The Burning Chambers is an epic historical novel set in 16th century France during the wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots. The daughter of a Catholic bookseller falls in love with a Huguenot soldier who wants peace between the two sides. But too many people wish to continue the fighting, and the lives of the hero and heroine are endangered. There is also a mystery about the heroine's origins, and a murderous noblewoman wants to have her killed. Author Kate Mosse has a great...
Monday January 18th is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Learn more and reflect on the life and work of Dr. King by exploring writings and words by the man himself.
This young adult novel, set during a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793, seems especially timely today. Young Mattie Cook struggles to survive in the fever-stricken city after her mother gets sick. With the help of Eliza, a freed slave, Mattie learns to nurse the sick and help the children orphaned by the fever, and becomes a stronger person. The novel is filled with details of life during the epidemic, some of them quite similar to today's pandemic.
The Shadow of the Wind is a complex, multi-layered novel set in Barcelona in the 1940s and 1950s. A young boy, Daniel, the son of a bookseller, visits the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, an enormous labyrinthine building filled with books. His father tells him to choose one book and adopt it. Daniel becomes so fascinated by the book that he decides to read everything by the author, Julián Carax, only to find out that someone is systematically destroying every copy of Carax's books. Daniel...
If your only experience with A Tale of Two Cities was of being forced to read it in high school, it's definitely worth re-reading. It's a wonderful novel set during the French Revolution (unusual for Dickens), with unforgettable characters such as the good-natured rogue Sydney Carton and the bloodthirsty, villainous Madame Defarge.
