This alternative history for young adults stars Victoria-Margaret, crown princess of the British Empire. She is to spend an incognito summer of debutante balls and negotiations in Canada as she quietly gets to know August Callaghan, a potential husband, away from the glare of London. Genetics is the crown jewel of the Empire where politically… View more
Bree Matthews is a lot of things in this fantasy young adult work from Tracy Deonn. She’s Black. She’s young (and graduated early from high school to be accepted into an early college program at UNC-Chapel Hill). She’s grieving the recent death of her mother and the anger of a life unlived. But she is… View more
Historian and author Ibram X. Kendi has published five books and countless articles on the construction of an anti-racist movement including the 2016 National Book Award winner Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and the New York Times bestseller How to Be an Anti-Racist. His 2016 work was adapted with author Jason Reynolds… View more
Humans are incredibly complex and incredibly simple and poet Dean Atta displays this poignantly in his debut novel The Black Flamingo. This bildungsroman follows Michael as he grows to understand himself through his Jamaican-Greek Cypriot heritage while growing up in London and accepting his queerness. Struggling to make friends, Michael is faithfully dedicated to Daisy… View more
Beloved actor, author, and activist George Takei is many things to many people; Sulu, helmsman of the U.S.S. Enterprise on Star Trek, Broadway performer, groundbreaking activist for LGBTQIA+ people as well as Asian and Asian Americans, and author of the bestselling They Called Us Enemy, a graphic memoir of his childhood in the American concentration camps during… View more
Stephen Colbert said, “you can’t laugh and be afraid at the same.” In that case, as long as you’re reading this book, you’ll forget about everything else going on around you in the world right now. Wow, no thank you is the refreshing distraction you need in your life. A series of essays written by… View more
In Empress, Ruby Lal tells a story that many have tried to erase from history. Her lyric writing at times also paints a stunning opulence of a royal ruling class that out does what can be found in a lot of fiction. By piecing together fragments from different sources, Lal traces the history of Nur… View more
Our staff is taking time right now to share reviews of some of the books, movies, and music they’re enjoying during their time at home. The views are uniquely their own. Be sure to tell us what you think! Never Let Me Go by Kazua Ishiguro Do you ever get in a reading funk? I… View more
US author Colson Whitehead has become only the fourth writer ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice. If you’ve read his work and watched interviews with him, it’s easy to see why. He takes his time, he hones his craft over many years and he’s so humble and conversational. It took him a… View more
April is National Poetry Month, but like any special month like this one, I think poetry should be read year-round. Poetry houses the framework for language. For children, it can highlight imagery, diction, rhyme and phonetics. As we get older, great poems express the human condition in bite-sized nuggets of gold. At any rate, there… View more
