![]() ![]() ![]() What does this have to do with Sammy? She kept a diary on her laptop that was backed up on the family server. ![]() When Dad and the board call in police to remove them, someone hacks the bank’s computer system. Unfortunately, the bank her father manages has been picketed by some pretty aggressive protesters, who have now started camping next to the building. She’s psyched about the end of her junior year, doing things with her besties, getting her driver’s license and hoping to go to prom with Jamie Moss, the boy she’s drooled over for ages. What they don’t expect is every single one of their thoughts, crushes, annoyances and feelings to be hijacked and posted online where everyone affected can see and react, not to mention receiving a barrage of Twitter and Facebook snark from people they’ve never met. In other words, mental squirrel-cage territory. What teen doesn’t privately criticize their friends? After all, they’re going through major changes that are accompanied by mood swings, major insecurity and self-doubt. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() I will leave any evaluation of the artwork for others who are more into Japanese-style illustrations. I am not a big fan of this media, but I must admit that, while a few of them are a little bizarre, most of the stories are fairly good and, in fact, make some beneficial points. I normally don’t do graphic books, but this one was sent to me by the publisher for review, so I read through it. This is a “graphic book,” a collection of seven all-new comic-book style stories written and illustrated by an award-winning roster of comics artists and edited by comics creator Kazu Kibuishi, with each story centered around the theme of places on hidden islands. Explorer 2: The Lost Islands (published in 2013 by Amulet Books, an imprint of Harry N. No other compensation has been received for the reviews posted on Home School Book Review. (1=nothing objectionable 2=common euphemisms and/or childish slang terms 3=some cursing or profanity 4=a lot of cursing or profanity 5=obscenity and/or vulgarity)ĭisclosure: Any books donated for review purposes are in turn donated to a library. Editor and Cover Illustrator: Kazu Kibuishi ![]() ![]() ![]() Three months of brutal killing of English followed, until sufficient English troops could March on the city, and the Muslims/Hindus were bloodily defeated. But when the sepoys rose against the English and the Muslims began to form jihadis, he was forced to take a position against the English. The last King of the moghul empire, himself a Muslim, ruled the city's Muslim and Hindu population peacefully. They rose up and marched in Delhi, killing many English. The sepoys belied that they were packed in pig and cow grease and that it had been done to force them to be defiled. ![]() Then, a new kind of rifle was distributed among the Indian soldiers-the bullets were packed in grease and they required to be bitten to load. Little by little, they became a ruling body over most of India, and soldiers were made of Indian Hindus.Įvangelical missionaries started a problem when they became too zealous in their efforts to convert Hindus and Mussulmen to Christianity. This was done by defeating their French counterpart, and they gained political control of Bengal. ![]() The East India Company was a trading partner with India, until little by little, they became a governing body. ![]() ![]() ![]() We all, myself included, have a hard time slowing down to just look or just listen," she notes. "That's all I knew, is that he had a fold-up chair, that he brought his lunch, that the sandwich was wrapped in waxed paper, and that he sat there every day and communed with her."īerg reveals that writing about Arthur and his pace of life was refreshing. "I think that in today's hectic world. "I started with an image of an old man going out to a cemetery to sit beside his wife's grave," she says. Berg says that Arthur was the character she fixated on before starting up on this book. Over time, Arthur, Maddy and Lucille form an unconventional family of sorts, guided in large part by Arthur’s quiet wisdom on the concepts of kindness, aging, acceptance, and the meaning of life itself. ![]() He eventually crosses paths with another frequent graveyard visitor, the angsty 18-year-old Maddy Harris who also lost her mother at an early age. But he visits his beloved deceased wife Nola’s grave every day at lunchtime, taking a simple sandwich and sometimes a baked good from his neighbor Lucille. He lives with his cat Gordon, he tends to his garden. ![]() At a glance, his life seems rather ordinary. Arthur Moses, aka Truluv, is an 85-year-old widower. ![]() ![]() Donalda Peters has one of those annoying, tight, dry, upper-crust British voices that make the listener feel like a disobedient child being lectured by a menacing nanny. Alas, the narrator is so unpleasant that I abandoned this book several times in frustration. Whatever her shallow moments, Fraser's Marie Antoinette has wisdom, steel and immense loyalty. We then follow Marie Antoinette from her arrival at the French court, where courtiers compete for the right to help her dress and privacy becomes a distant memory, to her affectionate but passionless marriage to the Dauphin (unconsummated for seven years) to her frivolous years as a fashion goddess, gambler and party animal and her final years as a woman who faced slander, intrigue, defamation and treason charges with dignity and grace. ![]() ![]() ![]() Fraser takes us into the life of the young "Antoine," the daughter of the strong, hands-on empress of Austria, Maria-Teresa, who has raised all her children to be rulers and consorts. ![]() Antonia Fraser has an amazing knack for writing biographies that are both impeccably researched and absolutely entertaining to read, and Marie Antoinette is no exception. ![]() ![]() Together these scenes make for a riveting start to the book, and I ripped through the chapters in record time. And then we switch to one of the bleakest sequences I've read in a while, with a young girl, Delilah, hatching an escape from a disgusting, pitch-black basement, where she's spent years enduring unimaginable horrors at the hands of her backwoods captors. It begins with the high-wire act of an unnamed wife sneaking out on her abusive husband to meet her lover, to what potentially seems like a violent abduction. Unfortunately Local Woman Missing was, for me, a miss. ![]() While not on the same level, I also found Don't You Cry to be a truly gripping psychological thriller, with imagery that has stayed with me to this day. The Good Girl remains one of my favorite thrillers, with twists that are genuinely shocking while still seeming plausible, and a mystery that unravels in realistic, but nevertheless thrilling, ways. ![]() For instance, when her books 'hit' for me, they hit. ![]() Never has an author embodied the phrase "hit or miss" for me the way Mary Kubica does. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Shirley Morrison, Jackson’s third client, is trying to locate her sister and her niece. Theo, having spent ten years accumulating information, has turned over a roomful of files to Jackson. ![]() Theo Wyre has hired him to investigate the death of his daughter Laura, his much-loved 18-year-old daughter, who was slashed and killed by a maniac ten years before while working in her father’s office. Three-year-old Olivia Land disappeared without a trace thirty-five years ago while sleeping in a tent with one of her sisters, two of whom have hired Jackson to find out what happened to her. ![]() Jackson Brodie, a former police inspector turned private investigator, is investigating three old cases, which soon begin to converge and then overlap. Which was exactly the opposite of how he felt now.”–about Jackson Brodie. “There was nothing for him, just bad memories and a past he could never undo, and what was the point anyway when France was laid out on the other side of the channel like an exotic patchwork of sunflowers and grapevines and little cafes where he could sit all afternoon drinking local wine and bitter espressos and smoking Gitanes…and he would be happy. ![]() ![]() And all my favorite characters-Vi, Raine, and Gunner are there too. And it was brilliant! I loved the fast paced story telling of what the resistance is doing to resist the Thinkers and free their world and Jag’s and Zenn’s place in it. But no, Elana makes the amazing decision of telling the story from Jag’s and Zenn’s views. I just assumed that ABANDON would be from Vi’s point of view. I was worried she couldn’t top SURRENDER, where she told the story from Raine’s and Gunner’s point of view. Elana is an amazing writer and she blew me away again in this final book in her series. Today I’m thrilled to have Elana Johnson back to talk about her new book, ABANDON, which was released June 4, 2013. Please e-mail me by the end of Wednesday or I'll have to pick another winner. ![]() The winner of THE TOWN THAT DISAPPEARED is Kristin Lenz!Ĭongrats! E-mail me your address so I can have your book sent to you. The winner of HANDBOOK FOR DRAGONSLAYERS is Neurotic Workaholic! But it feels so much more relaxed.īefore I get to my awesome interview, I have a few winners to announce. Not that we're not busy with her swim schedule, work, volunteer swim coaching, and ACT prep course. ![]() And it felt great for her and me to slow down. This weekend we had some lazy family time and it was so much fun. Happy Monday! It's officially summer in my house. ![]() ![]() In Wisdom 8:19, Saint Thomas Aquinas is described as "a witty child" who "had received a good soul." At Monte Cassino, the quizzical young boy repeatedly posed the question, "What is God?" to his benefactors. Though Thomas' family members were descendants of Emperors Frederick I and Henry VI, they were considered to be of lower nobility.īefore Saint Thomas Aquinas was born, a holy hermit shared a prediction with his mother, foretelling that her son would enter the Order of Friars Preachers, become a great learner and achieve unequaled sanctity.įollowing the tradition of the period, Saint Thomas Aquinas was sent to the Abbey of Monte Cassino to train among Benedictine monks when he was just 5 years old. ![]() His mother, Theodora, was countess of Teano. Thomas had eight siblings, and was the youngest child. The son of Landulph, count of Aquino, Saint Thomas Aquinas was born circa 1225 in Roccasecca, Italy, near Aquino, Terra di Lavoro, in the Kingdom of Sicily. An authority of the Roman Catholic Church and a prolific writer, Aquinas died on March 7, 1274, at the Cistercian monastery of Fossanova, near Terracina, Latium, Papal States, Italy. ![]() ![]() (1225-1274) Who Was Saint Thomas Aquinas?Ĭombining the theological principles of faith with the philosophical principles of reason, Saint Thomas Aquinas ranked among the most influential thinkers of medieval Scholasticism. ![]() ![]() ![]() That is until a chance meeting with Ross. Angie knows she needs to get out but doesn’t have the confidence any more to know that she can make it on her own. Eventually his actions over the years become those of an abuser, both emotionally and physically. Mitch has a very controlling personality and subtly forced Angie to resign from her job as a teacher stating that he needed her at home to maintain their home and assist him with his career as an architect. Angie has been married to Mitch for seven years and of those seven, only the first year was a good one. “Explosion in Paris” is the newest romantic suspense novel from this author. Linda Masemore Pirrung is the author of several romantic suspense novels including “Cracked Hearts” and “I Will Wait for You”. Right always wins out over wrong in the end ![]() |