Catherine Reef

Noah Webster may be best remembered for the enormous and ambitious task of writing his famous dictionary, but there was much more to his accomplishments. His goal was to streamline the language spoken in a newly formed country so it could be used as a force to bring people together and a source of national pride. Though people laughed at his ideas, Webster never doubted himself. In the end, his so-called foolish notions achieved just what he had hoped. Here,...

On the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, comes a riveting biography of its author, Mary Shelley, whose life reads like a dark gothic novel, filled with scandal, death, drama, and one of the strangest love stories in literary history. The story of Frankenstein's creator is a strange, romantic, and tragic one, as deeply compelling as the novel itself. Mary ran away to Lake Geneva with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley when she was just...

Victoria woke one morning at the age of eighteen to discover that her uncle had died and that she was now queen. She went on to rule for sixty-three years, with an influence so far-reaching that the decades of her reign now bear her name-the Victorian period. Victoria is filled with the exciting comings and goings of royal life: intrigue and innuendo, scheming advisors, and assassination attempts-not to mention plenty of passion and discord.