Back to Blog
The cottingley secret5/29/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Frances and Elsie will hide their secret for many decades. But when one of the great novelists of the time, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, becomes convinced of the photographs’ authenticity, the girls become a national sensation, their discovery offering hope to those longing for something to believe in amid a world ravaged by war. ![]() Now, in her newest novel, international bestseller Hazel Gaynor reimagines their story.ġ917… It was inexplicable, impossible, but it had to be true-didn’t it? When two young cousins, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright from Cottingley, England, claim to have photographed fairies at the bottom of the garden, their parents are astonished. The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home turns the clock back one hundred years to a time when two young girls from Cottingley, Yorkshire, convinced the world that they had done the impossible and photographed fairies in their garden. One of BookBub's Most-Anticipated Books of Summer 2017! An artful weaving of old legends with new realities, this tale invites the reader to wonder: could it be true?” - Kate Alcott, New York Times bestselling author of The Dressmaker “The Cottingley Secret tells the tale of two girls who somehow convince the world that magic exists. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Back to Blog
Of woman born by adrienne rich5/29/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() However, when someone occupies a culturally-privileged position (like men or white people do), they have no right to react defensively when someone points out oppression that did in fact happen at the hands of one particular group of people throughout history. I don't blame individual men living today for the crimes of the past, just like I don't blame individual white people living today for slavery. Well, who's been running that vague body, "society," for most of history? Men. Yet what irritates me, "Remorseful," is when people get their hackles up at the first sign of challenge to patriarchy and want to pretend that you can't blame men for anything, and they choose to blame this vague figure "society," so that individual men don't have to feel any sort of responsibility. Personally, I believe in the most basic definition of feminism: "feminism is the radical notion that women are people." It's about equality, not about hating men. ![]()
Back to Blog
Grr martin the winds of winter5/29/2023 ![]() A decade later-and roughly 11 years after Martin mentioned the first chapters ticketed for the penultimate installment of his series- Winds is still vaporware, aside from a smattering of sample chapters released long ago. I hope it doesn’t take me six years like this last one has.” Realistically, it’s going to take me three years to finish the next one at a good pace. Martin, fresh off the announcement of the release date for A Dance With Dragons (the fifth book in his beloved fantasy series), said, “Hopefully, the last two books will go a little bit quicker than this one has, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be quick. This past Tuesday, another milestone passed mostly unobserved: the 10th anniversary of the publication of an interview in which author George R.R. This Saturday will mark the 10th anniversary of the airing of the first episode of Game of Thrones. ![]() On Wednesday morning, HBO’s official Game of Thrones Twitter account cryptically tweeted, “Winter is coming.” And as soon as they saw it, countless A Song of Ice and Fire fans, burned by years of false rumors and misleading potential teasers for The Winds of Winter, thought, “No, it’s not.” ![]()
Back to Blog
Patchwork by Ellen Banda-Aaku5/29/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() In a first person narration, Patchwork is a poignant tale set in Zambia in the 1970s – 80s in which, the protagonist, 9 year old Pumpkin is an unwilling accomplice in her mother’s alcoholism, hiding her empty bottles, mopping up her vomit and heaving her unconscious weight into bed night after night. I read it again for this review and was still enthralled by its brilliant but simple crafting of sentences that together form a very emotive tale. I bought the book while waiting for a flight to someplace and for the first time, wished my flight would be delayed or that we would have some kind of detour up in the air I didn’t want to put the book down. I read Patchwork, Ellen Banda-Aaku’s debut adult novel and winner of the Penguin Prize for African writing, when it was released in 2011. ![]()
Back to Blog
![]() ![]() Now, surrounded by miles of darkness and tons of crushing rock,Richter has to find his way back into the light. Sion,leader of the Mist Village was left with only pain and regret as Richter was claimed by the abyss. What no one but the abandoned chaos seed knows is that he narrowly avoided the curse of the lich Singh, a curse that still hangs above his head. ![]() The battle of the dead was won, but at a great cost. The Land Monsters is Chaos Seeds Book 8 By Aleron Kong While many eyes have turned towards the mists, wanting to take the treasures within, the Mist Village stares back with a simple message. New skills have been learned, stronger enchantments have been wrought and the hundreds of villagers have answered the call to adventure. Richter and Sion need to be stronger than ever before. Richter’s people are horribly outnumbered by foes whose own power has been entrenched for thousands of years. Evil nobles from the Kingdom of Law, bloodthirsty goblins from the Serrated Mountains, an undead lord with a penchant for human sacrifice and fanatical kobolds from the Depths, all plot the village’s destruction. The path to power has not been without risk, however. Core buildings, Professional fighters and now, their own Dungeon, the settlement is primed to grow into a kingdom of true power and magic. In The Land:Predators, the Mist Village has harnessed its power. ![]()
Back to Blog
Lady in the lake laura lippman review5/29/2023 ![]() ![]() Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl-assistance that leads to a job at the city's afternoon newspaper, the Star. Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. This year, she's bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life. ![]() Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know-everyone, that is, except Madeline "Maddie" Schwartz. The revered New York Times bestselling author returns with a novel set in 1960s Baltimore that combines modern psychological insights with elements of classic noir, about a middle-aged housewife turned aspiring reporter who pursues the murder of a forgotten young woman. ![]()
Back to Blog
Winter of the world trilogy5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() "Hasn't it become abundantly clear during the tenure of our friendship that I don't know shit?" 32. "I'm not even supposed to be here today." Weakest link? Mallrats, which didn't deserve the kicking it got on release but is also by far the weakest of the three.įun fact: Wondering where the letters in the Clerks logo came from? Well, C is from Cosmopolitan, L is from Life, E is from Rolling Stone, R is from Ruffles potato chips, K is from Clark Bar and S is from a Goobers box. ![]() It just goes to show you don't need fallen angels, chimps or even Rosario Dawson to make a great movie. Smith hasn't surpassed Amy yet, but we can only hope he keeps trying to at least equal it. And on that basis it's hard to surpass Kevin Smith's first three films, a more grounded group than his follow-ons and, in the case of Chasing Amy especially, a near perfect mix of foul mouthery, far too in-depth geek discussions and warm heart. ![]() Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Shannon Doherty, Jeremy London, Claire Forlani, Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Ethan SupleeĪ loose trilogy, this, but we're assuming you readers felt this list was a little light on profanity and needed some explicit discussion of oral sex to balance out the selection. ![]()
Back to Blog
The midday demon5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() I would go sulk on the couch, joylessly playing a game on my phone that I had already beaten the summer before. But I’d hit some obstacle in the writing – a loss for the right word, doubts about an argument – and I’d leave my desk. I did try to work summer, I told myself, was my best chance to write a paper and thereby contribute to scholarship, something that was near-impossible amid the constant demands of my class schedule. It’s not as if I was hard at work, either. ![]() I never wasted a whole week in a hammock. ![]() I never took a long vacation to Berlin or Bali. In short, I had no work obligations to keep me from doing whatever I wanted to do – or nothing at all – for a solid third of the year, even as my paychecks kept coming in. I could have – and some of my colleagues did – set up an email autoreply to say I would be out of the office until late August and that the sender might consider trying me then. Not only did I earn a respectable middle-class salary, but, as other people liked to tell me, I had “summers off.” It’s true that for those three months, not to mention another month in winter, I had no classes to prepare, no papers to grade, no meetings to attend, no electronic forms to fill out for the registrar. For more than a decade, I worked as a college professor. ![]()
Back to Blog
Theodora by Stella Duffy5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() It was during this phase that the novel raised questions for me that were not completely answered. ![]() We follow her through misadventure into a slow conversion to Christianity. Her fortunes reverse when she follows her heart, and leaves the city. So well taught has she been that Theodora acts every role that is required of her. As with many actresses, apparently, during that period, she is also expected to act as a prostitute. Through force of will and a determination not to submit, our heroine survives and flourishes, becoming the main attraction. ![]() ![]() Their education is harsh, involving terrible physical punishment, the reading of which set me squirming in my chair. When Theodora is a small child, she witnesses her father killed by the bear he trained for the circus his death plunges the family even deeper into poverty, and Theodora and her sisters are effectively sold to train as performers. For this novel set in Constantinople during the Byzantine period, Stella Duffy takes the scandalous stories written by Procopious about Theodora the wife of the Roman Emperor Justinian, throws in the spice of more contemporary historical interpretations, whisks in a novelist’s invention, and turns them into a narrative of an extraordinary woman who rose from the bottom of the heap to the highest of ranks.įrom the beginning, it’s a romping good read, throwing us into the world of the circus and performance, into a city bursting with people and animals and all the aromas and sensations that those will bring in combination. ![]()
Back to Blog
Zami a new spelling of my name5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() The reader quickly grows to love the sturdy little black girl - daughter of parents immigrated to New York from Grenada before she was born - who is tongue-tied, unable to see without her glasses who forces herself to stay awake half an hour after her parentally-imposed bedtime in order to listen to the stories nightly serialized by her two older sisters who, in her loneliness, dreams of having a ''little female person'' all her own yet who yearns for the magical moments of privacy disallowed by a stern mother who, considering solitude a social perversion, insists that Audre's bedroom door remain open except when she is studying, constantly studying. Indeed, among the elements that make the book so good are its personal honesty and lack of pretentiousness, characteristics that shine through the writing, bespeaking the evolution of a strong and remarkable character. ![]() $5.95.ĬARRIACOU is an actual West Indian island as well as the isle of Audre Lorde's imagination Zami is ''a Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers.'' And while the publisher's claim that in ''Zami'' Miss Lorde ''creates a new form, biomythography, combining elements of history, biography and myth,'' is a bit pretentious, the book is, actually, an excellent and evocative autobio-graphy. ZAMI: A NEW SPELLING OF MY NAME By Audre Lorde. ![]() |