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Reviews

Reviews

by B. A. Shapiro - Fiction, Mystery

When Alizée Benoit, a young American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940, no one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her arts patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends and fellow WPA painters. And, some 70 years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who, while working at Christie’s auction house, uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind works by those now-famous Abstract Expressionist artists. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt?

by Stan Lee, Peter David, and Colleen Doran - Graphic Novel, Memoir, Nonfiction

In this gorgeously illustrated, full-color graphic memoir, Stan Lee --- comic book legend and co-creator of Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, the Incredible Hulk, and a legion of other Marvel superheroes --- shares his iconic legacy and the story of how modern comics came to be. Moving from his impoverished childhood in Manhattan to his early days writing comics, through his military training films during World War II and the rise of the Marvel empire in the 1960s to the current resurgence in movies, AMAZING FANTASTIC INCREDIBLE documents the life of a man and the legacy of an industry and career.

by David Mitchell - Fiction, Paranormal, Suspense, Thriller

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents --- an odd brother and sister --- extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late.

by James Shapiro - History, Nonfiction

Preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro shows how the tumultuous events in England in 1606 affected Shakespeare and shaped the three great tragedies he wrote that year --- KING LEAR, MACBETH and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. THE YEAR OF LEAR sheds light on these tragedies by placing them in the context of their times, while also allowing us greater insight into how Shakespeare was personally touched by such events as a terrible outbreak of plague and growing religious divisions.

written by Marie Jalowicz Simon, translated by Anthea Bell - History, Memoir, Nonfiction

In 1942, Marie Jalowicz, a 20-year-old Jewish Berliner, made the extraordinary decision to do everything in her power to avoid the concentration camps. She removed her yellow star, took on an assumed identity and disappeared into the city. In the years that followed, Marie took shelter wherever it was offered, living with the strangest of bedfellows, from circus performers and committed communists to convinced Nazis. As Marie quickly learned, however, compassion and cruelty are very often two sides of the same coin. Fifty years later, she agreed to tell her story for the first time.

by Claire Vaye Watkins - Dystopian, Fiction

Unrelenting drought has transfigured Southern California into a surreal, phantasmagoric landscape. With the Central Valley barren, underground aquifer drained, and Sierra snowpack entirely depleted, most “Mojavs,” prevented by both armed vigilantes and an indifferent bureaucracy from freely crossing borders to lusher regions, have allowed themselves to be evacuated to internment camps. In Los Angeles’s Laurel Canyon, two young Mojavs squat in a starlet’s abandoned mansion. But when they cross paths with a mysterious child, the thirst for a better future begins.

by Ilan Stavans - Cultural Studies, History, Nonfiction

The year 2015 marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of the complete DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA. The novel has spawned ballets and operas, poems and plays, movies and video games, and even shapes the identities of entire nations. In QUIXOTE, Ilan Stavans explores these many manifestations. Training his eye on the tumultuous struggle between logic and dreams, he reveals the ways in which a work of literature is a living thing that influences and is influenced by the world around it.

written by George R. R. Martin, illustrations by Gary Gianni - Adventure, Fantasy, Fiction

Taking place nearly a century before the events of "Game of Thrones," A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS compiles the first three official prequel novellas to George R. R. Martin’s ongoing masterwork, A Song of Ice and Fire. These never-before-collected adventures recount an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living consciousness.

by Ben McPherson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

For Alex Mercer, his wife, Millicent, and their precocious 11-year-old son, Max, are everything. But when he and Max find their enigmatic next-door neighbor dead in his apartment, their lives are suddenly and irrevocably changed. The police begin an extremely methodical investigation, and Alex becomes increasingly impatient for them to finish. After all, it was so clearly a suicide. As new information is uncovered, troubling questions arise --- questions that begin to throw suspicion on Alex, Millicent and even Max. It seems each of them has secrets. And each has something to hide.

written by David Almond, illustrated by Eleanor Taylor - Fiction, Short Stories, Young Adult 12+

May Malone is said to have a monster in her house, but what Norman finds there may just be the angel he needs. Joe Quinn’s house is noisy with poltergeists, or could it be Davie’s raging causing the disturbance? Fragile Annie learns the truth about herself in a photograph taken by a traveling man near the sea. Set in the northern English Tyneside country of the author’s childhood, these eight short stories by the incomparable David Almond evoke gritty realities and ineffable longings, experiences both ordinary and magical. In autobiographical preludes to each story, the writer shows how all things can be turned into tales, reflecting on a time of wonder, tenderness and joy.