A Quartet of Unsalable Gems: Madras Press Debuts Series One A modern eco-fable about an almost-royal swan and just-a-common-bluebird couple whose lives intersect with a miner and a logger who turn away from their destructive careers… a contemporary fairy tale about a witch with one heck...
Eva Mozes Kor survived the Holocaust because she was an identical twin. After a grueling journey from her native Romania which eventually ended at the infamous Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, Eva and her twin Miriam were immediately separated from their parents and two older sisters....
Although the second volume of Ōoku, a recently introduced (in translation) gender-bender series, this latest could definitely read as a stand-alone love story. And quite a unique and memorable one at that! The series' premise is that in an alternative history of premodern Edo Japan, the mysterious...
Surely, I have never been part of a more raucous audience than when I saw David Henry Hwang's latest play, Yellow Face, at New York's Public Theater in December 2007. The man at the end of the row in front of us LITERALLY FELL OUT...
Here's the assertion: "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals." In a 2006 poll given to adults in 32 countries, the resulting U.S. statistics were just plain staggering to me ...
Yuki Tachibana (whose first name means 'snow,' and last name means 'standing flower') is not your average first-grader. He draws strange pictures on his desk that unnerve his other classmates. He can see things no one else can. He talks to the invisible Super Star,...
At first impression, the story is very familiar: two American-born sisters of Vietnamese American immigrants – one the high-achieving 'good' daughter with her law degree, the other the 'lost' daughter with fast friends and temporary jobs that never last long. But in Bich Minh Nguyen's heart-string-pulling...
One of my dearest friends in all the world starts making gratitude lists when all the STUFF that needs to get done starts keeping her up at night ...
When 12-year-old Mahtab's father returns home with obvious signs of torture, and her grandfather is forever lost, her family knows it can no longer live in Taliban-controlled Herat, Afghanistan. Her best friend has already left without saying goodbye, hoping to find refuge somewhere in Iran....
Young Henry Bell's master insists that "he'll take an ax to the finger of any slave who touches a book." But before his father was sold away, he told his son that "book learning" would provide the way out of slavery. When Master Simon starts school,...
Using research originally developed by Harvard psychologist Dr. Howard Gardner about multiple intelligences which was made popular by Dr. Thomas Armstrong, author Nikola-Lisa chooses 12 achievers to show how they were each 'smart' in different, important ways. "Here are eight basic ways people can be...
Europol's greatest robot, Inspector Gesicht, arrives in Persia on a "hunch" – can robots have hunches? – that he's finally figured out who's behind all the gruesome murders of the world's greatest robots. The trail takes him to Amsterdam where he follows the mysterious Sahad,...
If you liked Koji Suzuki's freakishly scary Ring/Spiral/Loop trilogy, you'll definitely appreciate this fairly recent (I just discovered it at our local library!) horror series. Uzumaki means whirlpool, swirl, vortex ...
For the past week, I've been talking nonstop about this book to friends, even those who don't have children. This is one of those titles that should be on every bookshelf, regardless of breeding status. Really. Because it's as much about relationships with all people,...
To teach the value of life, the National Welfare Act places a timed nanocapsule in one out of every 1,000 first graders' immunization syringes. On a predetermined date between the ages of 18 to 24 – with just 24 hours notice to the moment to...
On Old-Timers, Boxing, and Lots of Sex (mostly off the page ...
Stupendous and spectacular come immediately to mind when you look at this book. Not to mention a bit of "oof!" over its hefty size and weight – it's full of gravitas, after all! Mike Tauber's photographs are breathtaking, laid out simply to let the gorgeous...
If you haven't heard of Randy Pausch and experienced his delightful, heartbreaking, inspiring Last Lecture, surely you must: Click here for a comprehensive summary page created by Carnegie Mellon University where he was a professor before he passed away on July 25, 2008 of pancreatic...
The remarkable story begun in The New Sun continues in this second volume of Taro Yashima's graphic memoir, a strikingly simple combination of pictures and brief text that capture a man's journey away from his homeland. Long out of print since its 1947 first printing, Horizon...
Oh, how sad to think this is the very last book by Kamila Shamsie I had left to read ...
