Teaser Tuesday: The Preserve and Choosing Diversity

I'm doubling down on the teasers this week, with one from a new historical thriller and another for Nonfiction November.

They traveled south for two hours, the truck's headlights finding only green tropical forest, brown streams, and an unending line of steep hills and surely mountains beyond. The last signs of civilization they passed was a village called San Mariel, just a junction of huts, their tires thumping on old cobbled road.

-- The Preserve by Steve Anderson. This post-WWII thriller is set on the Big Island of Hawaii in 1948. Wendell Lett, war hero turned deserter, seeks treatment for combat trauma at The Preserve, only to get caught up in an assassination plot that runs all the way to General Douglas MacArthur.

The Preserve is Anderson's second book featuring Wendell Lett, who first appeared in Under False Flags. They can be read as stand-alones, and are even better read back to back.

From the book flap: "Based on on of history's darkest secrets, The Preserve is a fast-paced historical thriller that will leave you breathless."

And that is the secret of charter schools – their ability to use the autonomy granted to them to create education programs that are very different from the regular public schools and very different from each other, but which responded to the individual demands of families. No one has to go to a charter school, but parents and their children vote with their feet because, as Moskowitz says, "There's a problem with the system and what it's delivering for children."

-- Choosing Diversity: How Charter Schools Promote Diverse Learning Models and Meet the Diverse Needs of Parents and Children by Lance Izumi. In celebration of Nonfiction November, I've been reading and featuring many nonfiction books this month, including this book that profiles 13 charter schools around the country.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.