Irena Book One: Warsaw Ghetto is the true tale of Irena Sendlerowa, a social worker in the Warsaw ghetto in the early 1940s, during the early days of German occupation. She is credited for saving the lives of 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them to safety in small groups. After the war, she attempted to reunite the children with their parents. This book is a must-have for admirers of Irena’s extraordinary life and those looking to learn more about the Jewish experience during World War II....

My favorite southern noir isn’t a novel at all…it’s the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play Streetcar Named Desire. What narrative can compete with a teacher accused of loving her student showing up at her sister’s house, where she finds Stella married to a blacked-out Marlon Brando fighting all his friends after losing in poker. He comes to alone in his apartment to realize that his wife and her sister have fled up to their neighbors’ place....

Growing up, I had a combination of both mindsets. I had a fixed mindset when I realised I had no natural inclination towards sports, and assumed I was destined to suck at them forever. Newsflash: I still do. But in the past few years, I’ve allowed myself to enjoy activities involving movement. While I might still not win the race, I no longer hold myself back from participating. My growth mindset found its way in activities I loved and received initial praise for....

In this mesmerizing sequel to the New York Times bestselling Girls of Paper and Fire, Lei and Wren have escaped their oppressive lives in the Hidden Palace, but soon learn that freedom comes with a terrible cost. Lei is known as the commoner who managed to do what no one else could. But slaying the cruel Demon King wasn’t the end of the plan—it’s just the beginning. Will Lei succeed in her quest to overthrow the monarchy and protect her love for Wren, or will she fall victim to the sinister magic that seeks to destroy her?...

What are the main categories of sci-fi plots? These types can overlap or be hard to define. There are a finite number of basic story shapes, but they can be modified or combined in seemingly endless, creative ways. This is true in every genre but particularly in sci-fi. Ever since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818, sci-fi has asked when humans go too far with technology, a question recent shows like Black Mirror also raised....

American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson Easily one of my favorite books 0f 2019, this is the story of Marie, a young Black woman working as an FBI agent in the 1980s. When she’s approached by the CIA to spy on the president of Burkina Faso, she’s skeptical—but her career at the FBI is going nowhere fast, and she might be able to leverage some information of her own if she takes the job....

1. Redwall by Brian Jacques In Brian Jacques world of sentient, oddly traditional animals, feasts are pretty much mandatory. They happen several times per book, with lavish descriptions of all of the food that’s heaped on Redwall Abbey’s groaning tables. These books got me to try beetroot, something that even my mother hadn’t managed, thanks to the moles’ famous turnip-n-tater-n-beetroot pie. 2. I Will Not Never Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child This story, featuring classic child duo Charlie and Lola, is perfect to read to the tiny fussy eaters in your family....

Getting Started So, why fan fiction? Maybe you want to see characters in different situations, time periods, relationships, or even different fandoms. Sometimes shows get cancelled too soon, endings don’t satisfy what you were expecting from the story, maybe you didn’t see yourself represented. Or you felt a deep connection to someone that only turned out to be a side character and you wish they could have main character level adventures....

Here’s a little bit of background, if you’re new to the story. In April of this year, I read an ARC of A Deadly Education, bestselling fantasy author Naomi Novik’s latest offering. I did have reservations going in: almost everyone raves about her last two books, Uprooted and Spinning Silver, but I found those pretty mediocre. A Deadly Education, though, blew me away. It features El, an antisocial half-Indian, half-Welsh protagonist living in the Scholomance, a deadly school for teenaged magicians where monsters lurk around every corner and try to kill you ALL THE TIME....

Oprah’s wildly popular TV show was very influential. So influential, in fact, that there’s a business term for it: the Oprah Effect. A mention by Oprah can be the making of a previously unknown brand, and books recommended by Oprah see their sales soar. Of the 70 books she recommended on her show between 1996 and 2011, 59 made it onto the USA Today Bestseller List. 22 hit number one – including Tolstoy’s classic, Anna Karenina....

Obviously, if you’re not okay with profanity, don’t continue. This post is about nothing but linguistic filth. People will be told to do things to themselves, let hostile third parties do things to them, and experience humiliation and pain simultaneously. F-words will abound. Consider yourself warned. “You must be the one nun in the whorehouse” This is a perfect example of the nuance that a good piece of profanity can deliver....

Goodreads notoriously doesn’t do enough to moderate bot/spam/sock puppet accounts. They don’t even require email address verification before rating. And now this will impact sales in a bigger way than ever. pic.twitter.com/kUB62fZc5c — Diana Urban (IN WRITING CAVE) (@DianaUrban) November 4, 2022 — Kwana aka K.M. Jackson (@KwanaWrites) November 4, 2022 A spokesperson from Goodreads also reached out in response with the following statement: “Goodreads takes the responsibility of protecting the integrity of customer ratings and reviews very seriously....

Not only were these non-plushies cuter than heck, but they also came with tiny poems on their tags. The first 136 were written by Lina Trivedi. The rest were written by unknown wizards. I’ve got to spoil this post for you and tell you that many of these poems are not good. They appear to have come out of a random rhyme maker. Many of them do not make sense....

Agatha Christie is no stranger to tropes. Certain types of characters and settings pop up again and again in her works, though each plot is distinctive. Here’s an Agatha Christie bingo card, followed by links to each square. Someone eats, or is likened to, an egg Multiple murders to hide key murder Poison Will Hastings distracted by a redhead auburn hair Miss Marple knits Military man bores everyone Obsessive attention to timeline Casual racism Clues in conversation Suffocating family The Servant Problem Plucky young woman Hot guys are bastards Inquest adjourned a fortnight Actors!...

via GIPHY By popular demand, you can now get behind-the-scenes access and exclusive goodness by signing up for a monthly or annual subscription. We’ve got two tiers for subscribers, so you can pick your perks. Short Story ($3/month or $29/year) – Behind-the-Scenes Newsletter – Exclusive Store Deal Novel ($5/month or $49/year) – Behind-the-Scenes Newsletter – Exclusive Store Deal – Bi-weekly Read Harder podcast – New Release Index What’s that you say?...

Though I love the huge, well-known book events like RT Convention, Book Expo America, Miami Book Fair, LA Times Festival of Books, etc, I really adore smaller, more intimate events, so preference was granted to those. To be included on this list, the book events must be annual or biennial and held in the same state every year. I also only included book events with a reader audience, as opposed to a writer audience....

Books are the obvious answer, but what about kids who can’t read yet? Kanopy Kids might be the perfect solution. Kanopy is a free-with-your-library-card video streaming service, and Kanopy Kids is their collection of films specifically geared towards younger viewers. Check out the 15 Book Adaptations To Stream for Free with Your Library Card post to learn more details on accessing the service through your public library. The streaming service has some great features, such as parental controls and age-appropriate ratings from Common Sense Media, plus the programming itself is fantastic....

What Is ASMR? I first realized I was sensitive to ASMR before I ever knew what it was. As a child, I would be sitting in class and would suddenly feel a pleasant tingling feeling in my brain when my teacher was reading aloud or explaining something in a calm, soft-spoken voice. And then there was how relaxed I would feel when my dad would read to me at night in a slightly quiet monotone voice while gently turning the pages of a book....

Everyone believed this was a great thing and, coming from the well-respected Internet Archive, assumed that it was entirely on the up-and-up. However, according to the Authors Guild, “the Internet Archive would use the COVID-19 epidemic as an excuse to push copyright law further out to the edges, and in doing so, harm authors, many of whom are already struggling.” — Ilana Masad (@ilanaslightly) March 29, 2020 The Authors Guild, along with hundreds of authors, agents, and publishers, have alleged that this site is infringing on their copyright....

“For so many years, in short, he had been loafing in his scholarly career as a losel who squandered time on children’s stories when he should have been whipping his Beowulf book into shape. He confided to his publisher in 1937 that Oxford would merely add The Hobbit to his ‘long list of never-never procrastinations’ (Letters, 18). Fiction-writing simply did not count in terms of academic production, especially after Tolkien had idled away his two-year Leverhulme Research Fellowship....