Lost in the Stacks

Retelling of several classic fairly tales with a SciFi twist.

Elephant Company by Vicki Constantine Croke is a biography of "Elephant Bill" James Howard Williams and the hundreds of elephants he worked with in Burma in the first half of the last century.

In this fourth entry in Donna Leon's mystery series set in Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti investigates the deaths of three prominent Venetian businessmen, as well as their connection to eight young women who died when a truck crashed in the mountains of northern Italy. Meanwhile, his teenage daughter Chiara shows signs of following in her father's footsteps, as she becomes involved in the case.

Han’s book provides insight into current events—Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, Russian propaganda, etc.—Big Data is the new Big Brother and it is Big Business. All of our sharing, all of our liking, all of the tracking of our every digitally connected movement (both voluntary and involuntary) has created the digital panopticon. We are transparent, we are quantified, we are stored and retrieved, we are added and reduced. We are packages of data to be bought and sold. But, Big Data is a Smart Power. It is friendly and it is Likeable. The power of Big Data is that it knows us and increasingly it can shape and predict our behavior.

Two time travelers from a future world arrive in 1815 to retrieve a lost manuscript and letters by Jane Austen. They are forbidden to change the past, but as they come to know Austen and her family, they decide to try to save her life. Whether they succeed or not, I will not say, but this is a suspenseful and thought-provoking novel, an intriguing combination of science fiction and Jane Austen spin-off.

Reading Austen in America is an in-depth study of Jane Austen's earliest American readers. Author Juliette Wells focuses on the 1816 Philadelphia edition of Emma, the only edition of one of Austen's works to be published in the U.S. during her lifetime. Only six copies of this edition are known to exist today. Wells writes about the lives of the original owners of these copies, and their reactions to Austen's novels and characters. Later she discusses two transatlantic friendships that developed through a mutual love of Austen's works.

The Duke's Children is the last novel in Anthony Trollope's Palliser series, about Parliamentary politics in Victorian England. It's a classical story of generational conflict, as the Duke of Omnium, former Prime Minister, struggles to come to terms with his three grown children's choices in love and politics.

Written by leading authorities in their given fields, each volume in Oxford University Press' What Everyone Needs to Know(tm) series offers a balanced and authoritative primer on complex current event issues and countries.

In Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series and many other works of science fiction and fantasy, gives voice to a forgotten character from Virgil's Aeneid. Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus of Latium, rejects all her suitors because of a prophecy that says she's destined to marry a foreigner. When Aeneas and his fellow survivors of the Fall of Troy arrive in Latium, she knows he is the man she's meant to marry, but one of her suitors, Turnus, has other ideas, and they fight a war over her--a war she never wanted. Le Guin writes beautifully of ancient Italy, and especially of its religious rites and ceremonies.

Jane Austen in Performance is a study of Jane Austen's enduring popularity, from the 19th century to the present day. Author Marina Cano discusses such topics as the use of Jane Austen by the women's suffrage movement, Austen's popularity during and immediately after World War I, film and theatrical adaptations of her works, and fan fiction based on her novels.