Empress Dowager Cixi

Empress Dowager CixiBy: Jung Chang A New York Times Notable Book An NPR Best Book of the Year In 1852, at age sixteen, Cixi was chosen as one of Emperor Xianfengs numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five year old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a coup against her sons regents and placed herself as the true source of powergoverning through a silk screen that separated her from her male officials. Drawing on newly available sources, Jung

young secret daughter of the late Enyon Trelawney

By: Raymond Carver     What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is Carver's most famous collection of short stories and remians one of the most influential pieces of modern literature to date

and induced distraction

By searching for clues around the school

creates fragrant bouquets for brides

Rodman draws on his firsthand knowledge of the Oval Office to explore the foreign-policy leadership of every president from Nixon to George W

The bond they formed was everlasting--a powerful transcendent friendship that would flow through Rumi as some of the world's best-loved ecstatic poetry

Just Desserts competition

composed to entertain himself as well as his recipients

Orr is never any less than fully persuasive in arguing what makes a poem or poet great—or not

but what can it be

the negotiations are adversarial and frustrating