Academy X: A Novel by Andrew Trees from Bloomsbury USA is $2.99 (US Kindle)
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Welcome to Academy X, an ethical wonderland in which up is down, right is wrong, and parents and students will stop at nothing (including lying, plagiarizing, and even seduction to name a few) in orderto get into the Ivy League. Caught in the middle is John Spencer, a bumbling but loveable English teacher struggling through the final weeks of his spring semester. But keeping focused on a Jane Austen seminar proves problematic when a His crush on the sexy school librarian andas well as a pending promotion threaten to divert his attentionare threatening to sink him in a sea of academic intrigue. Things become even more complicated when the college counseler asks John to lie (or at least exaggerate) in a recommendation letter for the very student who he’s just discovered is a plagiarizer! And things are only about to get worse for John, who discovers that no price is too high to achieve a coveted admission to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton—even if that includes his own disgrace.
Witty and rollicking, Academy X is a priceless peek into New York City’s top private schools—indeed into elite schools all over the country.where parents risk all for their child’s academic.
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Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death by Mark Essig from Walker Books is $3.03 (US Kindle)
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Thomas Edison stunned America in 1879 by unveiling a world-changing invention–the light bulb–and then launching the electrification of America’s cities. A decade later, despite having been an avowed opponent of the death penalty, Edison threw his laboratory resources and reputation behind the creation of a very different sort of device–the electric chair. Deftly exploring this startling chapter in American history, Edison & the Electric Chair delivers both a vivid portrait of a nation on the cusp of modernity and a provocative new examination of Edison himself.
Edison championed the electric chair for reasons that remain controversial to this day. Was Edison genuinely concerned about the suffering of the condemned? Was he waging a campaign to smear his rival George Westinghouse’s alternating current and boost his own system? Or was he warning the public of real dangers posed by the high-voltage alternating wires that looped above hundreds of America’s streets? Plumbing the fascinating history of electricity, Mark Essig explores America’s love of technology and its fascination with violent death, capturing an era when the public was mesmerized and terrified by an invisible force that produced blazing light, powered streetcars, carried telephone conversations–and killed.
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