The Ellie @ Home Summer Reading List is here!

   Hello, hello, hello! I hope everyone is having a lovely May thus far; I am absolutely looking forward to sunnier days. Here in western Massachusetts Nature has apparently forgotten that April is over: it's been raining off and on for days! Blaa. I realized yesterday that Memorial Day is almost upon us (okay, we have ten days to go, but when you work in scheduling days go by quickly. Case in point, I'm already looking for coverage for people's August vacations) and that means it's time to curate this summer's reading list. I scoured my Goodreads "To Read" list (all 51 pages of it) and pulled a bunch of titles I've got my eye on. I have fourteen weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and even though I am taking a class this summer and there are Red Sox games to watch, I *should* be able to get through 20 books. If I really want to push it I could try for 28 books, but some of these are biggies; I don't know if I could actually manage two books a week. Well, I probably could if I gave up on my Boston boys for the summer, which is never going to happen. Ever.


   I have a mix of non-fiction and fantastical fiction, as well as some true crime (my guilty...pleasure? That sounds gruesome. I'm not a sociopath, I promise) and some Arctic adventure (which also is a true crime/mystery), some poetry, and a volume of letters. I haven't looked these up in my library yet and I expect that I will have to purchase some of these titles. So here they are, in no particular order as I am subject to the whims of the Central/Western Massachusetts Regional Library System and Amazon. If any of these catch your interest, feel free to read along with me, and leave your thoughts in the comments!


All synopses are taken from Goodreads, with additional information for “Fragments of the Head of a Queen” also taken from Amazon. All images are pulled from Google.

 

Imagining Characters: Six Conversations About Women Writers: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch, and Toni Morrison

by A.S. Byatt, Ignes Sodre

   In this innovative and wide-ranging book, Byatt and the psychoanalyst Ignes Sodre bring their different sensibilities to bear on six novels they have read and loved: Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Bronte's Villette, George Elliot's Daniel Deronda, Willa Cather's The Professor's House, Iris Murdoch's An Unofficial Rose, and Toni Morrison's Beloved. The results are nothing less than an education in the ways literature grips its readers and, at times, transforms their lives. Imagining Characters is indispensable, a work of criticism that returns us to the books it discusses with renewed respect and wonder.

Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature

by Elizabeth Hardwick, Joan Didion (Introduction)

   The novelist and essayist Elizabeth Hardwick is one of contemporary America's most brilliant writers, and Seduction and Betrayal, in which she considers the careers of women writers as well as the larger question of the presence of women in literature, is her most passionate and concentrated work of criticism. A gallery of unforgettable portraits--of Virginia Woolf and Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Carlyle--as well as a provocative reading of such works as Wuthering Heights, Hedda Gabler, and the poems of Sylvia Plath, Seduction and Betrayal is a virtuoso performance, a major writer's reckoning with the relations between men and women, women and writing, writing and life.

 

How to Suppress Women's Writing

by Joanna Russ

   By the author of The Female Man, a provocative survey of the forces that work against women who dare to write.

"She didn't write it. She wrote it but she shouldn't have. She wrote it but look what she wrote about. She wrote it but she isn't really an artist, and it isn't really art. She wrote it but she had help. She wrote it but she's an anomaly. She wrote it BUT..." How to Suppress Women's Writing is a meticulously researched and humorously written "guidebook" to the many ways women and other "minorities" have been barred from producing written art. In chapters entitled "Prohibitions," "Bad Faith," "Denial of Agency," Pollution of Agency," "The Double Standard of Content," "False Categorization," "Isolation," "Anomalousness," "Lack of Models," Responses," and "Aesthetics" Joanna Russ names, defines, and illustrates those barriers to art-making we may have felt but which tend to remain unnamed and thus insolvable.

 

The Thunder of Giants

by Joel Fishbane  

 Mixing the eccentricity of the circus world and the heart of a love story, The Thunder of Giants is a warm and engaging debut about two exceptional women -- both almost 8-feet tall

The year is 1937 and Andorra Kelsey – 7’11 and just under 320 pounds – is on her way to Hollywood to become a star. Hoping to escape both poverty and the ghost of her dead husband, she accepts an offer from the wily Rutherford Simone to star in a movie about the life of Anna Swan, the Nova Scotia giantess who toured the world in the 19th century.

Thus, Anna Swan's story unfurls. Where Andorra is seen as a disgrace by an embarrassed family, Anna Swan is quickly celebrated for her unique size. Drawn to New York, Anna becomes a famed attraction at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum even as she falls in love with Gavin Clarke, a veteran of the Civil War. Quickly disenchanted with a life of fame, Anna struggles to prove to Gavin – and the world - that she is more than the sum of her measurements.

The Thunder of Giants blends fact and fiction in a sweeping narrative that spans nearly a hundred years. Against the backdrop of epic events, two extraordinary women become reluctant celebrities in the hopes of surviving a world too small to contain them.

 

House of Dreams: The Life of L. M. Montgomery

by Liz Rosenberg, Julie Morstad (Illustrator)

   An affecting biography of the author of Anne of Green Gables is the first for young readers to include revelations about her last days and to encompass the complexity of a brilliant and sometimes troubled life.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, "I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them." Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, not a great deal was known about Maud’s personal life. Her childhood was spent with strict, undemonstrative grandparents, and her reflections on writing, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her "year of mad passion," and her difficult married life remained locked away, buried deep within her unpublished personal journals. Through this revealing and deeply moving biography, kindred spirits of all ages who, like Maud, never gave up "the substance of things hoped for" will be captivated anew by the words of this remarkable woman.

 

The Heroine's Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder

by Erin Blakemore

   A testament to inspirational women throughout literature, Erin Blakemore’s exploration of classic heroines and their equally admirable authors shows today’s women how to best tap into their inner strengths and live life with intelligence, grace, vitality and aplomb. This collection of unforgettable characters—including Anne Shirley, Jo March, Scarlett O’Hara, and Jane Eyre—and outstanding authors—like Jane Austen, Harper Lee, and Laura Ingalls Wilder—is an impassioned look at literature’s most compelling heroines, both on the page and off. Readers who found inspiration in books by Toni Morrison, Maud Hart Lovelace, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Alice Walker, or who were moved by literary-themed memoirs like Shelf Discovery and Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, get ready to return to the well of women’s classic literature with The Heroine's Bookshelf.

 

Trial by Ice: The True Story of Murder and Survival on the 1871 Polaris Expedition

by Richard Parry

   In 1871, the Polaris sailed with great fanfare from New York harbor and began a historic journey to one of the earth’s final frontiers. Seven months later, a handful of half-starved survivors returned with a story that shocked the entire nation. . . .

In the dark, divisive years following the Civil War, America’s foremost Arctic explorer, Charles Francis Hall, became a figure of national pride and renown when he embarked on a harrowing, landmark expedition. With financial backing from Congress and the personal support of President Grant, Captain Hall and his crew boarded the Polaris, a steam schooner carefully refitted for its rigorous journey, and began their quest to be the first men to reach the North Pole.

Hall was a veteran of the Arctic and a man of great physical stamina, but all his strength and experience couldn’t combat the conflicts brewing among his officers and crew. Beset by bad luck, a lack of discipline, and an unclear chain of command, the Polaris entered the icy waters off the coast of Greenland. Neither the ship nor its captain would ever return.

As the expedition reached its most crucial stage, Hall inexplicably sickened and died. Whispers of murder swept through the ship. Still, the Polaris forged on, only to meet with a further disaster that left half the crew separated from the ship and most of their supplies at the bottom of the ocean. What followed was a horrifying, seven-month ordeal through the heart of an Arctic winter, when men fought starvation, madness, and each other upon the ever-shifting ice.

Trial by Ice is an incredible adventure that pits men against the natural elements and their own fragile human nature. Beyond this, it is also an authentic murder mystery that, in its time, led to accusations of foul play and a dramatic, unresolved investigation. Now, more than a century after the crime was committed, the author draws on recent evidence to recount the amazing story of the killer who boarded the Polaris–and got away with murder.

In this powerful true story of death and survival, courage and intrigue aboard a doomed ship, Richard Parry chronicles one of the most astonishing, little known tragedies at sea in American history.

 

The Odyssey of KP2: An Orphan Seal, a Marine Biologist, and the Fight to Save a Species

by Terrie M. Williams

 When a two day-old Hawaiian monk seal pup is attacked and abandoned by his mother on a beach in Kauai, environmental officials must decide if they should save the newborn animal or allow nature to take its course. But as a member of the most endangered marine mammal species in U.S. waters, Kauai Pup 2, or KP2, is too precious to lose, and he embarks on an odyssey that will take him across an ocean to the only qualified caretaker to accept the job, eminent wildlife biologist Dr. Terrie M. Williams.The local islanders see KP2 as an honored member of their community, but government agents and scientists must consider the important role he could play in gathering knowledge and data about this critically endangered and rare species. Only 1,100 Hawaiian monk seals survive in the wild; if their decline continues without intervention, they face certain extinction within fifty years. In a controversial decision, environmental officials send KP2 to Williams's marine mammal lab in Santa Cruz, California, where she and her team monitor his failing eyesight and gather crucial data that could help save KP2's species.

But while this young seal is the subject of a complex environmental struggle and intense media scrutiny, KP2 is also a boisterous and affectionate animal who changes the lives of the humans who know and care for him-especially that of Williams. Even as she unravels the secret biology of monk seals by studying his behavior and training him, Williams finds a kindred spirit in his loving nature and resilient strength. Their story captures the universal bond between humans and animals and emphasizes the ways we help and rely upon one another. The health of the world's oceans and the survival of people and creatures alike depend on this ancient connection.

The Odyssey of KP2 is an inside look at the life of a scientist and the role that her research plays in the development of conservation efforts, bringing our contemporary environmental landscape to life. It is also the heartwarming portrait of a Hawaiian monk seal whose unforgettable personality never falters, even as his fate hangs in the balance.

 

Torture Mom: A Chilling True Story of Confinement, Mutilation and Murder (True Crime)

by Ryan Green

  In July 1965, teenagers Sylvia and Jenny Likens were left in the temporary care of Gertrude Baniszewski, a middle-aged single mother and her seven children.

The Baniszewski household was overrun with children. There were few rules and ample freedom. Sadly, the environment created a dangerous hierarchy of social Darwinism where the strong preyed on the weak.

What transpired in the following three months was both riveting and chilling.

In October 1965, the body of Sylvia Likens was found in the basement of the Baniszewski home, where she had been imprisoned. She was starved, beaten, burned and had the words "I am a prostitute and proud of it" carved into her stomach.

Gertrude Baniszewski oversaw and facilitated the torture and eventual murder of Sylvia Likens. While she played an active role in Sylvia's death, the majority of the abuse was carried out by her children and other neighbourhood youths.

The case shocked the entire nation and would later be described as "The single worst crime perpetuated against an individual in Indiana's history".

*CAUTION: This book contains descriptive accounts of abuse and violence. If you are especially sensitive to this material, it might be advisable not to read any further*

 

The Poppet and the Lune  (The Poppet and the Lune #1-4)

by Madeline Claire Franklin

A lyrical, original fairy tale for all ages, with a cast of characters you won't soon forget.

The witch who made the patchwork girl died before she could give her creation a name. Stitched together from the remains of the villagers’ dead children—whose memories still live in her flesh—the patchwork girl is a spell as yet unfinished, held together by nothing more than a ring made of moonbeams. She can never be what her parents want her to be: a replacement for the children they’ve lost. So when the poppet grows up, and grows tired of being a disappointment, she decides to embark upon a journey through the Everwood Forest in search of her real name.

In the forest she meets Faolin, a newly made wereman (a man trapped as a wolf except during the full moon) running from the beasts who made him. Wanting nothing more than to become human again, and to return to his fiancée, the patchwork girl promises to help him in his quest is he will help in hers. Together they face the dangers of the forest, forming an unlikely bond as their paths wind together: Faolin running from his destiny, the patchwork girl in search of her own, and both of them bound by moonlight.

But Faolin, afraid of the beast he has become, has known all along what he must do in order to lift the curse and return to his fiancée-in fact, it is the very reason he sought out the patchwork girl to begin with. But now, his cure has become the very reason why he must leave her: to protect her from himself.

 

Becoming the Villainess

by Jeannine Hall Gailey

 "In this splendidly entertaining debut, Jeannine Hall Gailey offers us a world both familiar and magical-filled with fairytale and mythology characters that are our own bedfellows--we wake up with Philomel and argue with Ophelia while half-listening to a Snow Queen, amidst Spy Girls, Amazons and Mongolian Cows. The wild and seductive energy in this collection never lets one put the book down. (In fact, anyone who opens the collection in the bookstore and reads such poems as The Conversation and Job Requirements: A Supervillain's Advice will want to buy the book!) For her delivery is heart-breaking and refreshing, so the poems seduce us with the sadness, glory and entertainment of our very own days. Propelled by Jeannine Hall Gailey's alert, sensuous, and musical gifts, the mythology becomes all our own." -Ilya Kaminsky, author of the award-winning Dancing in Odessa

 

Fragment of the Head of a Queen: Poems

by Cate Marvin

Cate Marvin’s new poems, their wrought music, unblinking focus, and hard-edged sensuality, are wreathed with an entirely different silence than her first collection. The brokenness and loss of the fragmented queen—seeming to rise up through centuries—is their tutelary spirit.

 From Publishers Weekly: From the blood-soaked cover image of a Snow White–like figure to the final poem (You Cut Open), there is both violence and humor in the 42 lyrics of Marvin's second book. In her often amped-up sonics (standing neck-deep in a pit, whisky-pitched, ether-lit), her formal skill and her penchant for anger-filled poems on the love/hate of self and beloved, Marvin (World's Tallest Disaster) suggests a postmodern Plath. But the smirk on the speaker's face—she is both deadly serious and deadly funny—points these poems past melodrama. Dear less-than-a-man, writes Marvin, I think with my blood. Often the humor comes when the absurdity of the actual world is mixed with that of the speaker's world (my unsubsidized loan heart). Marvin also manages a more intimate voice: I would be the worm to your rain soaked side/ walk. Such tenderness is welcome among so much grief, but so is the ambivalence of Marvin's elegy detailing a lover's autopsy. Readers who can believe all love/ should be loud enough to scare off the neighbors will swoon for this work. (Aug.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

 

In the Night Garden (The Orphan's Tales #1)

by Catherynne M. Valente, Michael Wm. Kaluta (Illustrator)

 A Book of Wonders for Grown-Up Readers

Every once in a great while a book comes along that reminds us of the magic spell that stories can cast over us to dazzle, entertain, and enlighten. Welcome to the Arabian Nights for our time a lush and fantastical epic guaranteed to spirit you away from the very first page.

Secreted away in a garden, a lonely girl spins stories to warm a curious prince: peculiar feats and unspeakable fates that loop through each other and back again to meet in the tapestry of her voice. Inked on her eyelids, each twisting, tattooed tale is a piece in the puzzle of the girl's own hidden history.

And what tales she tells! Tales of shape-shifting witches and wild horsewomen, heron kings and beast princesses, snake gods, dog monks, and living stars each story more strange and fantastic than the one that came before. From ill-tempered mermaid to fastidious Beast, nothing is ever quite what it seems in these ever-shifting tales even, and especially, their teller.

Adorned with illustrations by the legendary Michael Kaluta, Valente's enchanting lyrical fantasy offers a breathtaking reinvention of the untold myths and dark fairy tales that shape our dreams. And just when you think you've come to the end, you realize the adventure has only begun.

 

 

The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution

by Donald R. Prothero

 Every fossil tells a story. Best-selling paleontology author Donald R. Prothero describes twenty-five famous, beautifully preserved fossils in a gripping scientific history of life on Earth. Recounting the adventures behind the discovery of these objects and fully interpreting their significance within the larger fossil record, Prothero creates a riveting history of life on our planet.

The twenty-five fossils portrayed in this book catch animals in their evolutionary splendor as they transition from one kind of organism to another. We witness extinct plants and animals of microscopic and immense size and thrilling diversity. We learn about fantastic land and sea creatures that have no match in nature today. Along the way, we encounter such fascinating fossils as the earliest trilobite, Olenellus; the giant shark Carcharocles; the "fishibian" Tiktaalik; the "Frogamander" and the "Turtle on the Half-Shell"; enormous marine reptiles and the biggest dinosaurs known; the first bird, Archaeopteryx; the walking whale Ambulocetus; the gigantic hornless rhinoceros Paraceratherium, the largest land mammal that ever lived; and the Australopithecus nicknamed "Lucy," the oldest human skeleton. We meet the scientists and adventurers who pioneered paleontology and learn about the larger intellectual and social contexts in which their discoveries were made. Finally, we find out where to see these splendid fossils in the world's great museums.

Ideal for all who love prehistoric landscapes and delight in the history of science, this book makes a treasured addition to any bookshelf, stoking curiosity in the evolution of life on Earth.

 

The Doll Funeral

by Kate Hamer

 My name is Ruby. I live with Barbara and Mick. They're not my real parents, but they tell me what to do, and what to say. I'm supposed to say that the bruises on my arms and the black eye came from falling down the stairs.

But there are things I won't say. I won't tell them I'm going to hunt for my real parents. I don't say a word about Shadow, who sits on the stairs, or the Wasp Lady I saw on the way to bed.

I did tell Mick that I saw the woman in the buttercup dress, hanging upside down from her seat belt deep in the forest at the back of our house. I told him I saw death crawl out of her. He said he'd give me a medal for lying.

I wasn't lying. I'm a hunter for lost souls and I'm going to be with my real family. And I'm not going to let Mick stop me.

 

The Power

by Naomi Alderman  

In The Power the world is a recognizable place: there's a rich Nigerian kid who lounges around the family pool; a foster girl whose religious parents hide their true nature; a local American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But something vital has changed, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power - they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world changes utterly.

This extraordinary novel by Naomi Alderman, a Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and Granta Best of British writer, is not only a gripping story of how the world would change if power was in the hands of women but also exposes, with breath-taking daring, our contemporary world.

 

Weedmonkey

by Lisa V. Proulx  

   Growing up during the Depression and forced to live in coal mining camps throughout Appalachia, Virgie Hopkins is subjected to child molestation, the KKK, murder, homelessness, starvation and ridicule for being the daughter of the town whore.

Virgie grows up hating her mother who was taken away when she was nine years old and while she was gone, she and her brother were put into foster care, starved and abused.

When her mother returned, she did not know her husband or her children and Virgie could not understand why she had changed.

At 16, Virgie made the decision to leave Kentucky and the only life she had ever known after discovering her prostitute mother was having an affair with the young boy Virgie loved.

Filled with hatred, resentment and shame for the woman she called Mom, it was not until her mother’s funeral, did she learn the horrible truth, the reason for her change and the reason why she became the town whore, a weedmonkey.

A haunting true story…

From the author: My mother began writing Weedmonkey when I was a little girl. In 2006, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given three months to live. On her deathbed, she asked me to finish writing it for her. I said yes.

 

Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure

by Jim Murphy, Alison Blank

   This is the story of a killer that has been striking people down for thousands of years: tuberculosis. After centuries of ineffective treatments, the microorganism that causes TB was identified, and the cure was thought to be within reach—but drug-resistant varieties continue to plague and panic the human race.

The “biography” of this deadly germ, an account of the diagnosis, treatment, and “cure” of the disease over time, and the social history of an illness that could strike anywhere but was most prevalent among the poor are woven together in an engrossing, carefully researched narrative. Bibliography, source notes, index.

 

As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil, the impossible life of Mary Benson

by Rodney Bolt

  As Good as God, As Clever as the Devil brings the late-Victorian and early-Edwardian period to vivid life through the telling of the remarkable true story of the life of Mary Benson.

'She is as good as God, and as clever as the Devil.' Dame Ethel Smyth, English composer and leader of the women's suffrage movement

Young Minnie Sidgwick was just twelve years old when her cousin, twenty-three-year old Edward Benson, proposed to her in 1853. Edward went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury and little Minnie - as Mary Benson - to preside over Lambeth Palace, and a social world that ranged from Tennyson and Browning to foreign royalty and Queen Victoria herself. Prime Minister William Gladstone called her 'the cleverest woman in Europe'.

Yet Mrs Benson's most intense relationships were not with her husband and his associates, but with other women. When the Archbishop died, Mary - 'Ben' to her intimates - turned down an offer from the Queen to live at Windsor, and set up home in a Jacobean manor house with her friend Lucy Tait. She remained at the heart of her family of fiercely eccentric and 'unpermissably gifted' children, each as individual as herself. They knew Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Gertrude Bell. Arthur wrote the words for 'Land of Hope and Glory'; Fred became a hugely successful author (his Mapp and Lucia novels still have a cult following); and Maggie a renowned Egyptologist. But none of them was 'the marrying sort' and such a rackety family seemed destined for disruption: Maggie tried to kill her mother and was institutionalized, Arthur suffered numerous breakdowns and young Hugh became a Catholic priest, embroiled in scandal.

 

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters

by Mark Dunn

 Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet

 

And the “Plus 8’s,” the books I’ll read if I actually finish the other 20 and have time to spare before Labor Day…we’ll see if that happens.

 

The Book of Lost Things

by John Connolly  

   High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own -- populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things.

Taking readers on a vivid journey through the loss of innocence into adulthood and beyond, New York Times bestselling author John Connolly tells a dark and compelling tale that reminds us of the enduring power of stories in our lives.

 

Little, Big

by John Crowley

   John Crowley's masterful Little, Big is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood—not found on any map—to marry Daily Alice Drinkwater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder.

 

The Testament of Gideon Mack

by James Robertson

   The Testament of Gideon Mack is James Robertson's acclaimed novel exploring faith and belief.

For Gideon Mack, faithless minister, unfaithful husband and troubled soul, the existence of God, let alone the Devil, is no more credible than that of ghosts or fairies. Until the day he falls into a gorge and is rescued by someone who might just be Satan himself.

Mack's testament - a compelling blend of memoir, legend, history, and, quite probably, madness - recounts one man's emotional crisis, disappearance, resurrection and death. It also transports you into an utterly mesmerising exploration of the very nature of belief.

 

The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer

by Kate Summerscale

   Early in the morning of Monday 8 July 1895, thirteen-year-old Robert Coombes and his twelve-year-old brother Nattie set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbours, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next ten days Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents' valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. But as the sun beat down on the Coombes house, a strange smell began to emanate from the building. When the police were finally called to investigate, the discovery they made sent the press into a frenzy of horror and alarm, and Robert and Nattie were swept up in a criminal trial that echoed the outrageous plots of the 'penny dreadful' novels that Robert loved to read. In The Wicked Boy, Kate Summerscale has uncovered a fascinating true story of murder and morality - it is not just a meticulous examination of a shocking Victorian case, but also a compelling account of its aftermath, and of man's capacity to overcome the past.

 

Spring and All

by William Carlos Williams

  Spring and All is a manifesto of the imagination — a hybrid of alternating sections of prose and free verse that coalesce in dramatic, energetic, and beautifully cryptic statements of how language re-creates the world. Spring and All contains some of Williams’s best-known poetry, including Section I, which opens, “By the road to the contagious hospital,” and Section XXII, where Williams penned his most famous poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow.”

 

Letters of Medieval Women

by Anne Crawford

 This work covers letters written by medieval women covering the period between approximately 1200 and 1500. The letters show the concerns and feelings of women from less exalted social circles and the vitality and variety of their lives. Most collections of medieval letters, dominated by male writers, are arranged according to the subject of the letters. Here, the emphasis is on the women's relationships with their families, parents, siblings, husbands and children and their wider social networks. A brief introduction to each letter sets it in context and provides information about the writer

 

The Night Garden

by Lisa Van Allen

Nestled in the bucolic town of Green Valley in upstate New York, the Pennywort farm appears ordinary, yet at its center lies something remarkable: a wild maze of colorful gardens that reaches beyond the imagination. Local legend says that a visitor can gain answers to life’s most difficult problems simply by walking through its lush corridors.

   Yet the labyrinth has never helped Olivia Pennywort, the garden’s beautiful and enigmatic caretaker. She has spent her entire life on her family’s land, harboring a secret that forces her to keep everyone at arm’s length. But when her childhood best friend, Sam Van Winkle, returns to the valley, Olivia begins to question her safe, isolated world and wonders if she at last has the courage to let someone in. As she and Sam reconnect, Olivia faces a difficult question: Is the garden maze that she has nurtured all of her life a safe haven or a prison?

 

 

The New Diary: How to use a journal for self-guidance and expanded creativity

by Tristine Rainer

  The New Diary is about a completely modern concept of journal writing. It has little to do with the rigid daily calendar diary you may have kept as a child or the factual travelogue you wrote to recall the Grand Canyon. Instead, it is a tool for tapping the full power of your inner resources.

The New Diary is as much for those who already keep a journal as it is for those who have never kept one. It does not tell you the "right" way to keep a diary; rather, it offers numerous possibilities for using the diary to achieve your own purposes. It is a place for you to clarify goals, visualize the future, and focus your engergies; a means of freeing your intuition and imagination; a workbook for exploring your dreams, your past, and your present life.

It is for everyone seeking concrete methods for dealing with personal problems. It is for women and men interested in achieving self-reliance and inner liberation, for artists and writers seeking new techniques for overcoming blocks to creativity.