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"Book Appraisal: The Brittle Sea. An evocative historical drama that brilliantly merges emotional depth with sweeping historical events. From the icy decks of the Titanic to the gritty streets of 1930s New York"

Book Appraisal: The Brittle Sea

Genre: Historical Fiction / Romance / Suspense

Setting: Early 20th Century. Ukraine, North Atlantic, Canada, New York

Author: Tom Kane

A Riveting Tale of Love, Loss, and Reinvention

The Brittle Sea is an evocative historical drama that brilliantly merges...

It's All About Bee-haviour
When we think of play in animals, puppies and kittens usually spring to mind. Most of us would picture a puppy chasing a ball in the grass or kitten playing with a ball of wool. What if I told you Bumble Bees also like to play. I'll bet you would be hard pressed to picture a bee chasing a ball or playing with a ball of string. Well, that's exactly the behavior that has been observed. No, not playing with a ball of wool, yes, playing with balls is what some bees do....

Miami, USA: Studies have shown dozens of structures, like luxury condos and hotels, that are sinking. In areas like Sunny Isles Beach and Miami Beach, some properties have sunk by 2 to 8 centimeters. But it isn't just sinking cities in America.

The ground beneath many of the world’s most iconic and densely populated coastal cities is a threat to their continued existence. Sinking cities are a worldwide phenomenon, and sometimes they're sinking faster than sea levels are rising. Subsidence,...

Let’s get one thing straight from the get go, you, dear reader, are a walking miracle. Not because you’ve climbed Everest, invented gluten-free breadsticks, or remembered all your passwords without resetting them. You're a miracle because statistically, you shouldn't even be here.

Let's rewind the cosmic lottery machine.

First off, your ancestors had to survive saber-toothed tigers, plagues, famine, wars, and the 1970s. Every single one of your forebears had to not only live through this chaos...

“Speak into My Shell-Like Ear”
Language is full of curious expressions that charm us with their imagery, and one such phrase is “shell-like ear.” It’s a term often used with a touch of humor or endearment, typically when someone invites another to share a secret or say something softly. “Whisper that into my shell-like ear.” But where does this odd-sounding phrase come from? And why a shell?

What Does “Shell-Like Ear” Mean?
At its core, the phrase “shell-like ear” is a poetic or whimsical way to...

I know, it sounds a bit of a bizarre statement, How to Read a Book, but there is a published book named as such, by an American philosopher, Mortimer J. Adler. It was published in 1940, and a revised edition published in 1972, co-authored by Adler along with writer and editor Charles Van Doren. Van Doren's name may be familiar to some. Van Doren was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s. He later testified before the US Congress that he had been given the correct answers by...

It was only last year, in May 2024, that I wrote and published Walking Away from Midnight. And then came up with the brilliant (crazy) idea for a series of nine books based on my WW2 SOE (Special Operations Executive) heroine, Jessie Fordham, known as agent Midnight. Just over a year later, and I've just published book three in The Midnight Series, Midnight's Secret.

I'm getting good reviews for all three published books, which means I have to keep up the quality of the stories and writing in...

In 1590, early modern English was less than 100 years old. It just so happens that at the time, one William Shakespeare was writing his sonnets and plays in English. But there were no dictionaries he could use to look up a word, so instead, he made up his own words.

At the time virtually all written documents were written in Latin. But because Shakespeare wrote in English, words he invented were included in his plays, and luckily not lost to us. His contribution of a whopping 1,700 words to...