Found Birds

In this Hugo-winner from Connie Willis, when too many jumps back to 1940 leave 21st century Oxford history student Ned Henry exhausted, a relaxing trip to Victorian England seems the perfect solution. But complexities like recalcitrant rowboats, missing cats, and love at first sight make Ned's holiday anything but restful - to say nothing of the way hideous pieces of Victorian art can jeopardize the entire course of history.

Blackbird - a Memoir addresses these questions through Elena Sada’s humorous and insightful story. It is the uplifting interpretation of a dark tale that begins the day she decides to leave Regnum Christi, a Catholic organization founded by sexual predator and Catholic priest Marcial Maciel. After leaving the order, Elena finds herself in Manhattan, longing for the life she left at 19. There, she faces a difficult decision: whom to trust? A shattered love story is followed by a successful one, and Elena finally understands what happened to her under Maciel.

As a reporter, Jacques Peretti has spent his life investigating important stories. But there was one story, heard in scattered fragments throughout his childhood, that he never thought to investigate. The story of how his mother survived Auschwitz. In the few last months of the Second World War, 13-year-old Alina Peretti, along with her mother and sister, was one of 13,000 non-Jewish Poles sent to Auschwitz. Her experiences there cast a shadow over the rest of her life. Now 90, Alina has been diagnosed with dementia.

The Mynah bird longs to be special like the other animals, but he is just a dull black bird. A snake suggests that he would be more popular if he tried to be like more the other animals, and so the Mynah bird tries doing impressions.... This is a story about both the empowerment of identity and the bankruptcy of people-pleasing.

Among the creatures that find the food, water, and shelter they need in our gardens, birds are the ones we notice the most, partly because the majority are active in the daytime. Of course, they can be a welcome distraction for us, as they go about their lives and we briefly escape from ours. From the Robin to the Blackbird, Starling and Chaffinch, this illuminating publication helps you identify common garden birds and reveals fascinating facts about them.