6/12/2023 0 Comments Undocumented by Duncan Tonatiuh![]() ![]() The whole story can be read in minutes, and is a fairly obvious pitch for the laudable efforts of Workers’ Action Centres. He helps organize his co-workers with the aid of the Workers’ Action Centre they strike for justice, sue their employer for labour violations, demand minimum wage, and ultimately they triumph. He gets married and struggles to eke out enough money to survive and raise a family, while continuing to face poverty-level working conditions and exploitative bosses.įinally, a young woman he works with introduces him to a local Workers’ Action Centre. He gets a job in a restaurant where he and his co-workers are exploited by their boss. After a few attempts, he makes it across. Juan, an Indigenous Mexican who doesn’t even speak Spanish, let alone English, is sent (illegally) across the US border to live with an uncle he’s never seen. ![]() The story told in Undocumented is not a new one. With Undocumented: A Worker’s Fight, award-winning Mexican-American author Duncan Tonatiuh shows how stories that are all too common can be reinvented in powerful new ways toward vital contemporary purpose, sometimes by drawing on age-old traditions. ![]()
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6/12/2023 0 Comments A river enchanted cover![]() ![]() Enchantments run deep on Cadence: gossip is carried by the wind, plaid shawls can be as strong as armor, and the smallest cut of a knife can instill fathomless fear. ![]() But when young girls start disappearing from the isle, Jack is summoned home to help find them. Jack Tamerlaine hasn't stepped foot on Cadence in ten long years, content to study music at the mainland university. House of Earth and Blood meets The Witch's Heart in New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Ross's brilliant first adult fantasy, set on the magical isle of Cadence where two childhood enemies must team up to discover why girls are going missing from their clan. "With lush world building and lyrical prose, A River Enchanted feels like the echo of a folktale from a world right next to our own." -Hannah Whitten, New York Times bestselling author of For the Wolf ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() And now it seems Vexley isn’t the only scoundrel interested in securing her unique talents as a painter. The trouble with scoundrels and blackguards is that they haven’t a modicum of honor, a fact Miss Camilla Antonius learns after one desperate mistake allows notorious rake-and satire sheet legend-Lord Phillip Vexley to blackmail her. With a powerful artifact and his own future at stake, Envy is determined to win, though none of his meticulous plans prepare him for her, the frustrating artist who ignites his sin-and passion-like no other… ![]() Riddles, hexed objects, anonymous players, nothing will stand in his way. And when a cryptic note arrives, signaling the beginning of a deadly game, he knows he’ll be called much worse before it ends. These are wicked names the Prince of Envy welcomes. The adult debut of #1 New York Times bestselling author Kerri Maniscalco, Throne of the Fallen is a seductive new standalone novel set within her fan-favorite Kingdom of the Wicked world, perfect for readers of fantasy, romance, and mystery alike. ![]() 6/11/2023 0 Comments Rollins get in the van![]() ![]() ![]() I go into this week’s British Championships in Liverpool happy and excited and hoping it goes to plan so I can begin to prepare for the European Championships next month. I believe gymnastics and swimming should be staple sports for kids and I cannot wait to unleash this project, knowing there is government backing to get PE right for primary school kids. In the future I would love to be able to say that I have hundreds of thousands of kids of primary school age getting involved in what we are doing. It’s not just about the governing bodies in a sport, I have put this responsibility on myself to go and do something. It’s very important to have something like this outside of competing and, together with Leah, we have spent so much time trying to get this right. If we can’t get this right, have no doubt, the sport will crumble and fall off a cliff edge at some point. ![]() Just Stop Oil protesters soaked by sprinkler at Chelsea Flower ShowĪside from that, Leah and I also intend to keep it going for years to come. ![]() 6/11/2023 0 Comments This Vicious Grace by Emily Thiede![]() But as rebellion explodes outside the gates, Dante’s dark secrets may be the biggest betrayal. ![]() When a powerful priest convinces the faithful that killing Alessa is the island’s only hope, her own soldiers try to assassinate her.ĭesperate to survive, Alessa hires Dante, a cynical outcast marked as a killer, to become her personal bodyguard. Now, with only weeks left until a hungry swarm of demons devours everything on her island home, Alessa is running out of time to find a partner and stop the invasion. Alessa’s gift from the gods is supposed to magnify a partner’s magic, not kill every suitor she touches. "This story of political intrigue, romance, and dark fantasy is elevated by Brentan's steadfast narration."- AudioFile MagazineĮmily Thiede's exciting fantasy debut, This Vicious Grace, will keep listeners riveted until the devastating conclusion and leave them primed for more! ![]() ![]() "Riveting, passionate, and full of high stakes danger." -Tamora Pierce, #1 New York Times bestselling author ![]() ![]() “The Sea Was Wet as Wet Could Be” by Gahan Wilson The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012) Great start to the collection that takes the rough concept of Hellraiser and does something both similar and remarkably different with it. Hits exactly the right notes and elements for a story like this. We both know that this wasn’t a simple prop. ![]() Jack then gets sucked into the underground movie scene by people who say they have access to this purportedly lost film…and the cabinet used as a “prop” in the movie. ![]() Jack is an old-time film buff and memorabilia collector who encounters a still photo from a presumed fictitious or lost film from 1932, which was said to be about people who are brought to Hell via a cabinet and transformed into living, murderous puppets (sounds like my kind of movie). “Prisoners of the Inferno” by Peter Atkins ![]() Hellbound Hearts, edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (Pocket Books, 2009) Brite by a slim margin because it blends a classic HPL story that doesn’t get enough love, plus the New Orleans goth scene in the 1980s. ![]() I think my favorite story was “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” by Poppy Z. Welcome to Week 220 of my horror short fiction review project! Some great stories this week–I loved all of them in different ways. ![]() 6/11/2023 0 Comments Lusitania book erik larson![]() ![]() As much attention is given to U-20, the submarine that sinks the Lusitania, as to the Lusitania itself. He further chronicles the rise and changing purpose of the German U-Boats and provides an outline of World War I. ![]() He frames the Lusitania’s construction and a biography of her captain within the naval advancements and attitudes of the era. To his credit, Larson understands that nothing in history occurs in a vacuum. In Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Larson is focused-all tangents, overviews, and factoids lead back to the Lusitania. The World’s Fair story is far more interesting than the other (surprisingly) so the back-and-forth is tedious. ![]() Devil in the White City tackles two stories simultaneously: the 1893 World’s Fair and the grisly murders of Dr. I’ve started Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City twice and have yet to finish it. ![]() 6/11/2023 0 Comments City of bones book![]() ![]() He was normal-enough-looking, Clary thought, for Pandemonium. It looked like a wooden beam, pointed at one end. “Aw, come on.” The kid hoisted the thing up over his head. Fifteen-year-old Clary Fray, standing in line with her best friend, Simon, leaned forward along with everyone else, hoping for some excitement. The bouncers were fierce and would come down instantly on anyone who looked like they were going to start trouble. It was a long wait to get into the all-ages club, especially on a Sunday, and not much generally happened in line. ![]() The fifty or so teenagers in line outside the Pandemonium Club leaned forward to eavesdrop. ![]() He stared down at the boy in the red zip-up jacket and shook his shaved head. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” the bouncer said, folding his arms across his massive chest. ![]() ![]() ![]() She handles the time shifts deftly as Hagar slips between reminiscence and present awareness- sometimes even within the same paragraph. Laurence has wonderful control of this story. Enraged and frightened, Hagar runs away to an old family property in the country where she spends a few cold, thirsty dank nights until found and hospitalized with a diagnosis of cancer and a short time to live. ![]() Doris herself is nearly seventy, and Marvin and Doris plan to place her in a nursing home. And yet it is the long-ignored Marvin that she shares her home with, along with his dowdy wife Doris, on whom the care burden falls as Hagar becomes more frail, dependent and confused. Her eldest son Marvin was invisible to her throughout his life her favourite son John died in a stupid driving prank. The marriage foundered: she was ashamed of her husband’s uncouthness and refused to ever reveal the pleasure that sex with him brought her. ![]() The only daughter of a rich merhant, she despised her widowed father’s pride in her achievements and emotional dependence on her, and deliberately married the sort of man she knew he disapproved of. Hagar, the focal character of this book is raging all the way, just as she has throughout her long life. I’m not a great epigraph reader, but the epigraph of this book seemed particularly apposite- Do not go gentle into that good night/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light (Dylan Thomas). ![]() 6/10/2023 0 Comments A disturbing nature brian lebeau![]() Without closure and carrying the scars of every predator he's hunted down, Palmer's thrust into a new killer's destructive path and forced to confront his own demons. ![]() Called back from an investigation that's gone dry in Seattle to his field office in Boston, he's assigned to a case closer to home. Under a celebrity veneer, the Beast in Palmer simmers. Who is destined to pay for the sins of their fathers, and who will pay for their own? Crippled by the loss of their families and haunted by mistakes, they wrestle with skeletons and ghosts neither understands. When FBI Chief Investigator Francis Palmer and Maurice Lumen's paths collide, a dozen young women are already dead-bodies strewn in the woods across southern New England. Author Brian Lebeau explores ethics, psychology and social justice in haunting new novelīOSTON, /PRNewswire/ - Described by Kirkus as a "gripping crime drama" wherein the "tension is immense," Brian Lebeau's "A Disturbing Nature" ( May 10, 2022, Books Fluent) follows a prolific killer and investigator in post- Vietnam War-era New England. ![]() |