The Hogarth Shakespeare series—“Shakespeare’s plays reimagined by some of today’s bestselling and most celebrated writers” – continues with three additional releases in 2016: Jacobson’s take on The Merchant of Venice, Anne Tyler’s reimagining of The Taming of the Shrew in June’s Vinegar Girl, and Margaret...
To get her four-eared infant to safety, Nouri Ahmad Mohammad ibn Mahsoud al-Morad's mother gave first her body, then her life. In 13th-century Persia, a child so different would require divine intervention to survive, and Nouri literally falls into the arms of a gentle, crippled...
Anna is 7 when her father disappears. In 1939 Krakow, Poland, being Jewish is enough to condemn people to death. When the Swallow Man appears – so named for his ability to conjure and communicate with birds – the unlikely pair reluctantly recognize in each other not...
Multiple narratives swirl around Alma Belasco, a Polish teenager who escaped the Nazis in 1939 and arrived in San Francisco to share a privileged life with an indulgent aunt and uncle. Now 73, Alma is a favorite resident in a senior facility, devotedly looked after...
We're right in the middle of National Hispanic Heritage Month – now through October 15. Do you know where your books are? If you're looking for a delightful, heart-tugging, bilingual even (!) picture book, this is it! Monica Brown, creator of the rollicking Marisol McDonald series, introduces...
While this summer's Justice League and Fantastic Four make for great celluloid entertainment, for true inspiration, Mister Doctor – as Dr. Janucz Korczak was called by his beloved children – is a real life superhero to be admired and emulated. His accomplishments beyond doctoring included also being a scholar,...
Rad American Women A-Z is the first-ever kids' title in 60 years of "storied history" from San Francisco's iconic bookseller/publisher City Lights. What a way to grab attention ...
In case you've missed the recent headlines, Cuba has been in the news a lot: "We are separated by 90 miles of water, but are brought together through shared relationships and the desire to promote a democratic, prosperous, and stable Cuba," a recent official White...
In real life, Linda Lavin (known to a certain generation as TV's Alice, also known to others for her almost-half-century of on-stage success) isn't quite as old as the titular Boston Girl, but she absolutely epitomizes the ideal narrator here. The year is 1985, and...
In an attempt to better understand the unfamiliar territory in which I find myself domiciled through June 2016 (yes, I'm counting), I've been reading quite a few titles that hopefully will provide insight into the mindset of some of our would-be neighbors. Many of those books...
Gail Gutradt is not a journalist. She is not a nurse or doctor, and actually has no training in the medical profession. She is not a mother. She is not a Buddhist. She speaks very little Khmer. For everything she is not, Gutradt is a...
George and Elizabeth Chast were born 10 days apart in 1912. They grew up two blocks from each other in East Harlem, and were in the same fifth grade class. "They never dated, much less anything else'd, anyone besides each other." They married in 1938. Their...
Sometimes, whispers can speak more loudly than any shouts and screams ...
Some time in the recent past, a video link came through that began with birthday wishes for Anne Frank, as if she had miraculously survived the Holocaust and lived many fulfilling decades. [I can't seem to find the link again, so if anyone recognizes the description...
"Look at us. A family of four. Seated around the dinner table," 16-year-old Simone observes. "We do this every night. ...
"I am Fagin the Jew of Oliver Twist," begins the 'father of the graphic novel'-Will Eisner's 21st-century literary reclamation of the 19th-century classic. "This is my story, one that has remained untold and overlooked in the book by Charles Dickens," a tattered old man insists....
Theater producer/critic/playwright Warren Hoffman (The Passing Game) insists that audiences have been "duped" into believing that the Broadway musical "is the most innocent of art forms when, in fact, it is one of America's most powerful, influential, and even at times polemical arts precisely because...
Preorder this title now and you can stop reading here ...
Every so often, I seem to get on a specific reading spree on a topic not exactly of my choosing – that is, the books seem to serendipitously line up on their own. The latest batch of they-chose-me-titles have been set during the final brutal months...
