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Steven Wright

They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.

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Steven Wright

Matt Taibbi

There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power.

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Matt Taibbi

Stephen King

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

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Stephen King

October 30, 2015

I feel like the Halloween equivalent of the Grinch in our neighborhood as I have yet to even put out a pumpkin for the holiday! I have five orange mums on the porch, but nothing that screams Halloween. We have boxes and boxes of decorations that we have accumulated through the years, but the last months have been hectic with weekend business events, and I have not gotten around to traipsing around the attic to gather them. I am determined to at least have the three big pumpkins in the windows by later today! I also need to buy some candy --- the kind we want to have leftovers of!

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Halloween may be over, but Friday the 13th falls this month! Which curse from a YA novel is the worst of them all?

November 2, 2015, 143 voters

November 2015

This month’s Cool and New roundup includes THE TRILOGY OF TWO by Juman Malouf, a mystical circus tale that follows twin musical prodigies with extraordinary powers; KID ATHLETES by David Stabler with illustrations by Doogie Horner, the latest in the True Tales series highlighting little-known stories from celebrities’ childhoods; and Read more »

Julie Checkoway, author of The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui's Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians. In spite of everything --- including the virulent anti-Japanese sentiment of the late 1930s --- by their third year, they'd be declared the greatest swimmers in the world, but they'd also face their greatest obstacle: the dawning of a world war and the cancellation of the Games. Still, in 1948, they'd have one last chance for Olympic glory.

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Ruth Rendell, author of Dark Corners

When his father dies, Carl Martin inherits a house in an increasingly rich and trendy London neighborhood. Carl needs cash, so he rents the upstairs room and kitchen to the first person he interviews: Dermot McKinnon. That was colossal mistake number one. Mistake number two was keeping his father’s bizarre collection of homeopathic “cures” that he found in the medicine cabinet, including a stash of controversial diet pills. Mistake number three was selling 50 of those diet pills to a friend, who is then found dead.

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Gregory Maguire, author of After Alice

Ada, a friend of Alice’s mentioned briefly in ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late --- and tumbles down the rabbit hole herself. Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life.

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November 2015

This month’s roundup includes THE CAMBODIAN DANCER: Sophany's Gift of Hope by Daryn Reicherter with illustrations by Christy Hale, the true story of a Cambodian woman who fled the Khmer Rouge and started a dance school in the United States; LOST.

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