Fresh Off the Boat is a memoir from Eddie Huang, the owner of the popular NYC restaurant Baohaus. The book is divided into 2 sections. The first takes up eleven chapters and covers Eddie’s childhood and school memories, and the second section spends the last six chapters from mid-college to the opening of Bauhaus. The book begins when Eddie is about seven years old and introduces a variety of family members as a group. Family plays a large part of the book, as does the […]
An Architect and a Serial Killer During a Fair
This book is a work of creative non fiction that re-tells the overlapping stories of the architects of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and the serial killer Dr Henry Holmes. The book opens with one of the last surviving architects, Daniel Burnham, reflecting on his life and his friends as he travels on the ship Olympic towards Europe April 14, 1912 (the significance of the date becomes obvious later on). The rest of the story is told as a flashback, beginning with Chicago’s bid to […]
Ghouls and Gods in Dreamland
Johannes Cabal is a necromancer, and one day three men appear with an offer. Messrs. Shadrach, Corde, and Bose want to hire him as their guide into the Dreamlands in order to find and destroy the Phobic Animus, the source of all fear. The Dreamlands are an alternate reality accessible to dreamers, poets, philosophers, and those under the influence of mind-altering substances. Dreamlands are full of beauty and wonder, but visitors are equally likely to meet monsters and nightmares of epic proportions. Cabal accepts this […]
The Best School Sport Ever?
Some of the opening words of this graphic novel are “Studying the art of tankery will help you to gain the essential skills of becoming an elegant woman! …We challenge you to start down the path of tankery and strive to become a vibrant and beautiful woman today!” The premise of this series is totally ridiculous but it works. In the world of this series, high school girls are encouraged to take up ‘tankery’ as an after-school sport which involves actual combat in actual military […]
When Medieval Books, Poets, Brothers, Hunters, and More Collide
The Brotherhood of Book Hunters is a work of historical fiction. The main character is Francois Villon, a medieval French poet who was arrested and sentenced to hanging in 1462. He was released in early 1463 and banished from Paris. After he was released from prison, Villon disappears from historical records. According to this story, he was released from prison to carry out a mission on behalf of the King of France who at the time was struggling to free himself from the power of […]