Most collections of quotations are compilations of a variety of notable people’s statements on diverse subjects. "Reduced Reflections" is entirely the work of Tan Kheng Yeang and is a delight to read. Yeang arranges his topics in... Read More

Portugal is Europe’s poorest nation as well as its least well known. This galls the author, who spent twenty years as an AP foreign correspondent in Lisbon, and this book, a mixture of history, tour guide, and national character... Read More

It’s impossible to read "The Survivors" without being reminded of another very popular series. It, too, featured characters who look young but are ancient, are prone to complex love triangles, and have strikingly odd skin. But enough... Read More

Whipping up the sequel to Discovering Pig Magic, Julie Crabtree blends themes of friendship and authentic emotions with the addition of some real recipes in The Crepe Makers’ Bond. This insightful and humorous depiction of the evolving... Read More

Marco Polo’s 5,000-mile Silk Route expedition to China in the thirteenth century; Umberto Nobile’s 1928 airship flight over the North Pole (and subsequent crash); Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary scaling Mount Everest in 1953: what... Read More

A boy’s difficult meditation on the loss of his mother to cancer, and what that means about his own changing identity, without any false promise. Jerome’s aunt and his cousins, with whom he suddenly lives, do almost everything... Read More

Japanese-American cell biologist Gordon Sato and his family were interned at Manzanar concentration camp during World War II, and he never forgot being hungry and learning to make corn grow in the California desert. This story recounts... Read More

Who would guess that a tiny seabird with webbed feet, the marbled murrelet, nests more than 300 feet up in the trees of old-growth forests along the west coast? Male and female adults take turns sitting on their egg until the chick... Read More