April = Letter Writing Month

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, patrons and staff outside of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, "Once that first stack got going, it was 'Goodbye, Charlie.'" The fire was disastrous, reaching 2000 degrees and burning for more than seven hours. It consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more....

"A witty and readable (and fetchingly illustrated and glossed) excursion through the history of handwriting." —The Wall Street Journal

Let a self-confessed "penmanship nut" take you on a tour of the strange and beautiful world of handwriting.
Since her Catholic school days learning the Palmer Method, Kitty Burns Florey has been in love with handwriting, and can't imagine a world where schools forego handwriting

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Craft your own colorful paper goods and personalized stationary. With clear, step-by-step instructions, Helen Heibert covers all aspects of the papermaking process — from growing and harvesting plants for a malleable paper pulp to embellishment techniques like dyeing, embossing, and laminating. With tips on building your own papermaking equipment, ideas for transforming junk mail into dazzlingly unique notecards, and much more, you’ll

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Sixty-one years ago, the United States and Japanese armies met on Iwo Jima. Decades later, hundreds of letters are unearthed from that stark island's soil. The letters give faces and voices to the men who fought there, as well as the extraordinary general who led them. Leading the defense is Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. With little defense other than sheer will and the volcanic rock of the island itself, Gen. Kuribayashi's unprecedented tactics...

More than forty years after a car accident causes Jennifer Stirling to lose her memory on the day she planned to leave her husband for a mysterious lover, journalist Ellie Haworth becomes obsessed by the story and seeks the truth in the hopes of revitalizing her career.

When award-winning film maker Justine Nolan returns to her beautiful childhood home, she is intrigued by an envelope she finds in her absent mother's post. But the letter inside contains a shocking revelation. If genuine it will change everything she believes about her family's recent history, her mother and her adored grandmother, Gabriele.