Seven-year-old Rachel Kalama is living in Honolulu in 1893. Her life is punctuated with a child’s hopes and dreams and drama. Her father is a sailor, and she loves it when he comes home on leave, mostly because she’s excited to see him, but also because she loves to hear his stories about the wider Continue Reading…
Telling the story of an epic flood of the Mississippi River in 1927, this book explores the early history of flood control efforts and a rivalry that made flood controls at the time practically a joke, the politics involved in decisions for handling the flood itself, the politics of disaster relief, and the impact of Continue Reading…
Journalist Alice Steinbach decided that she was going to take a break from the life she was living. She was happy, but she felt that she needed some time to get acquainted with herself now that her two sons were grown. So she planned an open-ended months-long trip to Europe. She had only the vaguest Continue Reading…
Annabeth has finally gotten her own quest. She must lead a group through the Labyrinth to find Daedalus, its creator, and ask for help defending the camp from Luke and Kronos’s minions. She’s only supposed to ask two people to help her, but she insists that Percy, Grover, and Tyson all come along. Of course Continue Reading…
This is the story of Mary Magdalene’s entire life, from childhood to her death. I enjoyed seeing this controversial historical figure in her own element, with no one sitting in judgment of who she was and her relationship to Jesus. The woman who emerged from these pages was initially very troubled. She was doing her Continue Reading…
Melanie Middleton is an excellent Realtor in the exclusive district of Charleston known as South of Broad, yet she hates the houses she sells. She sees the old mansions as termite-infested money pits. Still, the money is good and a girl’s gotta eat, right? One day she is summoned to the home of elderly Nevin Continue Reading…
This is the continuation of the true story of Vladek Spiegelman’s survival as a Jew in WWII Poland. Most of what I wrote in my review of Maus I still stands, but there’s a bit more of the author’s feelings included. You can see the catharsis he’s going through as he writes this novel. He’s Continue Reading…
Art Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, was a Jew living in Poland in WWII. He made it through, and Maus I is Spiegelman’s story of his father’s life, as well as an exploration of the way the lives of the survivors and their family members were never the same. Okay, let’s look at the fact that this Continue Reading…
Primo Levi was a young Jewish man living in Turin, Italy when he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Due to a combination of luck and calculation, he survived. I truly, truly hate to give any Holocaust memoir less than five stars. They are all important and they should all be read. That said. Somehow Continue Reading…
“In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.” So begins Howl’s Continue Reading…
Twenty-three-year-old Jacob Jankowski has just lost his parents in a car crash. They had already lost everything in the Great Depression. In a devastating bout of grief, Jacob, a vet school student, walks out of his final exams at Cornell University. He ends up working for a circus as the vet. His boss, August, is Continue Reading…