![]() ![]() They chatter with one another, but nature, we learn, has one rule: Do not talk to people.Īpplegate has a quirky imagination and a deft touch. ![]() They are “proof that something bad can become something good with enough time and care and hope.” Hers are home to owlets, possums, raccoons and skunks. Bongo, a self-described pessimist with a fine ear for the nuances of human language, resents being grouped in a “murder” of crows, while a bunch of hummingbirds is called a “charm.” She’s full of hollows, at her age, which start as wounds, but slowly heal, offering protection to creatures. She has lots of opinions and a tendency, when her best friend Bongo the Crow is hanging about, to philosophize. On the first of May, her limbs are tied with rags, tags, even “the occasional gym sock,” with wishes scribbled on them. She’s also a “wishtree,” one of an honorable tribe that hosts a centuries-old tradition found all over the world. ![]() Katherine Applegate’s “Wishtree” is a beautifully written, morally bracing story that will leave its imprint on a reader of any age.Ībout that tree: Red is a city tree, a tall, largehearted, middle-aged (at 216 rings) red oak. ![]() What’s more, this is a tale told by … a tree. Leave it to a children’s books writer to produce the most moving commentary I’ve read on the anti-immigration movement - without mentioning bans or walls or presidents. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Now it’s true that our hero, Vic Barinov, is a grizzly-tiger hybrid, but creating a cover that can successfully get that across. And with that in mind, I’m sure that all my loyal readers and hybrid friends will forgive the liberties taken with Bite Me. Especially the team that creates all my lovely covers. That being said, there’s only so much pressure I can put on a design team. And, until the end of time, I will stand tall with my mutt. ![]() It’s just wrong to hate those differently endowed. ![]() I’m the first to say it’s unfair to have prejudice against those with tusk-like fangs or snaggle-claws or excessively long legs combined with tiny paws. All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.Īs those of you who have read my books over the years know, I am against bigotry of any kind. ![]() ![]() ![]() This fast-paced tale of historical supernatural suspense, which Booklist hailed as “unfailingly readable and terrifically well-written,” provides “one cliffhanging chapter after another” ( Kirkus Reviews). In Victorian London, the black magician and spiritualist Jonathan seeks out the Throne of Solomon which will grant him immortality and dominion over Lucifer. ![]() ![]() Now, writer and fighter must stand together to save humanity from a darkness beyond even Poe’s tortured imagination. A bare-knuckle fighter named Pierce James Figg arrives with a letter of introduction from Charles Dickens, begging for Poe’s help chasing down the power-mad devil worshiper. In the shadows of New York City, Poe drowns his talent in rotgut gin, trying to forget the death of his beloved wife. In the shadows of New York City, Poe drowns his talent in rotgut gin, trying to forget the death of his beloved wife. To combat his dark designs, mankind’s hopes rest on a troubled author named Edgar Allan Poe. Jonathan is the most powerful psychic on earth, and in service of his god, Lucifer, he will tear civilization apart. The throne has been lost for millennia, but now one man seeks to find it and harness its secrets to unleash hell upon the world. It is said that beneath Solomon’s glorious throne, books that gave the fabled king control over life, death, and demonic power were buried. ![]() A half-mad, alcoholic Edgar Allan Poe aims to defeat an occultist’s terrifying plot in this “intelligent, suspenseful” thriller set in 1840s New York ( Booklist). ![]() ![]() ![]() The intellectual buzz in the still-young field of artificial intelligence was over programs that could recognize simple shapes and manipulate blocks. ![]() No one knew to what further uses home computers might be put. The people who bought or built them experimented with programming, often making their own simple games. The first home computers were being bought by people called hobbyists. Children played tic-tac-toe with their electronic toys, video game missiles took on invading asteroids, and “intelligent” programs could hold up their end of a serious chess match. Thirty years ago, when I joined the faculty at MIT to study computer culture, the world retained a certain innocence. ![]() ![]() Huddling for warmth, they pass the endless night by remembering the stories of how each came to love, marry, and ultimately move beyond Jack. Now, stranded in a North Dakota blizzard, they have come face-to-face-and each has an astonishing story to tell. with great poignancy and charm." - New York Times Book ReviewĪ darkly humorous novel of wild romance and heartbreak set against a raging North Dakota blizzard as five Native American women bond over their shared connection to one man, from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrichįive very different women have married Jack Mauser, a charming, infuriating schemer whose passions never survive the long haul. ![]() ![]() The result is a rich and fragrant infusion. ![]() "Romantic love, religious ecstasy, the strange mixture of devotion and misunderstanding that runs through families-all are steeped together. ![]() ![]() In the distance to their left, Langdon spied an elliptical-shaped lagoon with a small island adorned with lemon trees and statuary. They were standing beneath the trees at the edge of a wide-open plaza where several paths intersected. More important, traversing the Boboli Gardens would eventually lead them to the Palazzo Pitti, the stone citadel that once housed the main seat of the Medici grand duchy, and whose 140 rooms remained one of Florence’s most frequented tourist attractions. After all, the gardens were vast and had no shortage of hiding places-forests, labyrinths, grottoes, nymphaea. Langdon had little doubt that if he and Sienna could gain entrance to the gardens, they could make their way across it, bypassing the Porta Romana undetected. The massive expanse of the Boboli Gardens was now a popular tourist attraction. ![]() Along the Isolotto through the tunnel of leaves and Viottolone to the Neptune fountain and from there to the Grotta del Buontalenti and the door that provides access to the Vasari Corridor. ![]() ![]() I visited the Gardino di Boboli and in search of the places that are mentioned in the book. ![]() The main characters of the story Robert Langdon and Sienna Brooks traverse the famous gardens in their attempt to escape their pursuers. The latest bestselling novel by Dan Brown “Inferno” is for a large part set in Florence and one of the places that play a prominent role in the story is the Giardino di Boboli (Boboli Garden). ![]() ![]() No, no secret skills, beyond volunteering her time, being unsuspected of sneakiness (1966 here) and a giant purse. P’s Can-Do-Spirit is going to get her through, along with her amazing ability to connect with others. ![]() A simple job turns into a disaster– of course–but you just know that Mrs. is shown to a waiting room in the new CIA headquarters at the same time a legitimate applicant is expected. Because, of course, way forward in the future here-and-now, we actually understand that suicide is a real and sadly common event.Īt any rate, then it takes off rather nicely, semi-plausibly ( 1966, people, 1966), with a typical mistaken-identity thing: Mrs. But it was a bit disconcerting reading such exposition, and to then switch into ‘applying-to-be-a-spy” mode. P’s extreme emotion and not something played for laughs. I think, back then, it must have been meant by the author as representing Mrs. Pollifax contemplating the recent occasion she contemplated suicide. We aren’t meta-navel-gazers yet, people there’s very little post-mod nod-send-up here. ![]() Gilman’s elevator pitch was to take James Bond out of the picture, and put an adorable little white-haired grandmother in it. Lots of Cold War spy drama, if I remember my James Bond movies correctly. Published in 1966, it certainly speaks to simpler times, or perhaps different times. Pollifax? She’s unabashedly enthusiastic about travel and about meeting people from other cultures. ![]() ![]() Read February 2019 Recommended for people who like traveling in the 60s ★ ★ ★ ![]() ![]() It will take the support of her newly awakened family and the magic of Summer Island for Phoebe to embrace the challenge of an unexpected future and to trust her own heart. ![]() But when an accident threatens to destroy the tenuous tie between them, Phoebe realizes how fragile life can be, and that she has some serious choices to make about her own life. Each adventure opens a part of themselves they've neglected for too long and brings them closer together. Soon they're all enjoying things they used to do and discovering new ones. ![]() With Vera around, no one can stay morose for long, not even Lars, the grumpy widower next door, or his son Ty, formerly geeky middle child all grown up into a handsome and enigmatic man. Phoebe's plan for a peaceful retreat is quickly hijacked when globe-trotting Great Aunt Vera makes an unannounced pit stop. Large beach houses are replacing the old the Harken house next door is in disrepair. They both need a safe haven, and Phoebe knows just the place-Summer Island where Grandma Alice still rules the roost from the big New England beach house Phoebe and Ruth once called home. When reporter Phoebe Adams loses her job and her fiancé on the same day, it never occurs to her that she'll also have to support her mother, Ruth, through her divorce from Phoebe's father after thirty-five years of marriage. New York Times bestselling author Shelley Noble pens a heartwarming story of a mother-daughter road trip to the beach and to self-discovery. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “Widows and Children First!” premiered that fall. By the time his second installment, “Fugue in a Nursey”, followed in the winter of 1979, it was part of a stated trilogy. ![]() The “trilogy” began as a single one-act play, “The International Stud”, written by and starring a 23-year old Harvey Fierstein in the basement of the East Village’s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in 1978. I later had the chance to see an excellent production at Washington, D.C.’s Studio Theatre in 2013, starring a then-unknown Brandon Uranowitz, and kept wondering when the play would come back to New York. My young, gay eyes were transfixed, and there was no turning back. I had seen the Hollywood glitzed “The Birdcage” and “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar”, but the game changer was the 1988 film adaptation of Harvey Fierstein’s masterpiece, landmark play, the intimate “Torch Song Trilogy”. ![]() As a closeted-tween, happening upon that marathon coupled the excitement of finding King Tut’s Tomb with the revelation of peering through the looking glass to discover a world in which people like me existed. That was before the network made the jump to low-rent reality programming and still harbored an outsider focus on performing arts, drama, and independent film. One summer in the late 1990s, I stumbled across a late-night marathon of gay movies on Bravo. ![]() ![]() ![]() Margaret Flanaganįrom Kirkus ReviewsFifteen more times in these Sister Fidelma stories, Tremayne's Celtic sleuth hits the road and sorts out crime in seventh- century Ireland. A treasure trove of small gems for historical mystery fans. In each story Fidelma displays her usual knack for uncovering timeless, all too human motives as she solves crimes under the ancient Brehon law system in Ireland. The arrangement of the stories is strictly chronological, enabling devoted readers to fill in the voids between the novels. Like he does in the book-length mysteries the author uses these short stories to illustrate the unique, often coequal, role played by women in Ireland during this surprisingly enlightened era. These 15 tales feature inimitable and unshakable sleuth Sister Fidelma, a seventh-century Irish nun who also doubles as a distinguished advocate of the law courts of Ireland. In this collection of short mysteries, Tremayne fills in many of the background details of Fidelma and seventh-century Ireland not found in the novels, and weaves his always-beguiling mix of history and mystery.įrom BooklistCapitalizing on the popularity of his Sister Fidelma novels, Tremayne offers the complete set of Sister Fidelma short stories. ![]() ![]() “Sister Fidelma-an Eognacht princess and sister to the king of Cashel, a religieuse of the Celtic Church and an advocate of the Brehornn court-is one of the most interesting and compelling figures in contemporary mystery fiction. ![]() |