reviews

Magic rules… Author:  Angela Bourke For those who are reading this on a remarkably clever little handheld computer, it may seem bizarre to think that magic still plays a role in anyone’s life.  But it really wasn’t that long ago.  It was 1895, in rural Ireland, and the disappearance of a young woman was generating all sorts of theories – foremost being that the fairies had abducted her and taken her to their nearby stronghold – until her badly burned body was found in a shallow grave not far from her home.  Irish historian Angela Bourke tells of this real-life [...]

A Story of Serial Murder and a Failed Investigation Author: Michael Bilton Peter William Sutcliffe, commonly known as the Yorkshire Ripper, brutally murdered thirteen women and injured seven more in a five year spree across Yorkshire and Leeds. The Yorkshire Ripper, finally caught and arrested in 1981, is a case famous both for its violence and for the upheaval and big mistakes that characterized its investigation. How did Sutcliffe go undetected for so long, and how did the police, who interviewed him multiple times, fail to realize that the infamous serial killer was literarily in their grasp? How did over two [...]

Family, Food, Future Author: Flora Ahn I really don’t have the words for this one. I just want to gush on and on about all the feelings The Golden Orchard evoked and that perfect line it walked between nostalgia and hope. It begins with Maya, a teenage girl, on a hot summer day, listlessly lying around. Her grandmother, Halmunee, has recently moved in with Maya and her never-there, career-oriented, family-phobic mother. Halmunee is slowly progressing into dementia, but she still has her good days and wants to share her secret and her life with Maya through cooking – only not in [...]