The town of Green Bank, West Virginia, is often presented as a signal-free quiet zone — no Wi-Fi, no cell phones, no radio. The 13,000 +/- square mile area was set aside as the United States National Radio Quiet Zone in 1958. It was chosen for its remote nature and relatively light signal traffic in order to have a clear patch to listen to the cosmos. But the reality of day-to-day life within the Quiet Zone is less clear-cut.
A collection of new, recent, and upcoming books that didn’t wow me enough to write full reviews, but were still interesting enough to share with other readers.
In this historic nonfiction, Siân Evans highlights the role of women on the transatlantic ships, particularly in the years between the wars. Evans chooses a few specific figures to represent the various job that made travel by ship possible for women.
With mistaken identities, missing inheritances, mysterious disappearances, I cannot get enough of Victorian sensation novels. The Dead Letter can be counted as the first American detective novel.
Mikita Brottman’s deep dive into this suburban true crime goes beyond the ‘whodunit’, and even the ‘whydunit’ aspect. Instead, she focuses on the aftermath from the point of view of the murderer.