![]() They inspired her to become a writer herself. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl. Some of her favorite authors at that time were Lewis Carroll, P. Even before she was old enough to write, she would dictate stories to her mother to write down for her. Sometimes Ann names her characters after people she knows, and other times she simply chooses names that she likes.Īnn has always enjoyed writing. But many of her characters are based on real people. All of Ann's characters, even the members of the Baby-sitters Club, are made up. Many are written about contemporary problems or events. Some are based on personal experiences, while others are based on childhood memories and feelings. ![]() She's now a full-time writer.Īnn gets the ideas for her books from many different places. ![]() After graduating from Smith College, Ann became a teacher and then an editor of children's books. ![]() She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane. Ann Matthews Martin was born on August 12, 1955. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Even though the plot feels plodding at times, and readers may wish for a more nuanced resolution, Pulido addresses important themes of homophobia, socio-economic differences, and fallen heroes with a light hand. ![]() With the support of Rosie, his wisecracking Latina best friend, and Brandon, his loyal (and wealthy) Filipino boyfriend, Bobby persists through rigorous training while avoiding Rex and his goons at all costs, struggling through school, and ensuring that his hardworking single mother stays ignorant of his real-life drama. ![]() Inspired by his hero, world champion fighter Manny Pacquiao, Bobby trades custodial work for boxing lessons from Luke, the Jab Gym’s curmudgeonly yet generous Black owner. When a vicious beat down by the trio leaves Bobby badly injured and without his bike-a beloved gift from his deceased father-he takes up boxing to fight back. When Bobby Agbayani is outed by graffitied hate speech on his locker, he becomes the target of relentless harassment by Rex and Eddie, two Filipino brothers, and their lackey, Jorge, who is Mexican. ![]() You’d better watch your back if you attend Westlake High, an especially tough place to be a gay teenager. Boxing becomes an attractive defense tactic against bullying for a queer Filipino teenager in Los Angeles. ![]() ![]() something monstrous, something unfeeling.Įverything will be okay. Something is waiting for her to step outside the fragile safety of the house. Between the claustrophobic storm and the inescapable sense of being hunted, Clare is on edge. He promised they were alone here, but she sees and hears things that convince her something else is creeping about the surrounding woods, watching. but Clare doesn't know if she can trust him. Clare wants to leave, but a vicious snowstorm has blanketed the world in white, trapping them together, and there's nothing she can do but wait.Īt least the stranger seems kind. ![]() When she wakes, aching and afraid in a stranger's gothic home, he tells her she was in an accident, a crash in the snow. She remembers dark shapes in the snow and a terror she can't explain. She remembers abandoned cars and children's toys littered across the road. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Then there’s Leigh, whose affair with married Sellevision boss Howard Toast is going nowhere until she announces their relationship on air. Popping pills and drinking heavily, she fails to notice that her husband is spending a lot of time with the young babysitter who lives next door. As Max struggles to find a new job in television, the popular and perky host Peggy Jean Smythe is receiving sinister emails from a stalker. When Max Andrews, the much loved and handsome that is, lonely and gay host of a ‘Toys for Tots’ segment, accidentally exposes himself in front of millions of kids, Sellevision faces its first big scandal. Welcome to the world of Sellevision, America’s premier retail broadcasting network. The hilarious first novel by the 1 bestselling author of Running with Scissors, Dry, A Wolf at the Table, and You Better Not Cry, Sellevision is Augusten Burrough’s darkly funny and vastly entertaining skewering of a very troubled home shopping channel. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Tested by trials of extreme training, military rivalry, and lost love, Speirs's international odyssey begins as an immigrant child in Prohibition-era Boston, continues through the bloody campaigns in France, Holland, and Germany, and sheds light on his lesser known exploits in Korea, the Cold War, and embattled Laos. But who was the real Lieutenant Speirs? In Fierce Valor, historians Jared Frederick and Erik Dorr unveil the full story of Easy Company's longest-serving commander for the first time. Rumored to have gunned down enemy prisoners and even one of his own disobedient sergeants, Speirs' became a foxhole legend amongst his troops. His comrades called him "Killer." Of the elite paratroopers who served in the venerated "Band of Brothers" during World War II, none were more enigmatic than Ronald Speirs. ![]() ![]() He looked at me with a brilliant flash of recognition, slapped his forehead gleefully, and said, 'You mean the prophet!'Ī year before George Orwell died in 1950, his typewriter was confiscated. ![]() 'George Orwell,' I repeated - 'the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four.' The old man's eyes suddenly lit up. I wondered if he was losing his memory but, after several failed attempts, I made one final stab. But he was elderly cataracts had turned his eyes an oystery blue, and his hands trembled as he readjusted his sarong. ![]() The man was a well-known scholar in Burma, and I knew he was familiar with Orwell. I could hear mosquitoes whining impatiently around my head, and I was about to give up. We were sitting in the baking-hot front room of his house in a sleepy port town in Lower Burma. 'G-e-o-r-g-e O-r-w-e-l-l.' But the old Burmese man just kept shaking his head. ![]() ![]() ![]() Despite trying to hide it, his Noise betrays his secret and suddenly they are on the run – leaving everything he ever knew behind.Ĭhased by a town posse, a mad man, and the truth of Prentisstown history, Todd’s flight is full of life and death decisions to make for himself and the girl who flees with him. Something shocking and soul tearing at the same time. But how can that be? On further searching he finds the cause. While out collecting apples for Ben one day, Todd discovers something. The germ that brought the Noise, also wiped out every girl and every woman, including his mother. Todd lives on a farm on the outskirts of town, with two men, Ben and Cillian, who took him in when his mother died. ![]() So even when mouths are shut, the cacophony of Noise that surrounds you, can send you mad. This Noise allows everyone to hear everyone else’s thoughts – even from a distance. There was a great war where the Spackle (original inhabitants of the planet where Todd lives) fought the humans then released a germ called The Noise. There are only Misters, as no girls or woman live in Prentisstown. ![]() As such he is called Todd, where everyone else is called Mister …. He’s the youngest in town, the last ‘boy’. In days he will turn 13, and in Prentisstown where he lives, 13 is the crossover from a boy to a man. ![]() ![]() Her mission is to help people access that so-called bank account. “The government has basically filled a bank account for you with thousands of dollars that will help you go electric,” Abrams said. It includes a sprawling array of tax credits, rebates and other incentives to help people electrify their lives. When he signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) last year, President Joe Biden hailed it as “the biggest step forward on climate ever”. ![]() ![]() The impetus for her role comes from significant moves taken by the Biden administration. If you want to see what the future looks like, we start building it here and now.” “We don’t have to do it everywhere, all at once. “We are at an inflection point where we can choose to electrify,” she said in an interview. ![]() ![]() ![]() Just thinking about it makes my head ache. Will she even survive to initiation, let alone have her revenge? But a killer is loose within the Church’s halls, the bloody secrets of Mia’s past return to haunt her, and a plot to bring down the entire congregation is unfolding in the shadows she so loves. If she bests her fellow students in contests of steel, poison and the subtle arts, she’ll be inducted among the Blades of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the vengeance she desires. ![]() Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic-the Red Church. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades. ![]() In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.ĭaughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Genres & Themes: Young Adult, Fantasy, Dark ![]() ![]() ![]() It presents details of McKinley’s life growing up in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, his service in the Civil War and his time as a Canton lawyer, legislator, congressman and governor.īut the main tale is of the 1896 presidential election, which pitted McKinley against Democrat William Jennings Bryan. The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters was published in November. I thought, Someday, I needed to write a book about it.” “I was blown away with how engaged he was and how clearly involved he was in shaping his own future. “I walked away with a picture of McKinley as a fine human being who attracted and kept friends,” Rove says. He finished it as an admirer of McKinley. Rove approached the paper as a devotee of Roosevelt. It stretched from his time as New York City police commissioner in 1895 to his appointment to assistant secretary of the Navy by William McKinley to his role as vice president and, ultimately, president following McKinley’s assassination in 1901. Gould, a professor and expert on Gilded Age American history, Rove penned a 150-page paper on Theodore Roosevelt’s rise to power. ![]() During his years at the University of Texas, Republican political consultant and pundit Karl Rove took a seminar in historical writing. ![]() |