If Houses Could Talk

Descriptions of around twenty American homes, including Auldbrass Plantation near Yemessee, South Carolina.

From the Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and BBC Television series including Lucy Worsley: Mozart's London Odyssey and Six Wives with Lucy Worsley, available on Netflix. “Worsley is a thoughtful, charming, often hilarious guide to life as it was lived, from the mundane to the esoteric.” -The Boston Globe Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two “dirty centuries”? Why, for centuries, did rich people fear fruit? In her brilliantly and creatively researched book, Lucy Worsley takes us through the bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen, covering the history of each room and exploring what people actually did in bed, in the bath, at the table, and at the stove-from sauce stirring to breast-feeding, teeth cleaning to masturbating, getting dressed to getting married-providing a compelling account of how the four rooms of the home have evolved from medieval times to today, charting revolutionary changes in society.

Valerie Green and Lynn Gordon-Findlay have put their ears to the walls of Vancouver Island's historic homes and transcribed the whispered secrets of bygone days when folk of every description left their echoes in the buildings where they lived, worked, played, and died. If the walls of a venerable mansion could speak, what stories would it tell? How about that rustic shack farther down the road? In her first book, If These Walls Could Talk,Valerie Green explored 50 heritage homes in the Greater Victoria area. In this second volume, she ranges further afield, covering Greater Victoria and Southern Vancouver Island, Duncan and the Cowichan Valley, Nanaimo, Port Alberni, Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Courtney and District, and Campbell River and the North Island, including homes in Telegraph Cove and Port McNeill. Each home tells of a way of life long past, of people who dwelt within its walls, when and how it was built, or how it is historically significant. Once again, Valerie's text is complemented by architectural artist Lynn Gordon-Findlay's exquisite drawings.

Bartlesville, Oklahoma has been extremely fortunate to have fostered many historians over the past 100 years. These pioneers have documented memorable events and activities of early history, citizens and their families. A significant amount of research has been done to compile the stories and information presented in this volume.

Melanie Turner has made quite a name for herself remodeling historic houses in the San Francisco Bay Area. But more than her reputation is on the line in the first novel in the New York Times bestselling Haunted Home Renovation Mystery series. At her newest renovation project, a run-down Pacific Heights mansion, Mel is visited by the ghost of a colleague who recently met a bad end with power tools. Mel hopes that by tracking down the killer, she can rid herself of the ghostly presence of the murdered man. Mel’s only clue is an odd box she discovers inside a wall at the job site. If she can make sense of its mysterious contents, she might be able to nail a killer—before she herself becomes the next construction casualty...

A behind the scenes perspective on Boston Celtics history from two-time champion Cedric Maxwell Having won two NBA titles with the Celtics before joining the broadcasting team as a radio analyst, Cedric Maxwell knows what it means to live and breathe Celtics basketball. In If These Walls Could Talk: Boston Celtics, Maxwell opens up about his life and career and provides insight into the team's inner sanctum as only he can, from Larry Bird to the Big Three era and up to the current roster. Featuring conversations with players and coaches past and present as well as off-the-wall anecdotes only Maxwell can tell, this indispensable volume is your ticket to Celtics history.

Long before designing his signature Usonian houses, Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned an earlier series of affordable models for the middle class: The American System-Built Homes. He developed seven floorplans of varying size and layout, standardized so that materials could be precut at the factory to reduce costs. Only a few years after the project began, the United States entered World War I, and all home construction was stalled due to lumber shortages. Wright then turned his attention to other projects, and with fewer than twenty built, the American System-Built Homes were all but forgotten.In 2011, Jason Loper and Michael Schreiber purchased the only American System-Built Home constructed in Iowa, the Meier House, which set them on a course of refurbishing and researching their new residence. In This American House, Loper and Schreiber trace the history of the Meier House through its previous owners, and shed light on this underexplored period of Wright's oeuvre. With a preface by John H. Waters, the Preservation Programs Manager of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, This American House addresses what it means to be the stewards of a piece of history.

If Olive Trees Could Talk is a glimpse into a fellow traveler's journey with Jesus. Good times and some not so good, but in both the good and not so good, you will see His hand. It is about the companionship of God. The stories will touch your heart and jog your memory to see His hand on your life. Everyone has a story to tell because He lives!

Grasses describe the important jobs that they do, from feeding animals and grain harvesting to making reed furniture and beautifying gardens.

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.