Book cover of The Pirates of Penzance

Book description

When a pirate's apprentice tries to leave the high seas and build a new life, his hopes are dashed when a secret comes to light. The man's plans are shattered as he's forced to return to his old stomping grounds. Frederic is a 21-year-old who has spent his life working…

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1 author picked The Pirates of Penzance as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Before sitcoms, stand-up, SNL, and absolutely any great comedy movie you can name – there was Gilbert & Sullivan. Okay, yes they wrote operas (“light operas” technically; really more like our musicals today), but these works were created to be popular, scandalous, funny, and with hummable tunes for the masses. G&S operas were absurd, fantastic, politically incorrect, hysterical, “topsy turvy” extravaganzas that satirized (much like Wilde) the bourgeois mores of the day. Astonishingly, most of it holds up today, which is why you can still see Gilbert and Sullivan's productions being perpetually staged across the globe. If you can see…

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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

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The Tao of Poison by Isham Cook,

A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.

The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…

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Draakensky by Paula Cappa,

A wind sorcerer. A dark spirit. An unsolved murder.

On the haunted Draakensky Windmill Estate, sketch artist Charlotte Knight arrives to live on the property, hired to illustrate the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke—a bright and lucrative opportunity to boost her struggling art career. 

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