This is a book about readers on the move in the age of Victorian empire. It examines the libraries and reading habits of five reading constituencies from the long nineteenth century: shipboard emigrants, Australian convicts, Scottish settlers, polar explorers, and troops in the First World War. What was the role of reading in extreme circumstances? How were new meanings made under strange skies? How was reading connected with mobile communities in an age of expansion? Uncovering a vast range of sources from the period, from diaries, periodicals, and literary culture, Bill Bell reveals some remarkable and unanticipated insights into the way that reading operated within and upon the British Empire for over a century.

Ally knows her super-efficient big sis Linn finds their chaotic family a bit ... exasperating. But when Linn falls for Q, the tearaway lead singer in a local band, all her sensible ways go out of the window. Everyone else can see that Q's a creep, but does Ally have the courage to burst Linn's heart-shaped bubble?