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…
“When had I a choice to be other than I was?” So begins this fictional autobiography of Alice Perrars’ life. And that’s about where I stopped caring overly much. That’s harsher than I mean to be, because the book was okay, but I have very, very little tolerance for excuses. And this was a running Continue Reading…
When Janet Elder was diagnosed with breast cancer, she and her husband promised their twelve-year-old son Michael that they would get him a puppy as soon as she was better. They realized that life is too short to deny their son something he so desperately wanted, but they also knew that she would be in Continue Reading…
I don’t even know where to start with a synopsis for this book, so I’ll just skip that. I have a feeling that the reason I’m not giving this book 5 stars shows more about what I’m lacking than about what the book is lacking. I felt myself on the verge of a huge epiphany Continue Reading…
I pulled this out of its mailer and my husband took one look and said, “Oh, crap. You’re going to have a tattoo soon, aren’t you?” I was a little hesitant to open it for fear of that very thing myself. I don’t have anything against tattoos on other people, they just aren’t for me. 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…
Princess Andromeda feels like she can’t do anything right. Her mother, Queen Cassiopeia, always seems to be disappointed in Andie’s appearance and her tendency to have her nose in a book. Finally, Andie finds a way to prove her value as a researcher to her mother–just in time to help try to discover a way Continue Reading…
Lucy Bergmann’s husband Thom, is a brilliant physicist who is searching for life on other planets in the near future. He is killed in the opening chapter of the book, and we’re led to believe that religious nuts who didn’t want his discoveries published might have been behind his death. A few years later, Lucy 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…