New Releases: Ghosts & Flowers

Ok first of all, I love this cover. Now, what’s it about? Wong’s memoir is about “a childhood amid revolutionary times, where boyish adventures and school days mixed with dire poverty and political persecution.” His father, a “patriotic Chinese official” was caught by Mao’s Hundred Flowers Campaign, which was a time when people were encouraged to express their true feelings about the government, and then later hundreds of thousands were sent to prison camps for “re-education.” Wong was one of half a million Freedom Swimmers who swam to Hong Kong to escape.

A Hungarian ghost hunter! A suburban housewife! A possible poltergeist! This story takes place in 1930s London when Alma Fielding started experiencing things flying off the shelves, tortoises appearing in her car, etc. Y’know. Ghost stuff. This is the story of her, ghost hunter Nandor Fodor (fun name), and an imminent war.

Is it possible to talk about Freedom Riders without getting emotional? Freedom Riders were incredibly brave men and women who rode interstate buses into segregated states to “challenge the non-enforcement of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.” Charles Person was the youngest of the original Freedom Riders, being 18 when they started. The bus he rode was attacked by a mob, with several Riders severely beaten. This is his story.

Like I’m not highlighting this book. In the 1880s, James Vick spent $100,000 a year on advertising, publishing full-color floral guides multiple times a year, and getting rave reviews for his magazine. He employed 150 people and received 3000 letters a day. If you were into flowers and lived in the mid-to-late 19th century, you knew about Vick’s Illustrated Floral Guide.