This Week's Acquisitions
- Joseph Hocking, Jabez Easterbrook: A Religious Novel (Ward, Lock, & Co., n.d. [1890]). A young minister manages to make his way despite opposition to his theology, and converts an unbelieving woman in the process. A response to Robert Elsmere. Hocking, a Methodist, was, along with his brother Silas and sister Salome, a prolific and popular late-Victorian novelist. (AbeBooks)
- Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members: A Novel (Doubleday, 2014). Desperate English professor writes endless letters of rec, with comic results. (Freebie)
- Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea (Harper, 2015). Historical novel set during the American Revolution. Tensions between a plantation owner's family and their slaves, especially when it comes to one slave's desire to protect her children. (Lift Bridge)
- P. W. Musgrave, From Brown to Bunter: The Life and Death of the School Story (Routledge, 1985). Studies the fad for the "boy's school story," usually set at a boarding school; politics, masculinity, etc. (Amazon [secondhand])