Albert of Adelaide

Orphaned platypus Albert has escaped from the zoo. Now he's on a quest to find the "Old Australia." Instead, he meets Jack, a pyromaniacal wombat and the first of many eccentric creatures -- others include militant kangaroos, menacing dingoes, and a washed-up Tasmanian devil -- that Albert encounters on his journey. Howard L. Anderson's novel is an uproarious introduction to the menagerie of characters living just outside our enclosures.

June 18: George Orwell's "As One Non-Combatant to Another" was published on this day in 1943. Orwell's poem arguing against pacifism quotes from Churchill's "finest hour" speech, delivered to Parliament and the nation on this day in…

Very few debut novels exhibit the charm, assurance, emotional depth and bravura fabulation which the lucky reader will discover in Helene Wecker's

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