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Good Work, Secret Seven – A Review by Ben

The Secret Seven are enjoying a meeting in the trademark shed of Peter and Janet’s back garden a few days before bonfire night. Nibbling away at staple Enid Blyton favourites such as chocolate biscuits, apples, ginger buns, doughnuts, peppermint rock, hazelnuts and nutcrackers, the seven children are enjoying a feast in their well-lit shed, powered by an oil stove, with flower pots and boxes for the children to sit on. Suddenly the annoying Susie knocks on the door of the hideout and correctly shouts the password ‘Guy Fawkes’ much to the dismay of the Seven. Cue a quarrel which leaves poor Jack (Susie’s brother) red in the face after it emerges that utterances in his sleep have led to Susie finding out the password.

However, the excitement and Susie’s slyness are not to end there. Late to the meeting, Colin bursts in with an exciting tale about how he had overheard men quarrelling in the bushes on his journey down. In all the kerfuffle he dropped his torch on the pavement near the bushes and bravely went to pick it up only to discover the men had gone when he flashed it on. But to the joy of all the Seven Colin had found a notebook which contained notes about stolen items from a famous cricketer, and a place where the alleged thieves would meet up to discuss their plan.

Thinking they are in on another adventure, the Seven arrange to travel to the old workmen’s shed at the back of Lane’s garage where the gang are due to meet. Following their arrival, the Seven noticing a light on, creep up to the shed and hear a number of terrifying bangs. Bewildered, Peter peeps through the letterbox and to his astonishment sees Susie and her friends banging paper bags. The angry Seven demand the laughing Susie and her friends come out of the shed, but they only agree after Susie threatens to tell their whole school if the Seven pulled her hair.

Facing the impossible Susie

In despair, Peter and Janet go to see their mother’s old nanny Mrs Penton the next day. After an enjoyable afternoon of cream buns and chocolate éclairs, their father picks them up, taking them to station where he has to collect some parcels. It is here that the adventure of this book starts. Bored and tired, Peter and Janet are about to doze off when two men creep into either side of their dad’s car and drive off. Sensing the fact his dad’s car has been stolen, Peter tells a frightened Janet to crouch down so the two men can not see the two children. Eventually, the two men stop in a part of town that the children do not know, before the driver tells his companion to get in touch with Q8061 about meeting at Sid’s place at five o’clock in the evening.

In the stolen car

Scared but excited, Peter and Janet manage to find a phone box where their shocked dad picks them up. However, their dad does not want to phone the police about the two thieves, meaning it is left to the children to catch the pair.

The next day, Peter and Janet tell the rest of the Seven about the drama the previous day, thrilled, they all agree to search for clues. First, the Seven try Peter and Janet’s dads’ car where, to her delight, Janet finds a spectacle case with a note for ‘Briggs. Renning 2150.’ Jack also finds a button which had fallen off a mac. In light of this, the children search for the address in a telephone directory and find that Mr H.E.J. Briggs lives at Little Hill, Raynes Road, Renning. To their disappointment, this person turns out to be a friend of Peter and Janet’s dad.

Soon things get worse for the Seven when they decide to build a guy for bonfire night in Colin’s summerhouse. Sadly, Scamper comes bursting in to see the children, only to knock a lit candle on to the straw and hay needed to build the guy. Consequently, a fire destroys the guy and burns some of Colin’s summerhouse.

The distraught children are now mourning over their lack of progress in the adventure and the burning of their guy. But a bright idea from Jack involves Peter dressing up as a guy outside Sid’s cafe to be a look-out for the two men who stole his dad’s car turns the adventure for the better. There you have it, Peter ends up dressing as a guy, a wonderful one too with his old pair of patched trousers, great big boots, scarf, big old hat and a wig made of black wool. Down he goes with George, Colin and Jack to the cafe in a wheelbarrow and it is here where the mystery will start. Will Peter and the rest of the boys spot the two men? Will the Secret Seven find out what Q8061 is? Does the button belong to the coats of one of the men? You can only find out by reading this book!

The ‘guy’

I enjoyed reading this book as I was really taken in by Susie and her friends trick on the Secret Seven. I was convinced that the children were in on another mystery so to find out that it was all a hoax was a surprise. Blyton’s idea to dress Peter up as a guy was fantastic and made for a compelling story. It was clever how she managed to link the bonfire night theme with the narrative for this book. I just hoped that Peter would find the two men and it’s good to see a guy being made use of rather than to be burnt again!

First edition dust jacket

Next review: Secret Seven Win Through

3 Responses to Good Work, Secret Seven – A Review by Ben

Well done, Ben. It makes me want to reread the Secret Seven once more.

My main memory of this book was Peter telling Pam that he used to think she wasn’t as good a member of the Seven as the others. Pam is also very much The Chick (well, she and Barbara are Those Two Girls) of the group. I felt terrible that Peter was openly insulting her. Well, it was a backhanded compliment in context, but still.

As I remember it, the fire started by Scamper knocking over the candle destroyed their collection of fireworks. They hadn’t started building the guy yet.

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Secret Seven by Enid Blyton

Book Review : The Secret Seven

Diana’s project.

Some days ago I finished reading a very interesting book “The Secret Seven” which was written by Enid Blyton. It is an adventure story. It was my first book that I read in English .

Briefly about the author

Enid Mary Blyton (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968) was an English children’s writer whose books have been among the world’s best-sellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Blyton’s books are still enormously popular, and have been translated into 90 languages. Her first book, Child Whispers , a 24-page collection of poems, was published in 1922. She wrote on a wide range of topics including education, natural history, fantasy, mystery, and biblical narratives and is best remembered today for her Noddy , Famous Five , Secret Seven and Malory Towers series. Blyton worked in a wide range of fictional genres, from fairy tales to animal, nature, detective, mystery, and circus stories, but she often “blurred the boundaries” in her books, and encompassed a range of genres even in her short stories.

The Secret Seven Society consists of Peter, his sister Janet, and their friends Jack, Colin, George, Pam and Barbara. Although not an official member of the Secret Seven, Peter and Janet’s golden spaniel Scamper also attends meetings.

The children meet in a shed with “S.S.” on the door. Admission is by password only and badges must be worn. Peter, as head of the society, makes jolly well sure that everyone complies with the rules.

Their adventures begin when Jack witnesses suspicious activity on a snowing night, after searching for his badge near a large house where only a denf caretaker lives. Suspecting a person is being held prisoner the seven children investigate the mystery.

I was taken away by the unpredictable and gripping plot, the way the author portrays the main characters that I couldn’t help reading this book from cover to cover. The book is worth reading. I recommend everyone to read this amazing story.

And one more positive thing. Reading in English I enriched my vocabulary and improved my reading skills. If you want to learn English more quickly, lots of reading is important. The more you read, the more input your brain gets about how the language works. When you read in English, you can improve your vocabulary, your grammar, and your writing skills at the same time.

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Enid Blyton is one of the most popular children's authors of all time. Her books have sold over 500 million copies and have been translated into other languages more often than any other children's author.

Enid Blyton adored writing for children. She wrote over 700 books and about 2,000 short stories. The Famous Five books, now 75 years old, are her most popular. She is also the author of other favourites including The Secret Seven, The Magic Faraway Tree, Malory Towers and Noddy.

Born in London in 1897, Enid lived much of her life in Buckinghamshire and loved dogs, gardening and the countryside. She was very knowledgeable about trees, flowers, birds and animals. Dorset - where some of the Famous Five's adventures are set - was a favourite place of hers too.

Enid Blyton's stories are read and loved by millions of children (and grown-ups) all over the world. Visit enidblyton.co.uk to discover more.

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Book World: Two great new basketball books set the mood for March Madness

Eighty years ago, an extraordinary collegiate basketball game took place. It’s such a shining moment, it’s madness that March 12 isn’t an annual hoops holiday. On that Sunday morning in 1944, when most folks (including local cops) were at church, the Duke University medical school team traveled across town to play the all-Black North Carolina College Eagles behind locked gym doors. “The Secret Game” – a legitimate contest with a referee and a game clock but no spectators – was the first college game in the segregated South with Black and white players on the same court. The Eagles’ fast break helped them torch Duke, 88-44, but the competitive juices were still flowing afterward, so the young men did something even more extraordinary: On a Jim Crow hardwood, at a time when Black teams weren’t even allowed in the NCAA or NIT tournaments, they split up the teams and ran it back, shirts and skins.

I’ve been a basketball junkie for more than 40 years but had never come across this incredible story until it popped up as a narrative detour in “The Real Hoosiers: Crispus Attucks High School, Oscar Robertson and the Hidden History of Hoops,” by Jack McCallum, one of two terrific new basketball books out in time to make your tourney banter that much more intelligent. “The Real Hoosiers” is the story of a dominant but unheralded high school team that played during the same placid Eisenhower days as the squad in the beloved movie “Hoosiers.” The Crispus Attucks Tigers, led by one of the best to ever do it, Oscar Robertson, won a state title in 1955, becoming the first all-Black team in Indiana – and “quite likely,” in McCallum’s estimation, the United States – to do that. (They won it again the following year.)

In 1954, Attucks lost in the state tournament to Milan High School, the rural team that inspired the fictional Hickory High in “Hoosiers.” McCallum uses that film, and the racial dynamics of its conservative “Behold, the smart, scrappy white kids!” ethos as a jumping-off point for how much more improbable the Tigers’ real-world heroics were. For starters, they didn’t have a gym. They also dealt with consistently biased officiating, racist invective from opposing fans, restaurants that wouldn’t serve them, bigoted newspaper columnists, death threats and the murder of peer Emmett Till.

McCallum makes quick work of the movie’s legacy to tell a much deeper and richer story about life under de facto legal segregation in 1950s Indiana. The “most northern state in the South,” as it’s been called, was home to the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan, which is why the book goes well beyond simply resuscitating those Crispus Attucks Tigers and giving them their just due. “The Real Hoosiers” has a real edge to it.

McCallum, now in his mid-70s, pulls all the tricks from a Hall of Fame career out of his righteous writer’s bag to show what these teenagers endured while compiling an 85-6 record in Robertson’s three varsity seasons. He jumps back and forth in time, throws in fun footnotes about figures like Cab Calloway and Kurt Vonnegut, weaves in historical antecedents and ancillary tales, offers technical basketball analysis, and breaks the fourth wall with commentary and jokes, both grandpa groaners and one-liners dripping with animus at racial injustices past and present.

Nowhere is that animus felt more than in a chapter titled “Basketball and Blood in the Same Town Square.” In 1926, 90 miles north of Indianapolis in Marion, Indiana, the town square hosted a party after the local boys beat Martinsville (whose team featured a sophomore guard named John Wooden; hold that thought) for the state title. A raucous bonfire raged all night. Four years later, a crowd of 5,000 – a quarter of Marion’s population – gathered once again for a different purpose. This time, as McCallum describes it, “They were waiting – many of them hoping – to witness their first lynching.”

On Aug. 7, 1930, Black teenagers Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, who were in jail on unsubstantiated murder and rape charges, were brutally beaten, dragged to the Marion town square, strung up on a maple tree and left hanging for nearly 12 hours. Local photographer Lawrence Beitler captured the depraved indifference of the townspeople, some of whom undoubtedly reveled in the lynching as they had the hoops championship a few years before. The infamous photo would inspire Billie Holiday’s haunting classic “Strange Fruit.”

Strictly speaking, there is no direct link between the Marion grotesquerie and what Crispus Attucks players overcame during their dominant run, but does there need to be? Political and cultural eras bleed into one another, and they certainly did for Wooden, the Hoosier farm boy who went on to claim 10 NCAA titles as a coach in the California sunshine, including seven in a row during a time of massive American upheaval. Scott Howard-Cooper captures the wild juxtaposition of the on-court discipline required to win 88 consecutive games and the swirling campus insanity of the era in “Kingdom on Fire: Kareem, Wooden, Walton, and the Turbulent Days of the UCLA Basketball Dynasty.”

Over time, after retiring in 1975, Wooden went from being renowned as a great hoops tactician to being seen as a kind of cartoon of the humble, hard-working “Hoosiers” mind-set. “Kingdom on Fire” restores the neurotic Wooden ground down by the expectations of winning and pining for simpler days, before he coached two of the best college centers of all-time, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (still Lew Alcindor when he played for Wooden) and Bill Walton. Add in Wooden’s quirks, like being scared of L.A. traffic and believing ice in water causes stomach cramps; flaws, like discouraging interracial dating as late as 1970; and a willingness to experiment on-court well into his successful career, and you have a fascinating character, not a human motivational poster.

Hagiographies are for hacks, so Howard-Cooper doesn’t tiptoe around the subject of Sam Gilbert either. Gilbert was the millionaire building contractor/UCLA benefactor who made sure that players were always flush with cash for travel, cars, dinners, drinks, discos and, allegedly, abortions. Gilbert’s illicit largesse was an open secret, motivation for players to come to UCLA, so his prime seats near the bench weren’t an accident. As time went on, Gilbert’s profile grew, but as long as UCLA kept winning, he kept bolstering, whether Coach Wooden knew what he was up to or not (I’m calling it “willful ignorance” at best). The players knew Gilbert delivered and wanted him around, even if – according to Howard-Cooper, and a surprise to me – both Kareem and Walton considered leaving UCLA.

In those years, UCLA was more of a commuter college, filled mostly with well-tanned, “What Me, Worry?” white Angelenos. Abdul-Jabbar, whose New York City high school coach calling him the N-word played a role in why he ended up on the west coast, ultimately he wanted to transfer to the University of Michigan, which had a much more robust Black student body and was fairly close to Detroit’s jazz clubs. Walton, who was a serious activist and not just the goofy Deadhead he can seem on broadcasts today, yearned to be in the anti-Vietnam War action at Cal-Berkeley, where kids were fighting in the streets every day. The two centers respected Wooden apart from UCLA itself, stayed put and got the rings, of course, but their collegiate basketball years were far more complicated than many readers might have realized.

“Kingdom of Fire,” like “The Real Hoosiers,” places readers back in more interesting times, before the stories they tell were sanded down or inflated or forgotten. While filling out the brackets this year, consider getting your hoops mind right with these two substantial histories. The teams in them might seem a very far cry from the billion-dollar Big Dance bonanza of today, but look closer. The past will be there at tip-off. Three of the giants in these books still walk among us. Walton is 71, Abdul-Jabbar is 76 and Robertson, “the Big O,” is 85, winding down a long life that early on found him dribbling and shooting on a dusty, vacant Indianapolis lot, right about the time Black and white collegiate cagers secretly stepped on a court together.

Patrick Sauer has been a freelance writer for more than 20 years for many publications, some that still exist. He also co-hosts the live online talk show “Squawkin’ Sports,” which features interviews with authors of sports books.

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'The American Society of Magical Negroes': You don't wanna join this club

Aisha Harris

Aren (Justice Smith) and Roger (David Alan Grier) in The American Society of Magical Negroes. Focus Features hide caption

Aren (Justice Smith) and Roger (David Alan Grier) in The American Society of Magical Negroes.

Lately, I've been musing on the concept of time and its relationship to Black art and identity. I keep bumping into this question: What time do we all think we're living in right now?

In the year of someone's lord 2024, a recent episode of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans conjured up James Baldwin – the same James Baldwin who once wrote, "I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt" – as a Magical Negro to Truman Capote.

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A straight-faced excavation of this old Hollywood trope, which has been on the wane for some time, is startling enough. But now there's also Kobi Libii's feature debut, The American Society of Magical Negroes, which attempts to skewer it. The comedy writer and performer imagines an underground network of Black mystics who dedicate their lives to placating white people for the safety of Black people everywhere. "White discomfort," as one character opines, is the "nemesis" of Black existence.

If this all sounds like the premise for a classic Key & Peele sketch, you wouldn't be too far off . The trouble is, as far as I can tell, no one involved with writing Key & Peele had anything to do with the Society of Magical Negroes .

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The movie has at least two crucial factors working against it. For one, the Magical Negro trope isn't anywhere near as pervasive in Hollywood as it was when Spike Lee coined the term more than two decades ago. So despite being set in the present day, Libii's social commentary brings with it no new enlightenment on the dominant stereotypes Black people face now, despite a nearly two-hour runtime.

Second, it has no Black characters. To be clear, there are real Black performers playing these roles on screen. But one would think fully human, complexly written roles ought to exist in a movie where the goal is combatting multiple centuries' worth of one-dimensional representation. Here, they decidedly do not.

The Illuminati, but make it respectable

In Society of Magical Negroes , Justice Smith plays Aren, a dull and depressing L.A. artist whose specialty is dull and depressing abstract yarn installations. His latest work is on display at an art show, but no one "gets" it. When a white collector mistakes him for the waitstaff, Aren obliges and gets the man a drink instead of trying to convince him to buy his art.

A member of the actual waitstaff has been observing him all night and introduces himself. It turns out he's Roger (David Alan Grier), a jolly older man who's arrived to recruit Aren into the American Society of Magical Negroes, a "firm" that views itself as a group of world-class superheroes. He leads him to their secret headquarters, tucked away behind a Black barbershop, with hallowed rooms and halls that resemble Hogwarts or the Clue mansion. The visual world-building in this regard is the film's sole inspired choice.

Egotistical tech bro Jason (Drew Tarver) is Aren's first "client." Focus Features hide caption

Egotistical tech bro Jason (Drew Tarver) is Aren's first "client."

Each Society member is assigned a white "client" who's experiencing some sort of crisis and is dangerously close to taking out their anxieties on innocent Black people. (A "white tears meter" assists in monitoring the threat level at any given moment.) The Magical Negro's job is to befriend and counsel their client through all their issues until they get whatever it is they want. Aren's first guinea pig is Jason (Drew Tarver), a disgruntled, egotistical tech bro at a software company called MeetBox, who's angling for a promotion he almost certainly doesn't deserve. Aren is hired at MeetBox and immediately gets to work practicing his skill of being a personality-less doormat, which has a great effect on clueless Jason.

Did I mention this is also a workplace rom-com? Sure, why not? Aren discovers one of his other new colleagues is Lizzie (An-Li Bogan), a woman with whom he had the gawkiest and most unsexy of meet-cutes at a coffee shop earlier in the day. Lizzie happens to be Jason's "work-wife," but he's also into her, so that complicates Aren's adherence to his Magical Negro responsibilities and tests his commitment to The Cause.

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'magical negro' carries the weight of history, maybe we're all just magical negroes.

So many disparate ideas and tones are being mashed up here, and none of them gel. Libii spends a ton of time obsessing over the details and internal rules of these proud, respectability politicians. Yet he also has a slippery grasp on the trope he seeks to interrogate. In this world, the Magical Negro is broadened out from its very specific real-world definition – Spike Lee was referring to movies with "magical, mystical" Black characters in films like The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Green Mile – to an all-encompassing label that includes any Black person who's ever merely decided "Not today, Satan" and resisted the bait when dealing with racial microaggressions at work and Crispus Attucks.

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Those muddled conflations would be less jarring if Aren were written as anything other than a convenient vessel for showcasing a convoluted premise. We know nothing about him besides that he's a failed, self-loathing Rhode Island School of Design alum who's so spineless he'll awkwardly hold the door for a parade of oblivious exiting passersby before finally entering a coffee shop for himself. Before becoming a Magical Negro (I can't believe this is an actual sentence I'm writing), he has no community to speak of – no friends, no real job, and no family, except a white mom he offhandedly mentions. (This is somehow both very illuminating and not at all illuminating at the same time.) Where did he grow up? How can Aren afford to be a struggling artist with a decent apartment in Los Angeles in this economy? Has Aren ever spent any time with Black people? (Magical Negroes don't count.)

Lizzie (An-Li Bogan) and Aren (Justice Smith) have a tedious meet-cute at a coffee shop. Tobin Yelland/Focus Features hide caption

Lizzie (An-Li Bogan) and Aren (Justice Smith) have a tedious meet-cute at a coffee shop.

His character arc, if you wish to call it that, concludes with him superficially liberated. In the film's climax, he gives a grandstanding speech that's What It's Like to Be Black 101, a far more grating version of Barbie 's climactic Feminism 101 monologue. The moment is wholly unearned, and the epiphany lands with a thud because Aren didn't really start from any place real to begin with. There's nothing radical or daring about his journey to self-discovery, which hinges almost entirely on his romantic pining for Lizzie. In fact, Libii's script doesn't even try to engage with Black radicalism because if it did, The Society would have to come under far more rigorous scrutiny than the film is interested in pursuing. The Magical Negroes, so proud to have single-handedly "raised the Black life expectancy," at least according to society head Dede (Nicole Byer), exist in a world where the likes of Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey, the Black Panthers, and Bree Newsome never existed. The movie's finale seems content with that omission.

What time are we living in now?

Nicole Byer is Dede, head of the American Society of Magical Negroes. Focus Features hide caption

Nicole Byer is Dede, head of the American Society of Magical Negroes.

So: What time are we living in now? It depends on who you ask and where you look. Not unlike American Fiction , Society of Magical Negroes is convinced Black people on screen and in real life are, by and large, contending with the same stereotypes and barriers that we were 20 years ago. But that's its own kind of retrograde nostalgia trap to fall into, the kind that can only be constructed by ignoring key parts of history and the present reality.

There are pressing issues like pay inequities and Black-created TV shows being canceled far too soon. But there's also been so much exciting work being made by filmmakers on every level over the last decade – emerging voices like Nikyatu Jusu , Raven Jackson and Juel Taylor ; newly-minted titans like Issa Rae and Jordan Peele; established vets like Gina Prince-Bythewood. They've told stories spanning a breadth of genres, sensibilities and character studies, the stuff their predecessors dreamed of. Amid this landscape, it's hard not to view the Magical Negro as – thankfully – a relic.

Writing more than 25 years ago, bell hooks lamented how a dominant white supremacist environment forced too many Black artists to be hyperfocused on producing "resisting images," thus overwhelming their creative and upsetting artistic integrity. At the time, she observed that Black filmmaking was still a "fertile frontier" because of the lack of radical images, but that she foresaw a "far distant future" where Blackness will be "overworked, overdone" just as whiteness has been. We're a little bit closer to that future than we've ever been. But evidently, we've still got some ways to go.

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The Secret Seven on the Trail by Enid Blyton - review

The Secret Seven are a secret group of kids named Peter, Janet, Jack, Barbara, Pam, Colin and George. They are always ready for an adventure, big or small!

Something very strange is happening at Tigger's Barn, and the Secret Seven are desperate to find out what. Peter thinks it's all just a joke, but Jack is not sure when he eavesdrops on a conversation. It looks like the Seven have another mystery to solve...

I liked this book because it had a twist and it kept me unsure of what was happening next so I just couldn't put it down but I didn't like it when they made a Famous Five that didn't have the correct characters of the real books.

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7 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

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Writers writing about writers writing: It all gets a little hall-of-mirrors, sure, but that’s literary criticism for you. This week we recommend three books that look back at earlier eras of writing, from Marilynne Robinson’s luminous reflection on the Book of Genesis to Ramie Targoff’s survey of women writing in the 16th and 17th centuries to Tricia Romano’s oral history of The Village Voice.

Also up: an elegy for peasants and their way of life, and, in fiction, an Icelandic novel about an amnesiac, a British novel about a bride-to-be re-evaluating her life choices, and a South Korean story collection that tends toward the otherworldly. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

SHAKESPEARE’S SISTERS: How Women Wrote the Renaissance Ramie Targoff

Targoff’s rich excavation of writers of the 16th and early 17th centuries introduces not just four women but their work: fine poetry, ingenious translation, elegant diaries, subversive drama. Targoff brings a historian’s scope and a critic’s eye to her subject, and manages to make the result both enlightening and pleasurable.

“Fascinating. ... Targoff’s intent is to scrape away the layer of literary obscurity from Shakespeare’s sisters and present the pentimento as transcendent survivors. Their work indeed lives on.”

From Tina Brown’s review

Knopf | $33

READING GENESIS Marilynne Robinson

To read the first book of the Bible in Robinson’s company is a thrill. With exacting, benevolent intelligence, the prizewinning author of “Housekeeping,” “Gilead” and other novels (along with several previous works of nonfiction) brings marvelously to life this ancient chronicle of human longing, vice and virtue, and the awed intimations of divinity that inspired it.

“Its power lies in the particular reading it gives us of one of the world’s foundational texts, which is also one of the foundations of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s mind and faith.”

From Francis Spufford’s review

Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $29

PIGLET Lottie Hazell

Two weeks before her wedding, a young woman learns of her betrothed’s betrayal. She decides to proceed as planned — but will she be able to? Hazell’s debut novel is a tantalizing layer cake of horror, romance (sort of) and timely questions about the power of appetite.

“If I owned a bookstore, I’d hand-sell ‘Piglet’ to everyone. … Hazell’s prose is as tart and icy as lemon sorbet; her sentences are whipcord taut, drum tight.”

From Jennifer Weiner’s review

Holt | $27.99

THE FREAKS CAME OUT TO WRITE: The Definitive History of The Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture Tricia Romano

Romano’s oral history of The Village Voice tracks its rise from a local New York paper to a muckraking powerhouse with national influence. Interviews with former staff members, admirers and a killer’s row of cultural critics capture the anarchic, audacious spirit of America’s most important alternative weekly.

“A well-made disco ball of a book — it’s big, discursive, ardent, intellectual and flecked with gossip. … May be the best history of a journalistic enterprise I’ve ever read.”

From Dwight Garner’s review

PublicAffairs | $35

REMEMBERING PEASANTS: A Personal History of a Vanished World Patrick Joyce

Most of the people who have lived on this planet since the invention of agriculture have been what we now call peasants. And yet, as Joyce writes in his sensitive rumination on agricultural laborers, it’s a state of being that’s always been treated with a total lack of respect. While Joyce, a historian, addresses most of Europe in this sweeping study, his investment is particular: In the process, he paints a moving portrait of his own family.

A “moving and sensitive rumination on the historic fate of these earthbound people. … Joyce’s study is an elegy for a way of life, and a way of understanding the world.”

From Fintan O’Toole’s review

Scribner | $30

YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS Jon Kalman Stefansson

An amnesiac pieces together his identity from strangers’ stories in this peripatetic Icelandic novel, translated by Philip Roughton, which unfolds from an awakening in a small rural church into a rich history of a whole community. Stefansson uses the drama and comedy of everyday lives to dive into a broad range of topics: philosophy, music, faith and even the science of earthworms.

“Elemental nature and human tragedy are equally present. … Each story could stand on its own; one of the pleasures of the novel is the slow revelation of their connections.”

From Daniel Mason’s review

Biblioasis | Paperback, $19.95

YOUR UTOPIA: Stories Bora Chung

Chung’s new story collection, translated by Anton Hur, takes readers to otherworldly places and fantastical scenarios — ranging from an immortality research clinic to a version of Earth ravaged by a virus that causes cannibalism — to explore the very real quandaries we face as humans today.

“Chung builds out her stories with imagination, absurdity and a dry sense of humor, all applied with X-Acto knife precision.”

From Alexandra Kleeman’s review

Algonquin Books | Paperback, $18.99

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You never know what’s going to go wrong in these graphic novels, where Circus tigers, giant spiders, shifting borders and motherhood all threaten to end life as we know it .

When the author Tommy Orange received an impassioned email from a teacher in the Bronx, he dropped everything to visit the students who inspired it.

A few years ago, Harvard acquired the archive of Candida Royalle, a porn star turned pioneering director. Now, the collection has inspired a new book , challenging the conventional history of the sexual revolution.

Gabriel García Márquez wanted his final novel to be destroyed. Its publication this month may stir questions about posthumous releases.

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Secret Seven: Secret Seven Adventure by Enid Blyton
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The Secret Seven by Enid Blyton
The secret seven are: Peter, Janet, Jack, Barbara, Pam, Colin, George and not forgetting Peter and Janet's dog, Scamper. Peter can be bossy at times and likes being in charge as he is the leader ...
The Secret Seven (The Secret Seven, #1) by Enid Blyton
Enid Blyton. 3.90. 10,273 ratings394 reviews. It's their very first adventure and the Secret Seven super-sleuths are already on the trail of a mystery! The gang are dressed in disguise, following a lead to a spooky old house in the snow... Genres Childrens Mystery Fiction Adventure Classics Middle Grade Young Adult. ...more. 144 pages, Paperback.
Book Review: The Secret Seven
Title of the book: The Secret Seven Book Series: The Secret Seven Author: Enid Blyton Year of Publication: 2015 Publisher: Hachette India Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Adventure ISBN: 978--3408-9307-4. Outline:. The Secret Seven is a story of seven cousins who come together to form a secret society. The group come together for holidays, festivities, helping the needy and to solve mysteries ...
The Secret Seven by Enid Blyton
Last modified on Wed 20 Sep 2017 06.18 EDT. The Secret Seven series is series about 7 children: Peter (the society's leader), Janet (Peter's sister), Jack, Barbara, George, Pam and Colin. They ...
The Secret Seven
The Secret Seven - a review by Ben. Posted on January 11, 2013 by worldofblyton. The thrill of the Christmas holidays had vanished and Peter and his sister Janet decide to restart The Secret Seven. This essentially being a group of seven members who each wore a badge with S.S. and had to remember a quite often quirky password.
The Secret Seven Series by Enid Blyton
Book 13. Shock for the Secret Seven. by Enid Blyton. 3.87 · 3,119 Ratings · 59 Reviews · published 1961 · 58 editions. Dogs are disappearing from the village, but the Se…. Want to Read.
The Secret Seven
The Secret Seven or Secret Seven Society is a fictional group of child detectives created by Enid Blyton and based on the publisher's children. They appear in one of several adolescent detective series which Blyton wrote. The Secret Seven consists of Peter (the society's head), Janet (Peter's sister), Pam, Barbara, Jack, Colin and George.
The Secret Seven Collection by Enid Blyton
Whether they're investigating a spooky house in the snow, a missing pearl necklace, an intruder in their treehouse or mysterious happenings at Tigger's Barn - you can rely on the Secret Seven to get to the bottom of things! Show more. Genres ChildrensFictionMystery Chapter BooksAdventure. 512 pages, Hardcover. First published January 1, 1949.
The Secret Seven by Enid Blyton
The next morning the Seven phone the police and the two men are arrested. As a reward the children are given circus and pantomime tickets in a happy ending to the adventure! In my view, the first book of Blyton's Secret Seven series turns into a fairly strong mystery and story. It is clever how Blyton manages to disguise the identity of the ...
Good Work, Secret Seven
The Secret Seven are enjoying a meeting in the trademark shed of Peter and Janet's back garden a few days before bonfire night. Nibbling away at staple Enid Blyton favourites such as chocolate biscuits, apples, ginger buns, doughnuts, peppermint rock, hazelnuts and nutcrackers, the seven children are enjoying a feast in their well-lit shed, powered by…
Book Review: Secret Seven Mystery
Title of the book: Secret Seven Mystery Book Series: The Secret Seven Author: Enid Blyton Year of Publication: 2015 Publisher: Hachette India Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Adventure ISBN: 978--3408-9315-9. Outline:. The Secret Seven is a story of seven cousins who come together to form a secret society. The group come together for holidays, festivities, helping the needy and to solve ...
Well Done, Secret Seven by Enid Blyton
Sat 22 Mar 2014 11.00 EDT. The Secret Seven are a group of kids named Peter, Janet, Jack, Barbara, Pam, Colin and George. They are always ready for an adventure, big or small! The Secret Seven ...
Secret Seven Win Through (The Secret Seven, #7)
The Secret Seven Book 7 *Secret Seven Win Through* This book was a lot better than the other secret Seven Books comparatively. Even if it's a children's book, there's a realistic atmosphere seen throughout the book with a well defined and crystal plot. Also, I personally think that it was a bit bigger than the other SS books and wonderful too.
Secret Seven by Enid Blyton
Secret Seven by Enid Blyton is a series of books about children's adventures. The student has read this book and prepared a book review. Here you will find short information about the author, English children's writer Enid Blyton.
Book Review: Secret Seven Adventure
Title of the book: Secret Seven Adventure Book Series: The Secret Seven Author: Enid Blyton Year of Publication: 2015 Publisher: Hachette India Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Adventure ISBN: 978--3408-9308-1. Outline:. The Secret Seven is a story of seven cousins who come together to form a secret society. The group come together for holidays, festivities, helping the needy and to solve ...
Book Review: Puzzle For The Secret Seven
Title of the book: Puzzle For The Secret Seven Book Series: The Secret Seven Author: Enid Blyton Year of Publication: 2015 Publisher: Hachette India Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Adventure ISBN: 978--3408-9316-6. Outline:. The Secret Seven is a story of seven cousins who come together to form a secret society. The group come together for holidays, festivities, helping the needy and to ...
The Secret Seven (18 book series) Kindle Edition
The Secret Seven are siblings Peter and Janet, and Jack, Barbara, Pam, Colin and George. Together they are The Secret Seven - ready to solve any mystery, any time - in Enid Blyton's classic series of 15 mystery novels.In book ten, the gang witness the horror of a house going up in flames. Then there's the theft of a very valuable violin.
Book World: Two great new basketball books set ...
Book reviews. Book reviews "The Real Hoosiers: Crispus Attucks High School, Oscar Robertson, and the Hidden History of Hoops," by Jack McCallum (Hachette, 325 pages, $30) "Kingdom on Fire ...
Secret Seven Mystery (The Secret Seven, #9) by Enid Blyton
Enid Mary Blyton (1897 - 1968) was an English author of children's books. Born in South London, Blyton was the eldest of three children, and showed an early interest in music and reading. She was educated at St. Christopher's School, Beckenham, and - having decided not to pursue her music - at Ipswich High School, where she trained as a ...
At Long Last, a Gold Medal for America's World War II 'Ghost Army'
Bernie Bluestein, age 100, is one of only seven surviving members of a secret World War II unit that was honored with a Congressional Gold Medal on Thursday.
Book Review: Good Old Secret Seven
Title of the book: Good Old Secret Seven Book Series: The Secret Seven Author: Enid Blyton Year of Publication: 2015 Publisher: Hachette India Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Adventure ISBN: 978--3408-9318-. Outline:. The Secret Seven is a story of seven cousins who come together to form asecret society. The group come together for holidays, festivities, helping the needy and to solve ...
The American Society of Magical Negroes review: You don't want to join
The movie has at least two crucial factors working against it. For one, the Magical Negro trope isn't anywhere near as pervasive in Hollywood as it was when Spike Lee coined the term more than two ...
The Secret Seven on the Trail by Enid Blyton
Sun 25 Aug 2013 10.00 EDT. The Secret Seven are a secret group of kids named Peter, Janet, Jack, Barbara, Pam, Colin and George. They are always ready for an adventure, big or small! Something ...
Good Work, Secret Seven (The Secret Seven, #6)
The Secret Seven Book 6 *Good Work Secret Seven* This story is very much similar to various other SS books, especially the act of locating the suspects. It takes a bit from here and there and collaborates everything and builds a brand new story and amazes the readers. Susie, now, has truly become a main character and an antihero person.
7 New Books We Recommend This Week
Writers writing about writers writing: It all gets a little hall-of-mirrors, sure, but that's literary criticism for you. This week we recommend three books that look back at earlier eras of ...
Book Review: Look Out, Secret Seven
Title of the book: Look Out, Secret Seven Book Series: The Secret Seven Author: Enid Blyton Year of Publication: 2015 Publisher: Hachette India Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Adventure ISBN: 978--3408-9320-3. Outline:. The Secret Seven is a story of seven cousins who come together to formasecret society. The group come together for holidays, festivities, helping the needy and to solve ...
Book Review: Shock For The Secret Seven
Title of the book: Shock For The Secret Seven Book Series: The Secret Seven Author: Enid Blyton Year of Publication: 2015 Publisher: Hachette India Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Adventure ISBN: 978--3408-9319-7. Outline:. The Secret Seven is a story of seven cousins who come together to formasecret society. The group come together for holidays, festivities, helping the needy and to solve ...