Austen’s invitation to afternoon tea at Chawton Cottage—in the form of a handwritten note—implores the recipient to “come with an open mind and a readiness to engage in a few puzzles, ciphers, and mysteries.” At tea, Austen explains that since you have “no ties to our tangled social circles,” she can trust you to discover […]
Several months have passed since Matilde, Sayer, Æsa, and Fen escaped the Red Hand, a fanatical religious cult leader, by channeling elemental magic like the Fyrebirds of old. The four new Fyrebirds are now physically and emotionally distanced, however. In the Illish Isles, Æsa secretly practices amplifying fledgling girls’ abilities and wrestles with her family’s […]
Little lamb Nathaniel is lost. He remembers wanting to play, and perhaps running away from something, but he’s not sure how he ended up in a scary castle with his wool such a dirty mess. Things get much worse, though, when a dragon shows up. It threateningly tells Nathaniel that there’s nowhere to hide, and […]
For the past few weeks, a man has been following Angel and her family around. They live in the town of Bayfield, on the banks of Lake Superior, in a dystopian successor nation to the United States known as the Protectorate, governed by the authoritarian Galt Corporation. When Angel finally confronts the man, he tells […]
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was, as Brown explains here, “almost certainly the most lethal piece of legislation to ever clear Congress.” In reversing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowing slavery to expand into vast new western territories, the act deepened divisions between North and South and pushed the country toward civil war. This […]
Graves, who was born in the late 1930s in New Orleans, recalls that his first clear memory was learning about the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Although his parents were distraught that the surprise assault meant that the country was going to war, he remembers his father sprang into action, serving as a neighborhood […]
Tess Rosenbloom hasn’t had much of a life recently. Working the night shift at a Brooklyn hotel helps her manage the chronic insomnia she’s been dealing with ever since a traumatic experience caused her to drop out of grad school. The only escape she’s had through her biggest ups and downs are her favorite vampire […]
In this second series entry, the Weirdoughs—werewolf Bram, Sheila the ghost, surly Mona the elf-witch, Skele-tony Le Bone, and fartmeister extraordinaire Bryan the Lion—immediately smell something rotten in Felix Frostbite, a charismatic if literally icy new instructor. The friends wind up in a good position to scupper his genuinely villainous scheme to destroy the Villains […]
Rather than spin this memoir out in a single chronological thread, the co-authors (who are not related) open with the good stuff—the recruitment of “Charlie B.” into NASA in 1979 as the fourth Black astronaut and his four space flights between 1986 and 1994. They follow with information about his childhood, his early career as […]
“Corporate agriculture has not only destroyed the rural spirit and harmony of living as one with the land but of living with one another as well.” So writes Trom Eayrs toward the end of her book, equal parts manifesto and memoir. A constant presence is her father, the grandson of a Norwegian immigrant who made […]