Airs Above the Ground is a novel by Mary Stewart, first published in 1965. The title derives from Classical dressage, in particular, the graceful Airs Above the Ground, the haute ecole movements for which special breeds of horses, in particular Lippizans, are highly trained. These trained moves were once used by the horse to aid mounted soldiers in battle.
Mary Stewart is known for raising the genre of romantic suspense novels to a higher and more educated level with a new kind (for the time) of intelligent heroine. [1] [ better source needed ] [2] Airs Above the Ground is a romantic murder mystery which takes place in Austria. Central to the story is a horse from the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, which the author wrote with the permission of the Director, Colonel Alois Podhajsky, for not only the use of the school, but of himself in the story. [3] The story evokes the vivid and accurate sense of location, for which the author is well-known and beloved. [4] The author, in an interview years later, tells of hearing the story of a horse who was tethered in a field, and the horse, upon hearing a song on a nearby car radio, started all on its own to do a dance it must have been trained for. This haunting story was the seed around which this novel was built. [5]
Vanessa March is married to Lewis, who works for the Sales Department of Pan-European Chemicals.
Having tea with her mother's schoolfriend Carmel Lacy at Harrods, she learns that Lewis, whom she believes to be in Stockholm on business, appears in a newsreel story about a circus fire in Austria. Carmel, assuming Vanessa will be joining Lewis in Austria, asks her to accompany her seventeen-year-old son Timothy, who wants to visit his divorced father in Vienna.
Seeing the newsreel for herself, Vanessa sees Lewis in Austria — with his arm around a blonde girl. When she receives a message from Lewis postmarked Stockholm, Vanessa immediately agrees to travel to Austria, unaware that by doing so she is endangering her husband and herself.
The story is set against a backdrop of circus life, stolen goods, international smuggling, and an old mystery involving the disappearance of a famed Lipizzaner stallion and his groom.
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Alice Pleasance Hargreaves was an English woman who, in her childhood, was an acquaintance and photography subject of Lewis Carroll. One of the stories he told her during a boating trip became the classic 1865 children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She shared her name with "Alice", the story's heroine, but scholars disagree about the extent to which the character was based upon her.
Elisabeth, nicknamed Sisi, was Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary from her marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph I on 24 April 1854 until her assassination in 1898.
Murder on the Orient Express is a work of detective fiction by English writer Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934. In the United States, it was published on 28 February 1934, under the title of Murder in the Calais Coach, by Dodd, Mead and Company. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.
Julia is a 1977 American WWII drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann, from a screenplay by Alvin Sargent. It is based on a chapter from Lillian Hellman's 1973 book Pentimento about the author's relationship with a lifelong friend, Julia, who fought against the Nazis in the years prior to World War II. The film stars Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook, Rosemary Murphy, Maximilian Schell, and Meryl Streep in her film debut.
Mary, Lady Stewart was a British novelist who developed the romantic mystery genre, featuring smart, adventurous heroines who could hold their own in dangerous situations. She also wrote children's books and poetry, but may be best known for her Merlin series, which straddles the boundary between the historical novel and fantasy.
The Hartford circus fire, which occurred on July 6, 1944, in Hartford, Connecticut, was one of the worst fire disasters in United States history. The fire occurred during an afternoon performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus that was attended by 6,000 to 8,000 people. The fire killed at least 167 people, and more than 700 were injured. It was the deadliest disaster ever recorded in Connecticut.
Susan Pevensie is a fictional character in C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. Susan is the elder sister and the second eldest Pevensie child. She appears in three of the seven books—as a child in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, and as an adult in The Horse and His Boy. She is also mentioned in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Last Battle. During her reign at the Narnian capital of Cair Paravel, she is known as Queen Susan the Gentle or Queen Susan of the Horn. She was the only Pevensie that survived the train crash on Earth which sent the others to Narnia after The Last Battle.
Hedvig Antoinette Isabella Eleonore Jensen, better known by her stage name Elvira Madigan, was a circus performer who performed as a slack rope dancer, artistic rider, juggler and dancer. She is best known today for her romantic relationship with the Swedish nobleman and cavalry officer Sixten Sparre. Their joint death caused great sensation and the event was described in song by, among others, the author Johan Lindström Saxon in a song beginning "Sad things happen", which gained great popularity.
Mary, also known as "Murderous Mary", was a five-ton Asian elephant who performed in the Sparks World Famous Shows circus. After killing circus employee Walter “Red” Eldridge on his second day as her handler in September 1916, in Kingsport, Tennessee, she was hanged in nearby Erwin.
Mary Christianna Lewis, known professionally as Christianna Brand, was a British crime writer and children's author born in British Malaya.
Touch Not the Cat is a novel by Mary Stewart.
Agatha Christie's Marple is a British ITV television programme loosely based on the books and short stories by British crime novelist Agatha Christie. The title character was played by Geraldine McEwan from the first to the third series, until her retirement from the role, and by Julia McKenzie from the fourth series onwards. Unlike the counterpart TV series Agatha Christie's Poirot, the show took many liberties with Christie’s works, most notably adding Miss Marple’s character to the adaptations of novels in which she never appeared. Following the conclusion of the sixth series, the BBC acquired the rights for the production of Agatha Christie adaptations, suggesting that ITV would be unable to make a seventh series of Marple.
Lillian Stewart Carl is an American author of mystery, fantasy and science-fiction novels.
Anthea Mary Fraser is a British novelist, known for her mystery thrillers. Her mother was a published novelist and Anthea began composing poems and stories before she could write. At the age of five she announced that she wanted to be an author. However, despite having been a prolific writer in school, she did not become a professional writer until after her two daughters were born.
Wildfire at Midnight is a novel by Mary Stewart which was first published in 1956. Stewart herself described the book as "an attempt at something different, the classic closed-room detective story with restricted action, a biggish cast, and a closely circular plot".
The Ivy Tree is a novel of romantic suspense by English author Mary Stewart. Her sixth novel, it was published in 1961 in Britain by Hodder & Stoughton and in 1962 in the United States by William Morrow. As usual with the author, the novel is narrated in first person by a bold and intelligent young woman, and the setting is picturesque - in this case, Northumberland.
Alice L. MacGowan was an American writer. She and her sister Grace MacGowan Cooke wrote over 30 novels, about a hundred short stories, and some poetry. Alice produced several best sellers, including Two by Two, that was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and was published in 1922 in New York under the title The Million Dollar Suitcase.
Beverly Jenkins is an American author of historical and contemporary romance novels with a particular focus on 19th century African-American life. Jenkins was a 2013 NAACP Image Award nominee and, in 1999, was voted one of the Top 50 Favorite African-American writers of the 20th century by the African American Literature Book Club. Jenkins's historical romances are set during a period of African-American history that she believes is often overlooked. This made it difficult to break into publishing because publishers weren't sure what to do with stories that involved African-Americans but not slavery.
Julya Rabinowich (Russian: Юля Борисовна Рабинович; born 1970 in Leningrad, is an Austrian author, playwright, painter and translator. In 1977 her family emigrated to Vienna, a move in which she describes herself as having been “uprooted and re-potted.”
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