I picked up The Snow Child initially because it dealt with homesteading--been there--in an unforgiving climate--ain't been there, thank heavens. And it certainly painted a true picture of how difficult a way of life it is. But it was the characters and the fairy tale-ish element (it was as grim as those old Grimm tales at times) that kept me guessing--was the snow child real or not?--and kept me reading. I didn't want it to end.
A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska, Eowyn Ivey's THE SNOW CHILD was a top ten bestseller in hardback and paperback, and went on to be a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Alaska, the 1920s. Jack and Mabel have staked everything on a fresh start in a remote homestead, but the wilderness is a stark place, and Mabel is haunted by the baby she lost many years before. When a little girl appears mysteriously on their land, each is filled with wonder, but also foreboding: is she what she seems, and can they find room in…
I was a devotee of Judi Dench long before she was a Dame (There is nothing like a dame . . . ), and a devotee of Willy Wagstaff (aka Shakespeare--what a shame that he was never knighted) long before that, so this was a match made in heaven. She somehow manages to recall (albeit with the help of an interviewer) every role she played in every Shakespeare production, in very minute and often very bawdy detail. By the end of the book, you feel as if you know her, and as if you'd like to share an ale or two or three with her. It also makes you wish there were a video recording of the whole thing; it would be her best role ever.
Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig...
Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green...
Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head...
These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare.
For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O'Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare's plays with incisive…
Over the past couple of decades, I've read almost every one of Robertson Davies' (a fellow Canadian!) books, beginning with his Salterton Trilogy, which my editor at Dutton (who is not Canadian) gifted me, mainly because it revolved around an amateur theatre company's chaotic efforts to stage a production of Midsummer Night's Dream (the first novel I published with Dutton dealt with Shakespeare).Naturally I loved the books, especially Davies' droll but elegant, almost Dickensian style. This year I began to crave that sort of writing, so I revisited his novel Fifth Business (also theatre-related), the first book in the Deptford Trilogy, which compelled me to revisit the second one; I shall revisit the third anon.
The first book in Robertson Davies's acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly Link
Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball…
"A satisfying thriller with enough history and mysteries to keep readers enthralled until the end." -Kirkus Reviews
As the conflict in Vietnam heats up, Simon Hannay is pursuing his Masters in Comparative Literature at a Midwest university, teaching karate on the side and doing his best to avoid the draft. He's not overly excited about his thesis... until he stumbles upon an encrypted Renaissance journal that's been hidden for decades in the rare book room.
Simon, who's been fascinated by codes and ciphers since he was a kid, convinces his advisor to let him use the mysterious codex as his thesis topic. But first he has to decipher it—and, as he soon learns, that's going to be a formidable task. To add to his problems, an unidentified rival he calls the Mystery Man is desperate to get his hands on the codex—so desperate that he ransacks Simon's apartment and even drugs and interrogates him and his advisor.
With the help of Gabriela, a Brazilian classmate, Simon finally hits upon the key to the cipher. Together they struggle to unravel and translate the text, which was penned by a 16th-century Portuguese fortune-hunter. In the process, they learn the secrets the codex contains, and why the Mystery Man is so determined to steal it.
