A central character in Brian Selznick’s book, the Invention of Hugo Cabret, and in Martin Scorcese’s film of the book is the complex automaton that writes. Turn the key and click for these other tales of automata! At the time of the French Revolution, a young inventor’s greatest device–a talking mechanical head– crowns his [...]
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2012 has marked the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens. . .are you ready to read his contemporaries? Wilkie Collins? George Eliot? What about Anthony Trollope? Our blog will lead a read along of Trollope’s The Way We Live Now. Trollope describes the theme of his 1875 novel: Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent [...]
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The 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic has also inspired a number of novels based on the disaster. The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott A spirited young seamstress survives the Titanic only to find herself deeply torn between two men. Echoes of Titanic by Mindy Starns Clark Kelsey Tate’s great-grandmother Adele endured the sinking of [...]
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Some of the most popular series on PBS and the BBC are often based on hidden classics, books which gain contemporary popularity after the television series. Below Stairs, soon to be re-issued in the US, brilliantly evokes the vanished world of masters and servants portrayed in Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. Back on the UK bestseller [...]
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Two respected historians debut this month with historical novels. Classicist Victor Davis Hanson focuses on the Theban defeat of the Spartan army in 371 BCE in The End of Sparta. The tale, inspired by the battles of the Greek military leader Epaminondas, is told through the eyes of the farmer Melon, who leaves his home to serve [...]
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Do you like reading fiction? Do you like reading biographies? Then try these new novels featuring real people. Mary Doria Russell’s Doc redefines two towering figures of the American West – John Henry Holliday, a frail twenty-six-year-old dentist, and a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp – before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral links their [...]
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The legacy of World War I haunts the characters of these novels set during and after the war. When Daisy Dalrymple’s husband DCI Alec Fletcher investigates the shallow graves of three men found in Epping Forest, Daisy discovers the link that ties all three men to their Great War service, in Anthem for Doomed Youth by Carola [...]
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Although Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey’s most famous mystery, is celebrating its 60th anniversary, it still remains fresh. Inspector Alan Grant is laid up in the hospital after an injury, and he is bored out of his mind. Since this takes place in the 1950s, he doesn’t have TV or the Internet to distract him, [...]
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Vienna, known for its opera, balls, cafés, and Sachertorte, is also the setting for two new historical thrillers. Nothing is fair in love and war. Europe’s elite have gathered at the glittering Congress of Vienna. Princes, ambassadors, and the Russian tsar are all negotiating the fate of the continent by day and pursuing pleasure by night. Until [...]
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Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex and Countess of Leicester (1543–1634), was an English noblewoman and mother to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. A grandniece of Anne Boleyn and close to Princess Elizabeth since childhood, she was banished from court after marrying Elizabeth I’s favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Interestingly enough, Lettice Knollys, is a [...]
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