Lindsey's Library

Synopsis

“There’s a fine line between gossip and history, when one is talking about kings.”

Sophie Fitzosborne lives in a crumbling castle in the tiny island kingdom of Montmaray with her eccentric and impoverished royal family. When she receives a journal for her sixteenth birthday, Sophie decides to chronicle day-to-day life on the island. But this is 1936, and the news that trickles in from the mainland reveals a world on the brink of war. The politics of Europe seem far away from their remote island—until two German officers land a boat on Montmaray. And then suddenly politics become very personal indeed. …

Synopsis

A girl’s imagination transports polio-afflicted kids into a fantastic world.

The spring of 1955 tests Laurie Valentine’s gifts as a storyteller. After her friend Dickie contracts polio and finds himself confined to an iron lung, Laurie visits him in the hospital. There she meets Carolyn and Chip, two other kids trapped inside the breathing machines. Laurie’s first impulse is to flee, but Dickie begs her to tell them a story. And so Laurie begins her tale of Collosso, a rampaging giant, and Jimmy, a tiny boy whose destiny is to become a slayer of giants. …

Synopsis

It’s been over ten years since the Trojan War was fought by the heroes Achilles, Hector, and Agamemnon. Aeneas has been sailing around the world looking for home, which he eventually finds in what is now Italy. However, the bulk of this story is not about the Trojan War or the escapades of Aeneas. It’s about Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus and Queen Amata, the last wife of Aeneas to whom Virgil only dedicates a few lines in his epic poem The Aeneid. Le Guin seeks to expand the role and life of Lavinia by giving her a longer story, and weaving Aeneas into it rather than the other way around. …