty, director of Nanook of the North. In a narrative rich with human drama, Melanie McGrath follows three generations of the Flaherty family—Robert, Josephie, and Josephie's daughters—to bring this extraordinary tale of deception and harsh deprivation to life.

Vintage

SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWN, THE ANDRÉ SIMON FOOD BOOK AWARDS AND THE FORTNUM &amp; MASON BOOK AWARDS
'Filled with hearty goodness and packed together with care, this will go down a treat' Evening Standard 'Rich and compelling' Spectator 'Extraordinary and very moving' Julian Fellowes 'Beautifully written, carefully researched, wonderfully told' Danny Wallace
The fascinating history of an iconic East End institution from the bestselling author of Silvertown, Melanie McGrath. 
G Kelly's Pie and Mash has been run by the same family in the Roman Road in Bow for nearly a hundred years; an East End institution and the still point of a turning world. Outside its windows the Roman Road has seen an extraordinary revolution - from women's liberation and industrialisation to wars and immigration - and yet at its heart it remains one of the last traditional market roads of London.
Pie and Mash down the Roman Road is the biography of that shop and of the people - customers, suppliers, employees, owners - who passed through it, and continue to do so. Through vivid tales of ordinary lives the book tells the extraordinary story of the community living around the oldest trading route in Britain, and the true heart of the East End.
'Draws you right into the heart of the vibrant East End community' Rosie Hendry 'Pacy and breath-taking . . . I loved every word' Carol Rivers

Pie and Mash Down the Roman Road: 100 years of love and life in one East End market

Europe

Two Roads

SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWN 2018 AND THE ANDRÉ SIMON FOOD BOOK AWARDS 2019 'Filled with hearty goodness and packed together with care, this will go down a treat' Evening Standard 'Rich and compelling' Spectator 'An accomplished social history ... lively and absorbing' Who Do You Think You Are? The fascinating history of an iconic East End institution from the bestselling author of Silvertown, Melanie McGrath. G Kelly's Pie and Mash has been run by the same family in the Roman Road in Bow for nearly a hundred years; an East End institution and the still point of a turning world. Outside its windows the Roman Road has seen an extraordinary revolution - from women's liberation and industrialisation to wars and immigration - and yet at its heart it remains one of the last traditional market roads of London. Pie and Mash down the Roman Road is the biography of that shop and of the people - customers, suppliers, employees, owners - who passed through it, and continue to do so. Through vivid tales of ordinary lives the book tells the extraordinary story of the community living around the oldest trading route in Britain, and the true heart of the East End.

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