Earn It! by Cinders McLeod This is the perfect gift for young readers on your list, because it’s never too soon to learn financial literacy. Knowing how money works, and having the skills to make informed decisions about personal money matters, is said to be a concept best started early. […]
Bridge, by Robert Thomas “Welcome to the prayer-strewn pews of my brain,” Alice, the narrator of Bridge tells us, and quickly, we understand that this intellectually gifted young woman sees the world, and herself, in unconventional, and often dangerous ways. Robert Thomas’s powerful debut novel (BOA Editions 2014) takes place […]
Mecha Samurai Empire Peter Tieryas Ace/Penguin Random House Release Date: September 18, 2018 (USA) ISBN 9780451490995 Mac is a teenager living in Los Angeles in 1994 whose greatest desire is to become a pilot. But his test grades are mediocre, he’s not in the best of shape, and he’s a […]
Earn It! by Cinders McLeod (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2017) Teaching children financial literacy—knowing how money works and having the skills to make informed decisions about personal money matters—is said to be a concept best started early. The financial wisdom runs that parents should introduce the subject when children are young, […]
The City of Lost Fortunes A Crescent City novel Bryan Camp Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Release Date: April 17, 2018 ISBN 978-13-2881-079-3 Every year, a crop of new books come out, with imaginative plots and memorable characters, deftly written and wonderfully wrought. A very few rise to become exceptional. The City […]
The ‘Burg Series Kristen Ashley Titles: For You, At Peace, Golden Trail, Games of the Heart, The Promise Hold On Kristen Ashley sets her ‘Burg series in a town she knows well–Brownsburg, Indiana, the author’s hometown. But the characters in the series led very different lives than that of the talent writer. The six-book […]
And There was Evening And There Was Morning, Essays on Illness, Loss, and Love, by Mike Smith (WTAW Press) “Mourning,” Hilary Mantel wrote, “is work. It is not simply being sad. It is naming your pain. It is witnessing the sorrow of others, drawing out the shape of loss.” Who […]
The Buried Giant Kazuo Ishiguro Alfred A. Knopf Release Date: March 3, 2015 ISBN 978-0-307-27103-7 It’s the dusk of Arthurian England; an uneasy peace lies over the land. Britons Axl and Beatrice, an elderly couple, leave their village to travel to the town where they believe their estranged son lives. […]
Raven Stratagem (Machineries of Empire, Book 2) Yoon Ha Lee Solaris Release Date: June 13, 2017 ISBN 978-1-78108-537-0 In 2016, Yoon Ha Lee’s debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, burst on the scene and established itself as the newest entry in the trend towards imaginative, complex, norm-bending science fiction (think Ann Leckie’s […]
The City & the City China Miéville Del Rey Release Date: May 26, 2009 ISBN 978-0-345-49751-2 I enjoy exploring literary works whose titles have been short-listed for awards in my preferred genre; the Hugos and the Nebulas, the World Fantasy Awards. Doing so has led me to many talented authors […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.