Four Queens : the Proven?al Sisters Who Ruled Europe
Publisher Weekly Review: Starred Review. The four beautiful, cultured and clever daughters of the Count and Countess of Provence made illustrious marriages and lived at the epicenter of political power and intrigue in 13th-century Europe. Marguerite accompanied her husband, King Louis IX of France, on his disastrous first crusade to the Holy Land, where straight […]
Miss Julia Strikes Back
"With Miss Julia's darling Sam off on a long-planned trip and Hazel Marie vacationing in Mexico with Mr. Pickens, life is simply too quiet for Miss Julia. Of course, she has Little Lloyd to take care of (though he's not that little anymore and she's trying to remember to call him Lloyd). And she has […]
Scarlett
Publishers Weekly Rebellious Scarlett still has not gotten over her father's cheating and her parents' divorce. When she gets thrown out of yet another school, her mother sends her from London to the Irish countryside to live with her father, his pregnant wife and her stepmother's nine-year-old daughter. Scarlett begs her mother, "Don't make me […]
Paula Spencer
James Hynes – The Washington Post : Reading Paula Spencer is pure, undiluted pleasure, and it's not necessary to have read the first novel to thoroughly enjoy this one. Paula is still a very funny woman (and her sharp-tongued sister Carmel is even funnier), and Doyle himself is still the master of the extended set-piece. […]
The Dead Fathers Club
Kirkus Reviews: Literary influence is neatly reconfigured in the English author's second novel (after The Last Family in England, 2005), in which an 11-year-old schoolboy is commanded to seek revenge by the ghost of his murdered father. "Dad's ghost" appears to Philip Noble, not on the battlements at Elsinore, but at the family-operated Castle and […]
Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire : the Methods and Madness Inside Room 56
Publishers Weekly: Esquith might be the only public school teacher to be honored by both Oprah Winfrey and the Dalai Lama; he is the only school teacher ever to receive the president's National Medal of the Arts. For the past 25 years, Esquith has taught fifth graders at Hobart Elementary in central Los Angeles. Like […]
Dust
Kirkus Reviews: Scotland Yard Supt. Richard Jury is dragged into his 22nd case by the first of many children wise and meddlesome beyond their years. Because he looks taller than 13, Benny Keegan is able to talk his way first into a job as kitchen help at the Zetter, a "restaurant with rooms" in Clerkenwell, […]
Julia Morgan Built a Castle
chool Library Journal Gr 1-5-This picture book is a wonderful way to introduce young readers to a groundbreaking female architect. Luminescent illustrations, created using soft pastels and pencils in a golden-peach palette, appear to glow with the light of California and France, both seminal locations in Morgan's life. Informed by architecture, the paintings evoke C […]
The Saffron Kitchen
Publishers Weekly: Maryam is the willful daughter of an Iranian general who backed the Shah of Iran during the (U.S.-backed) 1953 coup that toppled Iran's prime minister, Mossadegh. In the midst of the turmoil, and with the threat of an arranged marriage hanging over her, Maryam is sheltered one night by her father's trusted assistant, […]
Sigmund Freud
Kirkus Reviews: Krull lives up to the promise of the first two entries in her Giants of Science series with this lucid and thoughtful examination of Freud's life, work and legacy. Sketching out the state of mental health care in the 19th century, she makes a convincing case for the real and lasting good done […]