Ellesmere Island, the second-closest landmass to the North Pole, is home to some of the world’s most intriguing species. The wild, snow-white Arctic wolves residing there have captivated renowned wolf researcher L. David Mech for 25 years, and they sustain the reader’s attention as well. Generally speaking, wolves are difficult for researchers to study up […]
Keira has fought and defeated powerful forces of evil in the past, but now she faces what may be the hardest battle of her life. She’s been targeted by the hired killers of the Artec corporation, which uses dead people to generate cheap electricity, “human batteries, condemned to writhe and scream and beg, without anyone […]
Historical fiction writer Epstein rescues Dickens’ Fagin from his reputation as a slimy character who exploits orphans, training them in thievery in the clotted, filthy streets of Victorian London. Epstein’s Jacob Fagin is a lonely, emotionally wounded man; a master pickpocket to be sure, but also a victim of virulent antisemitism from all classes of […]
In 1926, a man named Robert Thomas and a male friend, both Black, had to fight off a white female usher, white manager, and six riot officers to be allowed to take the orchestra seats they had purchased rather than be banished to the balcony at Harlem’s Loew’s Victoria Theatre. This was just one of […]
A young child spends the day on the beach and receives advice on how to build the perfect sandcastle. The child is first encouraged to ask a friend to help. The pair then builds a solid base by forming a crater in a sand hill and packing it down. The book offers different options for […]
In New Jersey in 2000, Tony Mazza (like matzah, only not, ha ha) stumbles out of a courtroom, wondering where he’s gone wrong in his life, and his narrative provides a thousand answers ranging from funny to sad. He relates his life in reverse: 2000 becomes 1994, then 1991 and so on, going back to […]
“Medicine is increasingly a retail prospect.” Health journalist Larocca realizes as much when visiting a New York doctor whose clinic now “looks like somewhere you’d go with a group of girlfriends for brunch.” Underscore “girlfriends,” for Larocca focuses on the health and wellness experiences of women—not just “today’s ideal woman…hopped up on her plant-based diet […]
“At home, my confidence shows, / at home, my bravery glows.” But when the young narrator is out and about, everything changes. Interacting with other kids at the park is “a big task.” “I try to play, I try to shout, / but my brave voice just won’t come out!” Though the protagonist looks forward […]
In her new work, Crispin’s tools of critique are the erotic thrillers in which Michael Douglas starred in the 1980s and ’90s. The characters he played during this time, the author suggests, all reflect a “new masculinity” trying to find purchase in the wake of not only feminism’s second and third waves, but also shifts […]
Seventeen-year-old Indian Canadian Sana Merali loves all things love, especially Toronto’s Love Street, where she lives with her mother above their struggling flower shop. When gentrification threatens the tightknit community of small businesses on their street, Sana throws herself into organizing a “festival of love” that she hopes will restore their fortunes. Co-chairing the planning […]