- August 28, 2020
This book is a wonderfully executed piece of historical fiction.
Maggie O’Farrell creates a family history of William Shakespeare, his wife, and children. Working with very little available factual information, O’Farrell pieces together her imagined version of the world in which Shakespeare lived and worked. In the process, the reader is invited to speculate along with the ...
Read more… - August 21, 2020
Her Last Flight, by Beatriz Williams28 Summers, by Elin Hilderbrandt
For anyone looking for a good beach read during these dog days of summer, two authors of the genre have new releases that might interest you. I recently read Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams and 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand. I loved the former, I ...
Read more… - July 30, 2020
A Curse So Dark and Lonely Brigid Kemmerer
In an instant, Harper’s life changed from one of deadly danger, as lookout for her brother’s nefarious doings, to a life of deadly danger, trapped in a castle with a lethal man-at-arms (Grey) and a monster/prince (Rhen).
Rhen’s father, while he was alive and ruling Emberfall, made the ...
Read more… - July 17, 2020
When my husband and I received this movie as a gift many years ago, it took us a long time to actually watch the film. Once we did, we realized what a lovely gift of a film it was; I just smiled when I saw it among the KANOPY selections. I can’t wait ...
Read more… - July 10, 2020
Nannerl is always the “other child.” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, her little brother (often called Wolferl) is the prodigy. He’s the one who writes sonatas in his sleep. He’s the one showing off and doing tricks to amuse his audience (while Nannerl is required to sit with her eyes downcast after a performance). He’s the cute ...
Read more… - June 25, 2020
Different voices. Different perspectives.
Like a dissonant Greek chorus, the voices in
Deborah Wiles’ work of YA historical fiction, Kent State, rage and argue
in poetic free verse as they narrate the events surrounding the Kent State
University shootings of May 4, 1970. Using a range of fonts to differentiate speakers,
Wiles employs the voices of multiple college students ...
Read more… - June 19, 2020
I was intrigued by the fanfare surrounding the release of Alexis Coe’s biography of George Washington, cheekily titled You Never Forget Your First. It seems that biographers of our first president are almost exclusively men, and that these biographies rely heavily on certain anecdotes about Washington’s virtue that have become canonized as fact. Coe’s biography ...
Read more… - June 12, 2020
If you enjoyed The Hunger Games series, and are looking for a guilty pleasure, look no further. Suzanne Collins has just published the prequel to her best-selling trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
The book is the origin story of Coriolanus Snow, the evil President of Panem, whom the heroine Katniss Everdeen ...
Read more… - May 29, 2020
At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic (and my unexpected hiatus from work) I briefly considered reading a lovely copy of War and Peace I had received as a gift years ago. My powers of concentration and tolerance for frustration were lacking and, sadly, the great novel was returned to the shelf. It seemed that ...
Read more… - May 22, 2020
Snow, Glass, Apples is Neil Gaiman’s chilling take on Snow White, told from the view of the “Evil Queen.” Gaiman originally published it as a short story in his 1998 anthology, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions. He teamed up with illustrator Colleen Doran in 2019 to create a graphic novel version. ...
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