A patron thought City of Thieves was a “good read.” “During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an…
About The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, the patron said: “This book is truly remarkable. It is hard to describe, but it was just so magical and moving.” “When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a…
A patron recently returned the two books below and said: “These were both really good.” The Paris Orphan – Natasha Lester “New York City/Paris, 1942: When American model Jessica May arrives in Europe to cover the war as a photojournalist for Vogue, most of the soldiers are determined to make her life as difficult as…
“So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason – to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?” To be honest, had it not been a book club selection I probably would have never heard about Christina Baker Kline’s novel Orphan Train. Despite this novel being extremely decorated…
“It the first day of November and so today, some will die.” Maggie Stiefvater’s The Scorpio Races takes you to the small island village of Thisby. Despite Thisby’s rolling hills and picture-perfect coast, this is a place haunted by tragedy. Creatures known as water horses are vicious beings who emerge from the sea on the…
I will be the first to admit the title of This Is How You Lose The Time War was what originally drew to this book. Why yes I do want to learn how to lose a time war (although I probably could without much help). Turns out there is a fantastic book hiding under that…
“Obstetrician Dr. Sophie Savard returns home to the achingly familiar rhythms of Manhattan in the early spring of 1884 to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. With the help of Dr. Anna Savard, her dearest friend, cousin, and fellow physician she plans to continue her work aiding the disadvantaged women society would…
“Here is a thing everyone wants: A miracle. Here is a thing everyone fears: What it takes to get one.” Maggie Stiefvater’s standalone novel All the Crooked Saints is a story of family, darkness, miracles…and the occasional owl. Bicho Raro, Colorado is a mysterious, small desert community that is home to the Soria Family. The…
“Before he became a household name in America as perhaps our greatest hard-boiled crime writer, before his attachment to Lillian Hellman and blacklisting during the McCarthy era, and his subsequent downward spiral, Dashiell Hammett led a life of action. Based on original research across the country, The Lost Detective is the first book to illuminate…
When it comes to being social, Athena Graves is far more comfortable creating a mix tape than she is talking to cute boys—or anyone, for that matter—and her staunchly feminist views and love of punk rock aren’t exactly mainstream at her conservative Catholic high school. Then a malicious rumor that her popular, pretty, pro-life sister…
1983: a time of technological advances, great movies, music, and art. 1983: a time of terror, death, ignorance, and homophobia. For many, like Michael Bartolomeo and his best friend James, being gay means watching those around you die from AIDS while the world condemns you for who you love. Set in New York City, Helene…
Over the summer I did a deep dive into research on the Italian Renaissance focusing on business, government and warfare. Two caveats before I get started though: 1) Several of these books will be hard to find unless you use our ILL Department. They are small print runs from academic presses so they are usually…
“Former CIA case officer Charles Jenkins is a man at a crossroads: in his early sixties, he has a family, a new baby on the way, and a security consulting business on the brink of bankruptcy. Then his former bureau chief shows up at his house with a risky new assignment: travel undercover to Moscow…
“Charlotte Runcie has always felt pulled to the sea, lured by its soothing, calming qualities but also enlivened and inspired by its salty wildness. When she loses her beloved grandmother, and becomes pregnant with her first child, she feels its pull even more intensely. In Salt On Your Tongue, a mixture of memoir, social history,…
“After an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico destroys three oil rigs trying to revive a dying field, Kurt Austin and the NUMA (National Underwater and Marine Agency) Special Projects Team are tapped by the President of the United States to find out what’s gone wrong. The trail leads them to a brilliant billionaire in…
Teaching children how to be kind friends, how to see things through a growth mindset, how to cope with anger and sadness, and simply how to manage the highs and lows of life is perhaps just as important as teaching children how to add and subtract or sing the alphabet song. Within the past few…
“New York, 1879: An epic blizzard descends on Albany, devastating the city. When the snow finally settles, two newly orphaned girls are missing. Determined not to give up hope, Dr. Mary Sutter, a former Civil War surgeon, searches for the two sisters. When what happened to them is finally revealed, Dr. Sutter must fight the most…
Not many of us will ever experience the pressure that comes from being in the public eye. We won’t have to go through life wondering if the paparazzi is waiting around the corner to catch us buying something embarrassing, or waiting to snap a picture of something that might cause a scandal. For most, we…
A lot of folks have a very set view of Howard Stern. Now 65, he’s in a new phase of his life and while he still maintains some of his outrageous (some might say offensive) traits, he is one of the most successful interviewers in broadcasting. In this book, he shares the best of the…
“Six days ago, Joe Lynch was a happily married man, a devoted father, and a respected teacher living in a well-to-do London suburb. But that was before he spotted his wife’s car entering a hotel parking garage. Before he saw her in a heated argument with her best friend’s husband. Before Joe confronted the other…
Before William Adams (immortalized as John Blackthorn in James Clavel’s novel Shogun) became the first English samurai in the early 1600s there was Yasuke. Yasuke was an African slave/mercenary who ultimately become a samurai and served as a retainer of Ode Nobunaga a Japanese warlord from the Waring States period of Japanese history. Lockley’s African…
Growing up I loved to read books that let me immerse myself in imaginary words. From Hogwarts to Middle-Earth to Narnia, there was simply something magical about escaping reality and diving into the pages of a great book. While in college, I strayed away from reading fantasy novels and instead traded in my enjoyment reading…
The Figaro Trilogy caught my eye when I was doing some browsing in the Comcat Catalog about music/operas and I came across this title. Beaumarchais’s book discusses the history and social background of the 18th century world behind the plays: The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, and The Guilty Mother. I never knew…
“London, 1880. “I’m dreadfully afraid someone is threatening to kill my wife …” When accounts clerk Ernest Stibbins approaches the World’s End investigation bureau with wild claims that his wife Albertina has been warned by her spirit guides that someone is out to harm her, the bureau’s owner Lily Raynor and her new employee Felix…
“For centuries, the kingdom of Iraden has been protected by the god known as the Raven. He watches over his territory from atop a tower in the powerful port of Vastai. His will is enacted through the Raven’s Lease, a human ruler chosen by the god himself. His magic is sustained by the blood sacrifice…
“Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In“Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a two thousand year old girl that he’s extracted from…
When I was in college I worked in a meat packing plant. There was a little old Vietnamese lady who worked on the same line as I did doing odd jobs. One day in February she handed me an ornate red envelope. Inside the envelope was a two dollar bill. I looked at her rather…
This new account of the 1893 Trial of Lizzie Borden, accused and acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother in the home the family shared in 1892, is packed with facts and photographs the author uncovered during the course of her research, much of which draws on the collections of the archives in Fall River.…
Life doesn’t always give us what we want, but it often gives us what we need without our realization that what we need might be right in front of our faces. For Max that might mean Coq au Vinny, a failing food truck, run by Jordan and his melodramatic mother, Lydia. And Max might be…
I’m reading To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. Willis is an incredible science fiction author, best known for Blackout/All Clear, a two-part novel about Oxford historians who travel back in time to observe (and not alter) historical events. They go back to World War II London. They’re amazing and stressful, and Willis…
I quite literally found this book by accident. I had an appointment at a local Minute Clinic to see about a persistent cough I had (turns out it was bronchitis) but was a little early. I ducked into a bookstore to kill sometime and the first book I laid eyes on was Lucy Ribchester’s Hourglass…
Raptus “Everywhere, a forceful, scrupulous intelligence is active- a luminous diction, a range of cadences.” So has Mark Strand written of the work of Joanna Klink, who has won acclaim for elegant, sensual, and musical poems that “remain alert to the reparations of beauty and song” (Dean Young). The linked poems in Klink’s third collection, Raptus,…
In our Today In History Reading List feature, we take the events of a particular day in history and try to give you a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction relating to those events. 1616 – Sir Walter Raleigh Freed From The Tower Of London Famous as an explorer Raleigh was also a…
“In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was…
On the night of October 30, 1938, thousands of Americans panicked when they believed that Martians had invaded Earth. What appeared to be breaking news about an alien invasion was in fact a radio drama based on H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, performed by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre players. Some listeners became…
I have a love/hate relationship with biographies and memoirs. On the one hand they are the natural adjunct to reading history. My problem is (and I fully acknowledge this an unfair and possibly self-defeating) I only really care about the parts of the subjects life that occurred during the events that made them worthy of…
I tend to think of myself as an ambidextrous history buff. They say that history buffs either like big sweeping histories of political events and wars or they like the from the ground up histories of down trodden and, typically, unseen figures in history. I like both and I think that is in large part…
London, 1947: Besieged by the harshest winter in living memory, burdened by onerous shortages and rationing, the people of postwar Britain are enduring lives of quiet desperation despite their nation’s recent victory. Among them are Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, embroiderers at the famed Mayfair fashion house of Norman Hartnell. Together they forge an unlikely friendship, but their nascent hopes…
I just finished The Bees by Laline Paull, which was mesmerizing. I keep seeing it described as a fantasy novel, but I think that term doesn’t quite cut it. Magical realism might be better. It’s the story of a bee from the lowest caste in a rigid hive society who finds herself involved in different…
However long ago it was that I first came across word of Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree, it was right then I determined to read it immediately upon its release (Feb 26, for the curious). With less than a week to go, Shannon has an essay up on Boundless that looks at…
“Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries—beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures…
I just recently discovered (and by discovered I mean a friend told me about them) the author Crystal King who writes cooking based historical fiction. Given that food and historical fiction are two of my favorite things I can’t wait to start these books. Also the covers are gorgeous. Feast of Sorrow: A Novel of…
Late last year the librarians of NOBLE came together to vote on their favorite books of 2018. Here are the winners by category. You can view the runners-up and the sort-list at NOBLE Book Awards 2018. Adult Fiction Finn, A. J. The woman in the window : a novel It isn’t paranoia if it’s really…
George Washington Black, or “Wash,” an eleven-year-old field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is terrified to be chosen by his master’s brother as his manservant. To his surprise, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can…
In How the Internet Happened, Brian McCullough chronicles the birth of the internet era for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in the early nineties and ending with the introduction of the iPhone fifteen years later. Depicting the lives of now-famous innovators like Netscape’s Marc Andreessen and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, McCullough reveals surprising…
I’m reading How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery. It’s a memoir told through experiences with 13 different animals that impacted Montgomery’s life. Montgomery is best known for The Soul of an Octopus, which is on my TBR. ~ Alex Lent
Ever wanted to be king? Yeah don’t it kind of sucks. At least that’s the feeling I got from The Restless Kings On the other hand if you are curious what its like being a king in the 12th century this is the book for you. This book traces the events of Henry II from…
I’m rereading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi books. It follows a character who isn’t able to discern gender and so the narrative doesn’t give many clues to the genders of the characters. At first this is somewhat confusing, but then it becomes clear that it doesn’t really…
When I was in high school I was an absolute World War II aircraft nut. I could identify all the planes. I knew all their specifications. I knew the exact course of the air war in Europe and the Pacific. It got so obsessive that my teachers worried that I wasn’t reading anything else. Then…
In our Today In History Reading List feature, we take the events of a particular day in history and try to give you a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction relating to those events. 1571 Royal Exchange Opens in London The Royal Exchange of London was based loosely on a similar institution in…
Today I’m honoring Katherine Kellgren, a renowned actress who voice acted more than 250 audiobooks. This month is the anniversary of her passing from a long battle with cancer that ended on 10 January, 2018. Kellgren is one of my all-time favourite audiobook performers; her voice acting brings characters to life like no other, and…
Here is another book I read over my vacation. The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez is another series by Ann Swinfen. Unlike the Booksellers Tales this one is set in Elizabethan London. Sadly it isn’t available in the NOBLE system but we can probably get it through ILL so just ask. Christoval Alvarez has way…
I am a big fan of Adriana Trigiani’s books. When I came across this book at the library I had to read it this one to add to my list of books to read by her. The book is set in late 1940’s South Philadelphia after World War II. The main character Nicky Castone is…
“Through the lens of Kelly Link’s vivid imagination, nothing is what it seems, and everything deserves a second look. From the multiple award- winning “The Faery Handbag,” in which a teenager’s grandmother carries an entire village (or is it a man-eating dog?) in her handbag, to the near-future of “The Surfer,” whose narrator (a soccer-playing…
You may remember my reading plans for my holiday vacation which I outlined in Jim’s Long Winters Nap Book List. As I suggested there it was an aspirational plan but one that I was somewhat successful in. Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants was one of those successes.This is a short book. Only about…
I finished They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera four days ago, but the ending of this novel and the entire plot that surrounds the characters has been weighing heavily on my mind since then. When one decides to read a book with such an ominous sounding title, one might expect the ending…
Dear readers, My name is Søren, and I’m a new reviewer/recommender for the Read This blog! I mostly read YA books in accessible formats like audiobooks, so know that almost all the books I review will be available in audio CD or digital audio format from MA public libraries. I’m going to start off my…
There are some people who believe that the universe sets plans in motion for a reason, and some that are cynical enough to believe that the universe is against them. Arthur is only in NYC for the summer, so looking for love would be a waste of his time, right? Ben has been cheated on…
A New Year And New History Books To Enjoy In It. Here are a few of the history books coming out in the new year that we are looking forward to. Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman. by Robert Hardman On today’s world stage, there is one leader who stands apart from…
In our Today In History Reading List feature, we take the events of a particular day in history and try to give you a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction relating to those events. 1154 Henry II of England Crowned King In Westminster Abbey Henry was the son of Matilda the daughter of…
The first two of the following titles are on top of the pile so that I can discuss them with sixth graders at the middle school (or, barring that, as a potential summer reading option). Foxheart – Claire LeGrand Twelve-year-old Quicksilver dreams of becoming the greatest thief in the Star Lands. With her faithful dog…
It is that time of year when I take a long vacation (i.e. for the rest of the year). This year I thought I would give you a list of books I’m planning on reading. The key part of that last sentence was “planning.” This list is entirely aspirational and many if not most will…
Charles Emmerson’s 1913 is a book I’ve been meaning to read since it came out in 2013. What drew me to it was actually my enjoyment of The Proud Tower by Barbara W Tuchman. You might remember Tuchman for Guns of August about the opening couple of months of World War I (Guns of August…
If you are a fan of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley I highly recommend reading the book Pride and Prometheus by John Kessel. Kessel combines the novels Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein that sparked my interest in coming across this book. I was curious to see how the two books combined would play out. Kessel uses Mary Bennett…
I just listened to Good Clean Fun by Nick Offerman, which is a memoir? a how-to-book? a satire? After enjoying Ruth Reichl’s My Kitchen Year (a cookbook? a memoir? a tell-all?), I thought I’d give this a try, but it wasn’t really for me. I’m currently listening to The Cleaner, by Brett Battles, a thriller…
A small sample of the many new history book titles arriving at the library soon How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England: A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves, and Braggarts by Ruth Goodman Every age and social strata has its bad eggs, rule-breakers, and nose-thumbers. As acclaimed popular historian and author of How…
So what do you think of when you think of the Crimean War (assuming you think anything)? Charge of the Light Light Brigade or Florence Nightingale? Those are some of the only iconic images left from the war. Orlando Figes’ Crimean War is, not surprisingly, a much deeper dive. I’ve read a couple of Figes…
mood board noun an arrangement of images, materials, pieces of text, etc., intended to evoke or project a particular style or concept. The Wee Free Men The Wee Free Men – Terry Pratchett “The first in a series of Discworld novels starring the young witch Tiffany Aching. A nightmarish danger threatens from the other side…
In our Today In History Reading List feature, we take the events of a particular day in history and try to give you a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction relating to those events. 1386 Tamerlane Sacks Tblisi Tamerlane, aka Timur, was the Turkic Emir of Samarkand who conquered much of Central Asia…
I have to say I can’t actually remember how I stumbled on this book. I may have been trolling the internet for historical fiction and found it that way. At any rate I ended up with this rather esoteric work of historical fiction that I loved. Sadly we don’t have a copy of The Bookseller’s…
I’m almost done with When by Daniel H. Pink, which is about effective timing. Certain types of work are more effective at certain times of day. Being aware of this face and of our individual “chronotypes” (per wikipedia: “a chronotype is the behavioral manifestation of underlying circadian rhythms of myriad physical processes. A person’s chronotype…
I’ve always been rather suspicious of stories that claim to be about something that was “forgotten.” Usually “forgotten” really means “not heard of by a lot of people because they didn’t really care until the book came along.” The Forgotten 500 falls into that category but its a story that was buried pretty far down.…
I’m listening to My Kitchen Year by Ruth Reichl, read by the author. Ms. Reichl was the last Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet and this book is her recipe-laden memoir of the year after the magazine shut down. It’s your standard food-related memoir, but because it has very short chapters, it zips right along. It’s odd to…
You may remember me mentioning Elsa Hart’s City of Ink a couple of months ago when I was reading the next installment of her Li Du Mystery series The White Mirror. City of Ink is the third book in the series and one that I approached with a little trepidation. What drew me to the…
In the wake of a scandal, the Montrose family and their three daughters—Catherine, Lydia, and Emeline—flee Boston for their new country home, Willow Hall. The estate seems sleepy and idyllic, but a subtle menace creeps into the atmosphere, remnants of a dark history that call to both Lydia and Emeline. All three daughters will be…
A small sample of the many new history book titles arriving at the library soon Beirut Rules: The Murder of a CIA Station Chief and Hezbollah’s War Against America. By Fred Burton. On April 18th, 1983, a van rigged with 2,000 pounds of heavy explosives broke through the security perimeter of the American embassy in…
In our Today In History Reading List feature, we take the events of a particular day in history and try to give you a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction relating to those events. 1360 – Treaty of Brétigny Ratified The Treaty of Brétigny marks the end of the early phase of the…
Unless you are a close follower of Spanish history you may not be aware that prior to modern times there technically was no such thing as Spain. Originally the concept of Spain was just the region of Hispania, the Roman province on the Iberian peninsula. Even during the early modern period the people we think…
In the annals of art theft, no case has matched―for sheer criminal panache―the heist at Ireland’s Russborough House in 1986. The Irish police knew right away that the mastermind was a Dublin gangster named Martin Cahill. Yet the great plunder ―including a Gainsborough, a Goya, two Rubenses, and a Vermeer― remained at large for years.…
If you have read any Roman history or historical fiction it probably falls into two categories. Its set in the very late Republic and involves Pompey and Caesar and Octavian and Anthony duking it out over who’s going to control Rome. The other is set much later at the imperial period and involves the coming…
Like most Americans, I got my knowledge about the mob in Cuba from watching The Godfather Part 2. Havana Nocturne was actually a book I picked up out of my interest in the Cold War but I learned quite a bit more from it than that. As the name suggests this is the parallel stories…
Whoa whoa whoa whoa. You’re looking for something that just might fill that Peter Kavinsky-sized hole you can’t seem to get over after watching To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before roughly a gazillion times? Those are some big Converses to fill, but perhaps one of the books on this list will come close. (Maybe?)…
On March 20, 1969, the day after she slipped a color-coded piece of paper into an on-campus mailbox designated for ride sharing requests, University of Michigan student Jane Mixer was murdered. Picked up by the man who had replied to her request for a lift back to her hometown, a man she did not know…
For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area. Three decades later, true crime journalist Michelle McNamara was determined to…
In our Today In History Reading List feature, we take the events of a particular day in history and try to give you a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction relating to those events. 1187 Siege of Jerusalem Begins The Kingdom of Jerusalem was established after the First Crusade along with several other…
A small sample of the many new history book titles arriving at the library soon Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin In this culmination of five decades of acclaimed studies in presidential history, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin offers an illuminating exploration of the early development, growth, and exercise of leadership. Are…
The whole idea behind the concept of a Cold War is that there is opposition without war. Now we all know that when they say “without war” they mean we managed to not incinerate ourselves in a global nuclear conflagration. There was plenty of hot war in the Cold War. That is where the argument…
After the success of the Hamilton musical based on Chernow’s biography Alexander Hamilton, it is not surprising that Grant would be a hit. In fact it was such a hit, the History Book Group here at the library picked it for its September book. We will be discussing it September 19 at 7pm. This like…
Getting into the tabletop roleplaying game hobby can feel a little daunting. This is often due to complexity or expense, with some games requiring multiple books and supplemental material. The Peabody Institute of Danvers roleplaying game collection is a fantastic resource for new players. Not only can they try these games for free, but we…
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. opens with a woman setting in a house somewhere in Victorian London. She is taking up her quill to write out the history of the shadowy government organization called D.O.D.O. She is bound and determined that her narrative will destroy that organization. Flash forward to present day Boston where…
In our Today In History Reading List feature, we take the events of a particular day in history and try to give you a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction relating to those events. 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field Bosworth was the last major battle of the Wars of the Roses and the…
The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies — humans with extraordinary abilities — who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone… except the villains they once overthrew. Nova has a reason to…
Anyone who knows me knows that I love food (I also like fancy hotels, but I can rarely afford to stay in them). All kinds of food from seven course French feasts to stuffing my face with hush puppies and soda. There very few things I won’t eat (I’m looking at you cranberries). I can…
“In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France’s Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Packing up his enormous, 35,000‑volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships…
The first thing you learn from Inheritance of Rome is studying the dark ages is hard. The introduction is basically an explanation of why we can’t really know for sure what the dark ages were like. Not only are the sources limited but scholars are carrying around a lot of nationalist and modernist personal baggage that…
Looking for some family friendly entertainment on hot summer nights? The Peabody Institute of Danvers has a selection of animated movies and television shows that appeal to all ages. Gravity Falls: Six Strange Tales Gravity Falls: Even Stranger Gravity Falls: The Complete Series Gravity Falls is one of those rare shows combining light hearted humor…
African American: Before She Was Harriet by Lesa Cline-Ransome In this beautifully illustrated book, Lesa Cline-Ransome tells the inspiring life story of Harriet Tubman. The book reads in reverse-chronological order, starting with Harriet reflecting on her life now that she has grown older. This is a great book for anyone hoping to learn more about…
Wuthering Heights was a tough read for this cynophilist, and I’ve often wondered if I would have enjoyed it more had the dogs in the book not suffered a cruel fate. To this day, having read the book years upon years ago, what sticks in memory most tenaciously is wrapped around dogs – and that Heathcliff…
Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits is the story of a crime wave that gripped Paris and to a lesser extent the rest of France from 1911 to 1912. Although largely unknown today, it sent waves of panic throughout Paris. Headlines about the crime even drove the sinking of the Titanic of the front page of…
In tandem with my reading of White Mirror, I’ve also been listening to Imperial Twilight. I was vaguely aware that there was an Opium War and that it basically amounted to the British declaring war on China to force them to buy drugs from their colony in India. And that is basically what happened but…
In our Today In History Reading List feature, we take the events of a particular day in history and try to give you a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction relating to those events. 306 Constantine I is Declared Emperor of Rome By His Troops. Constantine was born in the Balkans and like…
Do you ever have those times where you really love a book and you think “oh I can’t wait until the next one comes out!” Then life moves on and suddenly you look back and not only have you missed the next one but you missed the next one after that. That’s what happened to…
About Man In An Orange Shirt: “From novelist Patrick Gale, this is a tender, powerful film sure to spark conversation about outdated attitudes and equal rights. Two love stories set 60 years apart are linked by a secret that echoes through generations, from a forbidden relationship impossible during WWII, contrasted with a present-day romance that…
A small sample of the many new history book titles arriving at the library soon Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle over the Greatest Riches in the American West by Gregory Crouch Born in 1831, John W. Mackay was a penniless Irish immigrant who came of age in New York City, went to California during…
Born with the power to kill or resurrect at her slightest touch, Maisie Cothay has spent her childhood sequestered in her family’s manor at the edge of a mysterious forest. Maisie’s father has warned her not to venture into the wood lest she vanish like her female ancestors – but one day he disappears, and…
