Opening in Kenya in 1926 and moving from pre-World War I England to 1999 New York and back again, The Ashford Affair chronicles the life of popular debutante Lady Beatrice (Bea) Gillecote, her cousin, Addie, their loves and their offspring. Bea becomes her six-year-old cousin’s protector and champion when Addie is sent to live with [...]
Journalist Hannah Vogel is in Poland covering the 1938 St. Martin festival when it comes to her attention that thousands of Polish Jews are being deported from Germany. Her reporter instincts kick in and while investigating the death of a deportee she finds herself abducted by SS agents and taken across the border to Berlin. [...]
Ever wonder why lawyers use two words such as “have and hold” or “cease and desist” when one word would do? Or why there is a “b” in debt and a “p” in receipt? Those and other strange quirks of English are explained in The Story of English in 100 Words. From roe (a deer) [...]
Hopefully, Pak Jun Do (phonetically, John Doe) is not the North Korean everyman. From his start in a North Korean orphanage selecting which orphans get food to his stint in the tunnels beneath the DMZ fighting in the dark to kidnapping Japanese citizens to mining uranium in Prison 33 Jun Do manages to survive the [...]
Do you dislike aggression? Enjoy solitude? Are you a good listener? Work best on your own? Think before you speak? You, my friend, could be an introvert. In a world that glorifies the go-get-em, up-and-at-em, hard bargaining, out-going, people-person attitudes, introversion can make even the most well-adjusted feel just a little out of step with [...]
Miss Peregrines home for peculiar children By Ransom Riggs Jacob Portman finds his grandfather murdered. But this is no commonplace murder. Jacob’s grandfather, Abe, spent his life hunting wights, the monsters that prey on Peculiar Children. To find some answers Jacob and his father travel to Wales to visit the home where Abe Portman sheltered [...]
What if you re-wrote great literature condensing the action into chapters of up to 140 characters? Oh wait, that’s a tweet, right? Hence, the fusion of tweets and literature into Twitterature, the creation of University of Chicago dorm mates, Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin. Aciman and Rensin have taken 83 classic and not-so-classic works and [...]
“I was sixteen and I had the confidence then of a teenager who’d had to act like an adult for too long.” Girl In Translation (Jean Kwok, p. 290) In this debut novel, Kimberly Chang and her mother immigrate to New York City from Hong Kong knowing very little English but owing lots of money. To [...]