Book review: Hiding in Plain Sight
An extraordinary story about a Jewish woman who pretended to be Catholic to survive the Holocaust
ABC Staff Picks: March 2023
by Lília Surrounded by chocolate and tea, our Luke and Iris talked books on this month’s ABC Staff Picks livestream on YouTube. This time around, they (with a little help from their ABC friends) pointed us to fantasy, science fiction, some artistic and non-artistic self-help tomes, and a history book with [...]
Book review: A Snake Falls to Earth
"Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She’s always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories. Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he’s been cast from home. He's found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake. Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli’s best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven’t been in centuries. And there are some who will kill to keep them apart."
Instagram Poet: Rupi Kaur’s Rise to Prize-winning Poet
by EmmaV March 21 is World Poetry Day, and it’s a good moment to reflect on this beautiful and ancient art form. Poetry has been written through the ages, and it’s been brought to readers in all sorts of ways. Medieval bards recited their tales in long rhyming forms, while today, [...]
Book review: The Dead Romantics
"A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston."
ABC Staff Picks: February 2023
by Lília We start this ABC Staff Picks with an unusual choice: a cookbook! In recent years, we’ve seen many fandom cookbooks showing up on our shelves, and even though we might be a bit skeptical, many are actually quite good. Think about cookbooks based on TV series, games and, yes, [...]
Book review: Shades of Milk and Honey
"Jane Ellsworth and her sister Melody's lives still revolve around vying for the attentions of eligible men. While Jane's skill with glamour is remarkable, it is her sister who is fair of face, and therefore wins the lion's share of the attention. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Jane has resigned herself to being invisible forever."
Women’s History Month at ABC: What to read
by Natalia March is International Women’s History Month, during which we celebrate contributions to history, society and culture by women. The United States initiated this month in the late seventies, but the UK, Australia and Canada also celebrate it. In The Netherlands, we also celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8. [...]
Notes from a sewist: 7 Books on Mending, Upcycling and Repurposing those clothes you love
by Lília We all have T-shirts with tears, socks with holes in the heel, jeans torn from the friction between our thighs... You get the idea. Most of the time, the garments we’ve loved to death are all still very wearable, if not for those pesky details. So what can we [...]
Book review: Summer in the City of Roses
"All her life, seventeen-year-old Iph has protected her sensitive younger brother, Orr. But this summer, with their mother gone at an artist residency, their father decides it’s time for fifteen-year-old Orr to toughen up at a wilderness boot camp. When their father brings Iph to a work gala in downtown Portland and breaks the news, Orr has already been sent away against his will. Furious at her father’s betrayal, Iph storms off and gets lost in the maze of Old Town. Enter George, a queer Robin Hood who swoops in on a bicycle, bow and arrow at the ready, offering Iph a place to hide out while she tracks down Orr. Orr, in the meantime, has escaped the camp and fallen in with The Furies, an all-girl punk band, and moves into the coat closet of their ramshackle pink house. In their first summer apart, Iph and Orr must learn to navigate their respective new spaces of music, romance, and sex-work activism—and find each other before a fantastical transformation fractures their family forever."