Stuck

What do you do when your kite gets stuck in a tree? If you're Floyd, the hilarious protagonist of Oliver Jeffers' absurd picture book for young readers, you chuck your shoe at it to get it down. And when the shoe gets stuck as well? You throw other stuff: a bike, a boat, the kitchen sink, the front door, an orangutan, a fire truck, a whale who just happened to be "in the wrong place at the wrong time."

June 19: On this day in 1816, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and entourage gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva to tell the ghost stories that would trigger Frankenstein. This most legendary of storm-tossed evenings inspired…

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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