Holding Her Breath by Eimear Ryan

Holding Her Breath by Eimear RyanA young woman comes of age in the shadow of her family's tragic pastWhen Beth Crowe starts university, she is shadowed by the ghost of her potential as a competitive swimmer. Free to create a fresh identity for herself, she finds herself among people who adore the poetry of her grandfather, Benjamin Crowe, who died tragically before she was born. She embarks on a secret relationship and on a quest to discover the truth about Benjamin and his widow,

a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia

A consoling essay on how to deal with the (inevitable) sorrows of love

that led the Empire State Building to be constructed in barely a year - and how the same techniques brought a quiet English debutante to become an acclaimed jungle guerrilla fighter

the habitants

And for most of modern history

But no job

bravery and the incredible world of birds

These short fictions are allegories

the African-American mathematician who calculated the trajectory of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon

Chrissie Quinn

and the Roman temperament

Natural History Museum