Alice has always been the odd one in her small Appalachian community. She loves water, her hair grows incredibly fast, her feet are slightly webbed, and somehow her personality has just never “fit in.” She’s done her best all her life to blend into the background, but she gets quite a bit of publicity when Continue Reading…
In 1996, Jon Krakauer attempted to climb Mt. Everest as part of a guided group for a writing assignment for Outside magazine. An experienced climber in the hands of a reputable group of guides, he didn’t really foresee any problems. Go, climb the mountain, hope conditions allowed them to reach the summit, go home, write Continue Reading…
Rita Lurie is a Holocaust survivor. Her story is remarkably similar to Anne Frank’s. She hid in an attic in Poland for two years at the very end of WWII. Her family’s hiding place was nowhere near as carefully-planned as the Frank family’s though. They fled Nazi soldiers in the night and eventually found a Continue Reading…
Arabella Dempsey has just seen all her hopes dashed. She’s been a companion to her aunt since she was a child and fully expected to inherit from her. She realizes that isn’t going to happen when her aunt marries a much younger man–the very man that Arabella has been fantasizing about. Does it get any Continue Reading…
Children are missing from Cambridge, the town’s Jews have been blamed, and King Henry II is receiving less revenue while the Jews are in hiding. Clearly something must be done. Enter Adelia Aguilar. She has been trained at the world-renowned and forward-thinking school of medicine in Salerno, Italy. Her specialty? Corpses. She is a mistress Continue Reading…
We take so much in our daily lives for granted. Bill Bryson looked around his house one day, realized how little he knew about the everyday objects surrounding him, and, being Bill Bryson, decided to research and write a book about them. I read this slowly as my before-bed book, and I’m not sure that Continue Reading…
Moses Froben, an opera singer of world-renown, raised a son who could not possibly have been his own. When his son asked how they had come to be together, Moses would studiously avoid the question. On Moses’s death, however, his son found a memoir that told of Moses’s humble beginnings and how father and son Continue Reading…
The Christmas Box is about a young couple and their young daughter who move in with an elderly widow to help her out with light chores in exchange for rooms. Mary, the widow, becomes an adopted grandmother to them all and feels compelled to pass on wisdom she has gained with her years. This was Continue Reading…
William Bromley is a World War II veteran living in 1950’s London. In the war, he led a mountaineering expedition that ended disastrously. He has never moved past this and started living again. He’s just existing–teaching school, admiring the secretary from a distance, spending Friday evenings with his one friend, and visiting his father on Continue Reading…
My seven-year-old cousin and fellow lover-of-all-things-fairy, Natalie, convinced me to read this by reciting the cover blurb to me: “Part comedy, part love story, part everything-but-the-kitchen-sink.” What fairy tale fan could resist that? Not this one! I loved that the defining characteristics of the characters weren’t their beauty or lack thereof. Chris is intelligent, kind, Continue Reading…
I have somehow never seen “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” or any of the other movie incarnations of this book. In fact, I was surprised to read the back cover of this book and find out that the book is about Dracula moving to Enland to set up shop. So, I had no expectations going into it. Continue Reading…