The Librarian: Quest for the Spear is the story of a professional student who gets pushed out into the real world (finally, at the age of 30) to find that not everything is as it seems and magic is real. He is hired by "the library," an age-old institution that traps magical artifacts and prevents them from falling into the wrong hands.
Isabelle comes back to her family home after the death of her sister to find an autistic savant growing up in her sister's home. She teaches the girl, Karen, how to function in the world. Karen learns how to interact with the whole, not only through her aunt's patience, but also through the animals with whom she shares a special connection. Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World is Karen's story.
When Jason Amundsen drops an egg farm bomb on his wife Lucie, she understandably balks at the idea. He’s already dragged her from city to city chasing his supposed dreams, but those dreams at least came with health benefits. This one? It’s too much, and Lucie successfully puts the kibosh on the idea. Until Jason gets laid off.
Margee Kerr, author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear, and also the reader of the audiobook, is a sociologist who studies fear. Using herself as a guinea pig, and taking part in activities as varied as riding roller coasters, walking through haunted houses, taking part in paranormal investigations, and visiting Japan's notorious "suicide forest," Kerr explains what happens to the body and the mind when we take part in scary activities, or daredevil adventures.
In his introduction to Forever Words, Paul Muldoon says, “So ingrained in our collective unconscious is the voice of Johnny Cash that we can all but hear the boom-chicka boom-chicka of his guitar accompaniment, at once reassuring and disquieting in its very familiarity.” That was absolutely true for me as I was reading through this collection.
This is the first in a six book series, totaling some 3,000 pages, about a quiet man from Norway reflecting on parts of his life. It is boring and breathtaking at the same time. The author ruminates on the death of his father and his own mortality as he shuffles through memories of his childhood and then the more recent past. Day-to-day events such as making breakfast, working at a computer, and making phone calls take center stage. We all do things like this every day and then forget about them. Somehow, Karl Ove Knausgaard makes them memorable.
Sue Lowell Gallion has recently celebrated the publication of her first book, Pug Meets Pig, a picture book illustrated by Joyce Wan. A sequel is already on the way. We asked Sue a few questions to learn more about who she is, her journey to publication, her thoughts on being an author, and her plans for the future.
"After their English aunt dies, listless American twins Julia and Valentina travel to London to live in their aunt's now empty flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery. There they become embroiled in the day-to-day sagas of their eccentric neighbors. But soon they discover that something is alive in Highgate--something unable to move on."
