She wants to mail her letter from the corner mailbox so her mother will not see it, but Trevor and two teammates are on the porch near the mailbox. She chats about several topics and asks why he called her “Little Tomato” in his letter. Zoe wants a career as a pastry chef and would love to achieve similar fame. Ruby won, receiving cash and a cookbook deal. Ruby Willow is a young baker Zoe saw on a Food Network baking competition. She is surprised that Trevor got her Ruby Willow’s cookbook. After many summers of adventures and years of close friendship, Zoe now feels betrayed, angry, and wary. Zoe does not want to talk to Trevor last month, she overheard him saying unkind things about her. While Zoe debates what to do about the letter, her next-door-neighbor and former best friend Trevor arrives with a birthday gift. She does not understand his reference to his other letters to her, as this is the first letter she ever received. Zoe does not like to think about being related to someone who committed a terrible crime when she reads the letter, Zoe is surprised that Marcus sounds nice and caring. Zoe immediately hides the letter, thinking that her mother might not let her read it. He was convicted of a murder that took place before Zoe was born. Just home from her 12th birthday party, Zoe Washington discovers a letter from her biological father, Marcus Johnson, whom she has never met. This guide refers to the 2020 edition by Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
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She often focuses on familial relationships and how a crime, sudden or otherwise, can test or tear them apart. Her debut, I Let You Go, smashed onto bestseller lists in 2016, and she’s been crafting sensational novels since with I See You, Let Me Lie, and After the End. This British author who loves jigsaw puzzles deftly creates intricately woven stories on a regular basis. The story’s packed with intense twists, scary reveals, and nail-biting action. It’s a thriller set on a flight from London to Sydney where an attendant must choose between saving her daughter or an entire plane full of people. So it’s impressive how much fear and suspense she’s injected into her new novel, HOSTAGE. “It’s my favorite part of any trip,” she says. She boarded her first airplane at 17-years-old for a trip to Greece with a friend and has loved flying since. Clare Mackintosh has never feared flying. The novel features Shane, a shy junior in college who, after living three years of what has felt like an eternity, decides to break her cycle of schoolwork with no excitement or socialization and study abroad. When paired with the novel’s backdrop of various beautiful locations, including Paris, Rome and London, “Again, but Better” creates the perfect escape for the cabin fever that goes hand in hand with life during COVID-19. Riccio incorporates some of the best elements of the young adult genre: humor, relatability and romanticized plotlines to create a book that accurately depicts the young adult experience. On my way home that night, I stopped at a Barnes & Noble and stumbled upon Christine Riccio’s debut novel, “Again, but Better.” It was exactly what I needed. What I had long anticipated as the best semester of my life had felt like a huge bust due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. I felt like a record stuck on repeat going from my bed, to my computer to the dining hall every day. A few months ago, I was on my way home from a less-than-stellar fall semester of my freshman year. Lowen feels an immediate kinship with Jeremy when he helps her on the street: "Most people come to New York to be discovered. There are far more people here with stories much more pitiful than mine." Did you find yourself relating to Lowen in this moment? Or were you surprised by the frankness with which she compared her circumstances to others'? Did you agree with Lowen when she said that people who have experienced great hardship often seek out individuals who are "worse off," to make themselves feel better?ģ. Lowen enjoys living in New York because, in the vastness of the city, she feels invisible: "The state of my life is irrelevant in a place this size. Why do you think the author chose to open the novel in this way? What did the scene foreshadow, in terms of the fragility of life, and how did the man's demise contrast with the prolonged, in-between state Verity found herself in as a character?Ģ. The novel begins with a sudden death, which Lowen witnesses as a bystander. On the basis of their remarkable similarity to paintings in the Villa Farnesina in Rome, the Boscotrecase frescoes most likely were executed by artists from the capital city. Most of the panels feature delicate ornamental vignettes and landscapes with genre and mythological scenes set against richly colored backgrounds. The frescoes, which are among the finest existing examples of Roman wall painting, must have been painted during renovations begun at that time. As the child was only a few months old, Julia would have overseen the completion of the villa. In 11 B.C., the year after Agrippa’s death, the villa passed into the hands of his posthumously born infant son, Agrippa Postumus. One of the most sumptuous must have been the villa at Boscotrecase built by Agrippa, friend of Emperor Augustus and husband of his daughter Julia. In antiquity, numerous Roman villas dotted the coast along the Bay of Naples. Therefore, Mr P really is unable to distinguish between his wife and a hat! For me, this was the first time that I considered that different senses are associated with different areas of the brain.Īnother particularly interesting case in this book describes a Jimmie G who has Korsakoff’s syndrome and is unable to form new memories. However, if he were able to touch it or it made a sound, he would immediately recognise the object. For example, if Mr P were presented with an object he would not be able to tell what it was by just looking at it. Visual agnosia is effectively the inability to recognise objects by sight alone. The title of the book gets its name from one of the patients, Mr P, who is suffering from visual agnosia. This is a series of short case studies of some of the most notable patients Sacks encountered during his career. One book that particularly inspired me to study Biomedical Sciences was The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by neurologist Oliver Sacks. In Euripides’ Bacchae, the verbal clash between Pentheus and Tiresias does not occur until some way into the drama.ģ 511–12 cognita… ingens. This initial briskness stands in contrast to the elements of ‘slow-mo’ that Ovid will soon introduce (and which make up the lion’s share of the set text): the speeches of Pentheus and of Acoetes. 1This brief but complex section includes: (i) transition from the previous story, the tale of Narcissus, whose fate the seer Tiresias unerringly foretold (ii) introduction of the next character destined for doom on Thebes’ killing fields: the young king Pentheus, the only one left to scorn Tiresias (iii) Tiresias’ anticipation of events to come: the clash between Pentheus and Bacchus (in essence also an encapsulation of Euripides’ tragedy Bacchae).ĢThe narrative speeds along here: Tiresias’ prediction of Bacchus’ arrival and its fulfilment come in quick succession. Strangely, Thom heals Goran's injury by touching his leg over the compound fracture. Thom is thrown off his game and Goran ends up breaking one of his legs. It turns out that actually Goran is the person who started the reading program a few years before.ĭuring a basketball game, Thom recognizes one of the players from the opposing team as Goran. Thom mistakes Goran for a student because of his strong accent, accidentally offending him. After an incident during a reading session, he is moved to another class where he meets a young man named Goran. He becomes a tutor for children with reading and language disorders at the community center, and often reads to his students. Thom is filled with teen-aged angst because he is gay and knows that his father greatly disapproves of homosexuality. His mother abandoned the family several years ago, and his father Hal, a publicly disgraced ex-superhero, is now a lowly factory worker. Thom Creed is a 16-year-old high school basketball star, who has a tendency to get into trouble. The fantasy novel is about a teenage superhero, Thom Creed, who must deal with his ex-superhero father's disgrace, his own sexuality, and a murderer stalking the world's heroes. Hero is a 2007 Lambda-winning novel, and the only novel by openly gay film producer and novelist Perry Moore. How can someone have possibly made this? How in the world could it not have been made?Ĭheryl Haines, Haines Gallery, San Francisco: Clear intention, unwavering dedication, patience, perseverance, self awareness and the drive to make for yourself and no one else. Good visual art looks stunningly right and, in retrospect, obvious, or inevitable- yet it's also continually surprising. So I asked them, "What makes good art?"īrian Gross, Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco: Art that is unique in conception and well executed.ĭeWitt Cheng, freelance art writer and critic, Bay Area, CA: Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces molded by time, certain twilights and certain paces- all these are trying to tell us something, or have told us something we should not have missed, or are about to tell us something that imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the aesthetic reality." While art has become, in the experimental 20th and 21st centuries, impossible to define- critics learned long ago to stop being prescriptive, perhaps a little too well- Borges's tentative manifesto makes a good starting point- as long as we don't succumb to mystical mush. Ever wonder how experienced art world professionals separate out the best art from the rest? Me too. Nafiza Azad’s THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME is a richly detailed and entertaining novel centered on Fatima, a human girl who gets swept up into court politics and otherworldly battles when she inherits the power of naming. It is always a delight to finish a debut author’s novel and be excited for their future. Review: (Note: This book includes references to massacres and brief incidents of sexual harassment and stalking.) Nafiza Azad weaves an immersive tale of magic and the importance of names fiercely independent women and, perhaps most importantly, the work for harmony within a city of a thousand cultures and cadences. Oud in hand, Fatima is drawn into the intrigues of the maharajah and his sister, the affairs of Zulfikar and the djinn, and the dangers of a magical battlefield. Now ruled by a new maharajah, Noor is protected from the Shayateen by the Ifrit, djinn of order and reason, and by their commander, Zulfikar.īut when one of the most potent of the Ifrit dies, Fatima is changed in ways she cannot fathom, ways that scare even those who love her. However, the city bears scars of its recent past, when the chaotic tribe of Shayateen djinn slaughtered its entire population - except for Fatima and two other humans. There the music of myriad languages fills the air, and people of all faiths weave their lives together. Summary: Fatima lives in the city of Noor, a thriving stop along the Silk Road. |