![]() There were so many other books, too, so many authors-S.E. It was where I first learned the importance of plot and structure and about the second-person point of view. I was also a big fan of the Choose Your Own Adventure series, where readers were asked to make choices in plot that would determine the fate of the main character, which was always assumed to be the reader. I recall being so engrossed in the story that I faked being sick just so that I could stay home from school to finish reading it. Frisby, her ill son, Timothy, and a group of highly intelligent lab rats that, through scientific experimentation, had acquired the ability to read and write. A children’s story, it concerned a widowed field mouse named Mrs. ![]() The first book I remember reading for actual pleasure was Robert C. So, it’s a bit anomalous that I, the youngest of eleven children, born into a working class family and raised in a suburb of Los Angeles, a suburb surrounded by factories and plants, would end up becoming a writer and an avid reader. The only time I ever saw my siblings crack open a book was when their teachers assigned homework. ![]() We didn’t read out of pleasure at my house. ![]() The only books we carried around were those assigned to us by our teachers. I was raised in an environment where books were rare and precious commodities. ![]() By California Humanities Board Member, Alex Espinoza ![]()
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![]() ![]() Young Achievers: we've reached out to some of the young people who refuse to let their age be a barrier to success. ![]() Meet some of your iconic record holders in our Hall of Fame section. Understand the challenges being faced by our planet because of climate change, and find out what's being done to reverse the decline and build a better future. See dinosaurs come back to life with a free augmented-reality feature. So join us as we take a deep dive into GWR 2022, through the vast panorama of record-breaking in 9 fact-packed chapters, including all our favourite sports, animal and entertainment records as well as the following new features: The changing pace of the last year has given us the opportunity to take stock of our planet and explore the current state of the environment, as seen through our unique record-breaking lens. Welcome to the 2022 edition of the world's best-selling annual book!Ī global pandemic and lockdowns haven't stopped record-breakers from achieving spectacular things. ![]() ![]() I wish I had said to him then - yes, I know, to a tiger, but still - I wish I had said, "Richard Parker, it's over. I wish so much that I'd had one last look at him in the lifeboat, that I'd provoked him a little, so that I was on his mind. That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse. It's important in life to conclude things properly. For example - I wonder - could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less? I'll tell you, that's one thing I have about my nickname, the way the number runs on forever. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. “What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell. ![]() ![]() ![]() But for small businessman Sam Peebles, who thinks he may be losing his mind, another enemy is hiding there as well - the truth. ![]() Three Past Midnight: "The Library Policeman" is set in Junction City, Iowa, an unlikely place for evil to be hiding. Alone, that is, until a figure named John Shooter arrives, pointing an accusing finger. Two Past Midnight: "Secret Window, Secret Garden" enters the suddenly strange life of writer Mort Rainey, recently divorced, depressed, and alone on the shore of Tashmore Lake. Only 11 passengers survive, but landing in an eerily empty world makes them wish they hadn't. One Past Midnight: "The Langoliers" takes a red-eye flight from LA to Boston into a most unfriendly sky. ![]() Four chiller novellas set to keep listeners awake long after bedtime. ![]() ![]() ![]() When her much older husband starts to have erectile problems, she advertises for sexual partners on a website and treats it as a joke when one of them sends her abusive texts. These are women whose attitudes to sex were formed in the 1960s and they seem never to have reconsidered them, as evidenced by Vanessa’s admiration for the Marquis de Sade. Vanessa and Isadora resemble their creator to such an extent that multiple Jongs seem to flit through the pages of the book. She has a poodle called Belinda Barkawitz and her best friend is Isadora Wing, heroine of Jong’s bestselling novel Fear of Flying. Her protagonist, an actress in her early sixties called Vanessa Wonderman, lives with her fabulously wealthy husband in New York. In that sense, Erica Jong can’t be accused of going after the sympathy vote. ![]() They share some of the existential anxieties of ordinary people, but such gilded living makes empathy a bit of a stretch. They go to glitzy parties and sociable AA meetings and they have cosmetic surgeons on hand to smooth out lines and wrinkles. They live in spacious apartments in Manhattan and own ski places in Aspen. The characters in Erica Jong’s new novel are not like the rest of us. ![]() ![]() ![]() Had the convention dissolved, any number of adverse outcomes could have resulted, including civil war or a reversion to monarchy. The Philadelphia convention could easily have been a failure, and the risk of collapse was always present. Based on prodigious research and told largely through the voices of the participants, Michael Klarman's The Framers' Coup narrates how the Framers' clashing interests shaped the Constitution-and American history itself. ![]() ![]() As Benjamin Franklin keenly observed, any assembly of men bring with them "all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views." One need not deny that the Framers had good intentions in order to believe that they also had interests. However, most of us are unaware how tumultuous and improbable the drafting and ratification processes were. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Nicholas Thornhill, Earl of Guildford has been searching for his missing wife for three weeks. But love always comes at a price, and she must make a painful sacrifice in order for them to be together. Only when the earl learns to trust her does she realize her future lies in the past. Worse, Victoria finds herself falling in love with a man who loathes her. Despite Victoria’s attempts to convince the earl she’s not his wife, her counterpart’s infidelity, lies, and ill-tempered personality makes the task almost impossible. ![]() When a bomb explosion thrusts Victoria Ashton backward in time to 1897, she’s forced to impersonate the Countess of Guildford. With an endearing cast of characters this multiple award-winner is sure to earn a place on the keeper shelf. WARNING: This book contains a proper English earl, whose frozen heart hides a tortured soul, and a feisty modern-day heroine determined to convince the man she's not the woman he thinks she is. 2015 GOLD MEDAL Winner, Readers' Favorite International Book Awards ![]() ![]() “Diversity is a constant, important topic in the children’s book world. In the capable hands of this writer, readers will adore Willow Chance and wish her a good and happy and mostly normal future with her new family.” The writing is remarkably funny for what could have been a sad tale of growing up surrounded by people who have no reason to care about you. Yes, you can see the ending coming, especially if you are an adult reader. With an array of distinctly fascinating characters parading in and out of the book, I truly hated to turn the last page. This is one smart, resourceful 12-year-old.Īlternating chapters are told in the voices of her school counselor and an older girl whose Vietnamese mom runs a nail salon. Give credit to her adoptive parents, who ‘Really Truly L-O-V-E’ Willow. Instead, she teaches herself Vietnamese, researches rare diseases, and tends her garden. Ever,’ Willow seems untroubled by being outside the mainstream. Acknowledging both her strangeness and that, despite being a thinker, she’s ‘never the teacher’s pet. Willow Chance – a perfect name for the highly-gifted narrator – begins chapter two of Counting by 7s by going back to the beginning, in a new school where she knows no one. ![]() If the story’s skillfully written and the characters cleverly conceived, it’s hard to stop. ![]() “If you know by the end of chapter one that the narrator’s parents have been killed, do you keep on reading? ![]() ![]() ![]() Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick’s terms…until he discovers the ALC’s mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own. ![]() Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. The ALC’s leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji’s darkest secret: the cult’s bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all. ![]() Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with.īut when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him-the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. "A long, sustained scream to the various strains of anti-transgender legislation multiplying around the world like, well, a virus." -The New York Times A furious, queer debut novel about embracing the monster within and unleashing its power against your oppressors. ![]() ![]() ![]() 'A faultless novel, effortlessly profound. Her sheer brilliance makes it all seems so effortless' GRAHAM NORTON Anne Tyler’s ‘French Braid’ captures the avoidances and silences of family life Maat 6:00 am By Laurie Hertzel Star Tribune Robin is a plumber and Mercy is first a housewife and. 'Exquisitely crafted, tender, hilarious, devastatingly precise, I loved this powerful meditation on the small and often unvoiced moments that can make up a life' RACHEL JOYCE 'She is and always will be my favourite author' LIANE MORIARTY 'Gorgeous, charming, profound, and written with such lightness of touch' MARIAN KEYES The glorious Sunday Times bestseller follows one family's joys and heartbreaks, mistakes and secrets, from the 1950s right up to today It's the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations. Anne Tyler, the Pulitzer Prizewinning writer widely considered one of America’s finest authors, released her novel French Braid in 2022. For Mercy it all begins in 1959, with a holiday to a cabin by a lake. Not even their cat, Desmond.īut it turns out family life is impossible to escape - particularly when it's in your past. When Mercy Garrett moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice.Īll she wants is space and silence. ![]() |