Veteran educator and author Margaret Stenerson announces the release of two powerful books that shine a light on the transformative power of knowledge, curiosity, and lifelong learning: My Noble Profession (Third Edition) and The Joy of Knowing: Everyday Wonders and Science Stories. Together, these titles offer a heartfelt tribute to teaching as a calling, and …
The Jesus Trail: Following in the Footsteps of Christ by Pierce Kelley is a deeply moving and contemplative novel that follows sixteen-year-old Mekhaeil Zacharias, a Coptic Christian, as he undertakes a pilgrimage from Nazareth through the Galilee to Jerusalem. Still reeling from the horrific murder of his two older brothers and nineteen other Coptic Christians …
Luminara is a world built on imagination. Each one of its people, the “Lumies,” has their own “Phanta,” a small, winged being that helps manifest their thoughts into reality. Young Ayla, however, is the exception. She was born without a Phanta, making her a target of ridicule by kids who claim she has no imagination. …
Emma, depicted at the outset of the story as a polar bear cub, wakes one morning in her ice-cavern bedroom, her mother calling her to breakfast. Anticipating a feast of berries, seaweed, and fish, Emma sets out, following her nose up icy cliffs, down slippery slopes, across shimmering plains, and over jagged crevasses. Along the …
It’s clearly been a busy time for platforms locking themselves away in their sheds, because several of the biggest seem to have stumbled back into the daylight to show us what they’ve built. Today, I want to talk about two of them that are of particular interest to us—and I have a third saved for …
Ghosh is one of the leading chroniclers of the post-colonial South Asian experience. He explores what it is like to be both privileged and displaced: educated in the canons of the West, but always seeing power from the viewpoint of the historically excluded. This collection of essays on environmental trauma and historical alienation, drawn from …
Mason Kowalski is stuck in a dead-end job he hates, writing copy for his boss at a health-food company while taking care of his elderly grandmother in his free time. He regularly experiences stress, due to a generalized anxiety disorder, but he becomes alarmed when he also suffers vivid hallucinations and debilitating headaches. When Mason’s …
The Colony of New York, built underneath the ruins of the city following the great hurricane of 2085, faces mounting challenges as the 24th century draws to a close. Violent gangs draw in disillusioned youths. Increasingly frequent tremors (“The earth surrounding the tunnels was warming, shifting and changing”) damage buildings and cause pipes to leak …
Semi-retired Bennett, a man “accustomed to mild interest” in most things, embarks on a road trip to visit ex-girlfriend Jenn in Ann Arbor after she texts him out of the blue. He’s not expecting much but brings along lubricants and lotions just in case. Jenn, however, seems more interested in Bennett’s rental car than romance. …
Journalist and author Cohen, author of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, strikes gold with a story from Victorian Britain that comes with a scholar’s favorite documentation: court transcripts. In 1883 a wealthy Australian bought a used yacht in Britain and hired a crew to deliver it: an experienced …
Williams has long worked magic with stories that, on the surface, seem quite quotidian, save that something unspoken—and occasionally sinister—lies beneath. The interactions of a woman and her driver in the opening story, “Flour,” are a case in point: She is well-off, but she invents an excuse to get rid of an expected weekend guest …
Working in western France, Slimak, author of The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature, discovered that a group of Homo sapiens had taken up residence in a Neanderthal cave 54,000 years ago and remained for 40 years. Neanderthals themselves did not vanish for another 12,000 years, according to the latest evidence. Also …