Abby Sinclair is the neglected daughter of a plantation owner. Three years after the end of the Civil War, she is still mourning the loss of her uncle and her family is still adjusting to the loss of their slaves. When her father decides to move the whole family out to the Outer Banks of Continue Reading…
Moses Froben, an opera singer of world-renown, raised a son who could not possibly have been his own. When his son asked how they had come to be together, Moses would studiously avoid the question. On Moses’s death, however, his son found a memoir that told of Moses’s humble beginnings and how father and son Continue Reading…
The Christmas Box is about a young couple and their young daughter who move in with an elderly widow to help her out with light chores in exchange for rooms. Mary, the widow, becomes an adopted grandmother to them all and feels compelled to pass on wisdom she has gained with her years. This was Continue Reading…
Have you ever wondered exactly where some of our more common phrases come from? Judy Parkinson sets out to give a brief definition and history of some colorful, common English sayings. I found this book interesting and I learned a lot. For example, “Put a sock in it!” comes from the days of the old Continue Reading…
William Bromley is a World War II veteran living in 1950’s London. In the war, he led a mountaineering expedition that ended disastrously. He has never moved past this and started living again. He’s just existing–teaching school, admiring the secretary from a distance, spending Friday evenings with his one friend, and visiting his father on Continue Reading…
My seven-year-old cousin and fellow lover-of-all-things-fairy, Natalie, convinced me to read this by reciting the cover blurb to me: “Part comedy, part love story, part everything-but-the-kitchen-sink.” What fairy tale fan could resist that? Not this one! I loved that the defining characteristics of the characters weren’t their beauty or lack thereof. Chris is intelligent, kind, Continue Reading…
Professor Random has sneezed Alice right out of Wonderland. He sends young Henry Witherspoon into the book to find her and put her in her place before the world as we know it comes to an end. But Henry accidentally gets sent into the wrong book. Luckily, he meets the unflappable doodle witch, Winnie Flapjack, Continue Reading…
I read this for A Christmas Carol but decided to read the rest and see what else Dickens had to say about Christmas. There were a few other little gems, although none were as good as A Christmas Carol, but there were some that I didn’t like at all. A Christmas Carol was a 4 Continue Reading…
In Annexed, author Sharon Dogar imagines what life in the Annex with Anne Frank must have been like for young Peter. We know all about Anne’s thoughts and feelings, but surely Peter needs a chance to tell his side of things too. The novel begins as Peter is dying and looking back on his life, Continue Reading…
Do you ever find yourself reading along, and when you come to a reference to ancient Greece or Rome, you start scratching your head? With sort of a, “I think I heard something about that somewhere, but I don’t remember much about it” kind of thought? The Classics: All You Need to Know, from Zeus’s Continue Reading…
The Somnambulist features Edward Moon, a conjurer most easily compared to Sherlock Holmes, but with a freakish twist. His Watson is an 8-foot-tall mute man named–can you guess?–The Somnambulist. The pair are asked to investigate a bizarre murder in the seamier part of London at the beginning of the novel. Within pages, they have solved Continue Reading…