6/7/2023 0 Comments Mitchell albala art![]()
0 Comments
![]() If it was indeed poison, one sip and I could die." If I suspected poison and tossed it into the pool, she would have her guards behead me on the spot. ![]() "I took the cup and raised it toward Tryphaena as if toasting her, but really I was watching the liquid, looking for oil floating on its surface, or powder sticking to the sides of the cup. Now the Pharaoh has gone into hiding, hunted by his enemies, and the young princess has to keep her head-literally-as her power-hungry older sister Tryphaena threatens to grab her father's throne. Her father, the Pharaoh of Egypt, nearly died when a venomous adder meant for him attacked and killed his favorite servant. ![]() The year is 57 B.C., and 12-year-old Cleopatra, Princess of the Nile, has a lot on her mind. ![]() ![]() ![]() The grandfather has seen many fever outbreaks in his long life, and this seems no worse than any other. At first many people, including Mattie’s grandfather, are skeptical about the fever. Soon the fever spreads throughout the city. One day Polly is perfectly healthy, and the next day she’s dead. The fever hits Philadelphia in the summer of 1793, and one of the first victims is the family’s maid, Polly, who had been Mattie’s childhood friend. Instead, she has a crush on Nathaniel, a painter’s apprentice. Mattie has dreams of going to Paris, expanding the coffee shop, and opening a store that sells the latest French fashions, but she has no desire to marry the rich man’s son. In an early scene, we find out that she wants to marry Mattie off to the son of a wealthy family. It is suggested that her mother came from a higher social class and has aspirations for Mattie. Mattie’s father, a carpenter, had died in a fall from a ladder when Mattie was four years old. She is actually closer to Eliza than to her own mother, who is always scolding her for not doing her chores. ![]() Eliza, a freed slave, is the family’s cook and seems like a second mother to Mattie. The protagonist is fourteen-year-old Matilda (“Mattie”) Cook, who lives in the apartment above her family’s coffee shop with her hard-working mother and her grandfather, a Revolutionary War veteran. It was published in 2000, but, of course, it seems very timely today. Fever 1793 is an award-winning young adult novel by Laurie Halse Anderson about the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793. ![]() ![]() ![]() We in the west are so very fortunate with our educational opportunities - even if college does cost a king's ransom these days, it is possible. He would like to get a student visa to study more in Japan, but so far no luck. ![]() He's very sharp - currently he's reading "The Tao of Physics" - and is obviously understanding it from the conversations we have. The youngest son, who had just been born when I trekked up to Muktinath, is the waiter in the dining room. The older son is the one who brings me my "bed tea" each morning around 6:45. There's a daughter, who has a darling 2 year old of her own, who is busy in the kitchen with her mom at meal times. Or more accurately, his wife actually runs the guest house with the help of their children. Whenever I arrive back here, I greet them with a "Toshi Dili" ("Good Fortune" - the modern Tibetan greeting). I see him sitting on the porch of their living quarters at the back of the guest house most of the time, prayer wheel steadily turning. It's a magical, barren spot, high on the backside of the Annapurna Massif, where there is a spring where fire and water both come out of the earth into the air. She and her husband come from Muktinath in Mustang province, an area I visited when I went trekking in 1980. She seems to be very sweet and very strong. I hear her gravelly voice over all the other human sounds of the area. The matriarch of the family and strongest personality is the granny. ![]() Like all guest houses I have ever stayed at in Nepal, this one is run by the family that owns it. ![]() ![]() ![]() The series originated as a poem that Kessler was writing about a "little girl who lived on a boat but had a big secret" an editor recommended that Kessler turn the poem into a book. It is illustrated primarily by Sarah Gibb and published by Orion Children's Books in Britain, and Candlewick Press in America. ![]() Orion Children's Books Candlewick Press (US)Įmily Windsnap is a series of children's fantasy novels written by British author Liz Kessler, inaugurated by The Tail of Emily Windsnap in 2003 and continuing as of 2020. Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the DeepĮmily Windsnap and the Castle in the MistĮmily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight SunĮmily Windsnap and the Ship of Lost SoulsĮmily Windsnap and the Falls of Forgotten Island ![]() ![]() 'A love letter to folklore and the rebellious women of history' Publishers Weekly a tale of women's battle for equality, of fairy tales twisted into wonderfully witchy spells, of magics both large and small, and history re-imagined' Louisa Morgan, author of A Secret History of Witches 'Compelling, exhilarating and magical - a must-read' Booklist (starred review) I devoured it in enormous gulps, and utterly loved it' Kat Howard, author of The Unkindness of Ghosts Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote - and perhaps not even to live - the sisters must delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.īut when the three Eastwood sisters join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. 'A gorgeous and thrilling paean to the ferocious power of women' Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of Strange the Dreamer a tale that will sweep you away' Yangsze Choo, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Tiger ![]() 6/6/2023 0 Comments Swim Back to Me by Ann Packer![]() ![]() Her prose is deceptively simple, her insights always complex. It’s characteristic of Packer’s subtle artistry that “Her Firstborn” climaxes with a sentence whose emotional force derives from the insertion of a comma. Families are fragile in these gently unsparing stories the death of a child drives both “Molten,” a scarifying snapshot of raw grief, and “Her Firstborn,” the tender story of a young father-to-be haunted by the knowledge that his wife’s previous marriage was destroyed by the crib death of her 5-month-old son. There, on the eve of her brother’s wedding, she copes with impossible Dan, the novella’s charming scapegrace now revealed as a terminal narcissist, and quietly seethes over the disengagement of Joanie, who long ago checked out of the drama. ![]() To Richard, the 13-year-old narrator of “Walk for Mankind,” his new friend Sasha’s parents, Dan and Joanie Horowitz, seem happier and much more fun than his morose father and his well-intentioned, much-resented mother, who left her husband and son to move out to Oakland because she “needed to do something useful with my life.” But Sasha’s escapades with sex and drugs over the course of the 1972-3 school year reveal fissures in the Horowitzes’ cheerfully bohemian façade even before Dan loses his job at Stanford-and before the collection’s final story, “Things Said or Done,” revisits Sasha decades later. ![]() ![]() A novella and five stories limn with acuity and empathy the intricate negotiations and painful losses of family life. ![]() 6/5/2023 0 Comments The henna wars adiba jaigirdar![]() I think this is often how real life is too, and we often use humour as a way to alleviate the more serious things we experience. This is actually a staple in a lot of South Asian media, like Bollywood, where humour and serious themes go hand-in-hand, often playing off each other. I love balancing some of the heavier themes in my work with lighter moments. Humour is really important in my work, especially since I write for a younger audience. It’s been amazing to see readers celebrate these books, and to see the stories resonate with them. It’s been amazing to have these accolades specifically for these books because even now there are very few books written by and about Bengali people, let alone about queer Bengali girls. Tell me about them and what such accolades have meant.īoth The Henna Wars and Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating are queer romcoms that centre Bengali girls. ![]() Your second book, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, won the YA Book Prize 2022. ![]() Time Magazine called your debut, The Henna Wars, one of the best YA books of all time and it won two KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards. ![]() 6/4/2023 0 Comments Cold storage book review![]() ![]() ![]() I actually made a movie about a blackout in the mid-90s called The Trigger Effect, which was narrowly focused on these three people stuck together. I’ve been interested in the subject for a long time. We spoke to David Koepp about writing his latest novel, and how the adaptations of both this and his previous novel, Cold Storage, are coming along… When did you first get the idea for Aurora? Aubrey’s estranged brother Thom, a self-made billionaire who abandoned her years ago, retreats to a gilded desert bunker where he can ride out the crisis in perfect luxury.īut the complicated history between the siblings is far from over, and what feels like the end of the world is just the beginning of a personal reckoning long overdue… Soon they hear rumours of riots, the struggle for food becomes real, and even within their small communities, the rule of law is collapsing. Aubrey and her stepson now face the biggest challenge of their lives: A society without rules. But this time the blackout won’t be over soon – it could last for years. When a solar storm hits the earth, the lights go out across the planet in David Koepp’s latest novel, Aurora. ![]() 6/4/2023 0 Comments The future of another timeline![]() ![]() Tess and Beth’s lives intertwine as war breaks out across the timeline–a war that threatens to destroy time travel and leave only a small group of elites with the power to shape the past, present, and future. And just when Tess believes she’s found a way to make an edit that actually sticks, she encounters a group of dangerous travelers bent on stopping her at any cost. But rewriting the timeline isn’t as simple as editing one person or event. ![]() This murder sets Beth and her friends on a path of escalating violence and vengeance as they realize many other young women in the world need protecting too.Ģ022: Determined to use time travel to create a safer future, Tess has dedicated her life to visiting key moments in history and fighting for change. “ 1992: After a confrontation at a riot grrl concert, seventeen-year-old Beth finds herself in a car with her friend’s abusive boyfriend dead in the backseat, agreeing to help her friends hide the body. ![]() |