reviews

Piranesi: A Book For the Dreamers Author: Susanna Clarke It does not matter that you do not understand the reason. You are the Beloved Child of the House. Be comforted. Piranesi lives outside of time in a ruined house where the sea roars through the lower levels and the dangerous tides drown galleries and creep up stairs. In this house there are few windows but infinite statues and hall after hall to explore. Some halls are crusted in barnacles while others are tumbled ruins with gaping holes leading to the drowned levels where the fish swim and the beautiful flowering [...]

Image from the 1941 edition, which captures the critical meeting between Nancy and Rai. Nancy and the Mystical Author: Carolyn Keene (This review is for the original 1930s version). When a giant snake gives Nancy the squeeze at a train station, a dangerous new adventure begins. This time the mystery goes all the way back to India and involves a shifty circus, a malicious animal handler named Rai, his abused boy assistant (Coya), and a woman named Miss Alison who owns an eerily empty circus house and claims to see visions. Tying everything together is a rare ivory charm [...]

A Classic About Heritage Author: George Eliot Daniel Deronda is a story of identity told from three views: a former debutant who has lost everything and faces either poverty or a bad marriage, a young Jewish girl who has run away from a father who would sell her into depravity, and the famed Daniel Deronda himself, a young man who is haunted by an unknown past that obscures his parentage. Slowly, the three come together and each discovers what is ultimately most important. Anyone who has read a George Eliot story before knows that she writes at a slow burn, more [...]