This article was originally published on Hubpages in June 2019. What’s It About? Marina  tells the story of fifteen-year-old Oscar, a lonely boy who lives at a boarding school in Barcelona, Spain, in the late 1970s. Wandering the old and rambling streets, he comes across a mansion surrounded by a tangled garden and is tempted inside. This is how he meets Marina, who lives there with her frail, elderly father and an aloof cat. Marina decides to share a mystery which she has been secretly witnessing. So she takes Oscar to an old graveyard and together they watch as an elegant lady, who is dressed in deep-mourning black, visits a particular grave which is inscribed with a black butterfly. Seized with curiosity, the two teenagers plan to discover who this lady is and why she enacts this ritualistic visitation at the same time each month. Marina  leads its readers through an engagingly complex plot which features a derelict theatre, automatons which seem to come alive, severa...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in June 2019. What's It About? Laura leaves behind the city she's always known and follows her husband Henry to a remote cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta. While Henry's living out his dream, Laura has to struggle to raise two children, run the house and help out as best she can under the critical eye of her bone-idle, racist father-in-law. When the weather turns to rain, the one bridge to escape by becomes swallowed under a rising tide of glutinous mud. As WWII ends, two soldiers return from the Front. One is Henry's dashing brother, Jamie. The other is the eldest son of the black sharecroppers who work on Henry's land. They have survived the war, but will they survive its brutal memories? And will they survive the harsh grind of endless work and severe poverty which await them now they are home? About the Author Mudbound  was Hillary Jordan's debut novel. She has a BA in English and Political Science from W...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in June 2019. What's It About? This heavily illustrated book tracks the rise of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood from its inception and early struggles for recognition and respect to the heady years, which saw the blossoming careers of some of the Western world's best-loved 19th-century artists. In the autumn of 1848, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William Michael Rossetti, along with William Holman Hunt, Thomas Woolner, Frederick George Stephens and James Collinson, met at the home of John Everett Millais on Gower Street, London. Inspired by etchings of antique Italian works, they created a new artistic aesthetic inspired by paintings created prior to the Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino era (1483 to 1520). Thus, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) was born. These young art students were roundly ridiculed for their pretension. Stoically, they forged ahead and organised independent exhibitions of their work. At firs...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in March 2019. What's It About? Born in 1784, Minguillo Fasan is a vile child. Everyone dislikes him, even his own parents. By the age of twelve he has developed a cruel, sadistic temperament which defies any attempt to curb it. Then a sister is born. Beautiful, kind and gentle, Marcella is everything which Minguillo is not. She is loved by all, including the household servants who become deeply loyal to her cause, especially after her brother deliberately cripples her leg. Minguillo finds his father's legal Will, and he learns the family's luxurious Venetian villa is to be inherited by Marcella instead of himself. Furious, he schemes to have her removed from obstructing his ambitions. Meanwhile, their father spends most of his time on the other side of the world, in Arequipa, Peru. He is there to oversee the family's silver mines, which are the source of their wealth. But he also has another life there which his Veneti...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in February 2019. What's It About? Breathe  is a young adult novel published by Bloomsbury in 2012. It describes a desolate world devoid of trees, plants and air. Survival means submitting to the regime that rules the Pod, where air consumption is carefully monitored to the extent that people are scared to walk at anything more than a stroll. Kissing uses too much oxygen, so it is frowned upon. Adults have to work long hours in tedious jobs just to pay for the oxygen they need to stay alive, and having children is a luxury that some people simply can't afford. Retirement is not an option. Some people in the Pod live like this, anyway. Poor people, called Auxiliaries, live these dull lives of drudgery. If you're a Premium, however, then life is wonderful. You can have as much oxygen as you wish and squander it how you wish. For you, life is a cushy pleasure trip of lovely homes and meaningful occupations. Survival Beyond the...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in January 2019. What's It About? Over 200 quality reproductions of Claude Monet's world-famous Impressionist paintings illustrate this large book. A choice selection of private letters allows the reader a fascinating insight into the artist's life. These letters describe Monet's early experiments with drawing and painting. The book also contains the blossoming of what were to become life-long friendships with fellow artists such as Cezanne, Manet and Degas, Monet's decades of financial struggles, and his personal life as a husband, father and step-father. Monet toured widely through Italy, Brittany and Norway in search of new vistas to paint, while struggling with very little money and encountering crushing disinterest from art dealers and critics. Monet experienced occasional bouts of ill health and sometimes dismal temporary housing while searching for scenes to paint. He determinedly refused to admit defeat in t...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in January 2019. What's it About? Just as the title implies, this book brings together a large collection of Joseph Mallord William Turner's sketches. William Turner is famed the world over for his oil and watercolour paintings, many of which feature stormy seas and mountainous landscapes. More than anything he is renowned for his paintings of light - light bouncing off water, off clouds, off buildings - so that specific architectural or geographic details are veiled by his determination to capture the every-shifting qualities of light and shadow. Turner was born in 1775 in London, England, and entered the Royal Academy of Arts when aged only 14. He also studied architectural drawing, which served him well later when he was able to earn a steady living from illustrating travel books, for example those by Sir Walter Scot. He never married but had two daughters by his housekeeper. He was reputed to be an astute businessman, and i...