L. Frank Baum, Lighthouse Stays, Eisner Nominees, New Crime Novels & More: Endnotes 15 May

Every Friday, we celebrate the weekend — and all the reading and relaxing and daydreaming time ahead — with Melissa's favorite book- and travel-related links of the week. Why work when you can read fun stuff?!

This post is part of our Endnotes series.

Happy Birthday to L. Frank Baum, born on this day in 1856 in the village of Chittenango, New York. You probably know him as the author of the beloved fantasy story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. (Did you know that book is the first in a series of 14 Oz tales?!) He also wrote 41 other novels (like the YA mystery The Daring Twins), 83 short stories, at least 42 scripts, and more than 200 poems. You can find many of them on Gutenberg. His collection of stories based on Mother Goose rhymes — Mother Goose in Prose — was illustrated by the painter (and master of light) Maxfield Parrish; flip through it on Internet Archive. Although the vast majority of Baum’s works were driven by his imagination, he also authored the how-to book The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows and Interiors — subtitle ‘A Complete Manual of Window Trimming, designed as an Educator in all the Details of the Art, according to the best accepted methods, and treating fully every important subject.’ The book is based on his experiences creating department store displays. It’s available to read online, should you need a quick primer on color theory or instructions for washing windows. Baum was also an active suffragist and an advocate for women’s rights. Read more about his remarkable life here and here. You might also watch a short documentary, a video about his literary legacy, or a longer doc from PBS. I’ve got plans to watch the 1939 classic movie this weekend — here are the 9 best Wizard of Oz adaptations, ranked by Mental Floss.

• I’ve wondered this, too: Why do we always forget about Anne? ‘Perhaps it is simply that Anne was the youngest in a remarkable family, and so in death is overlooked as she may have been in life. Or her stories are not the gothic fantasies featuring troubled and problematic literary heroes like Rochester and Heathcliff we immediately associate with the Brontë name.’

• Related: On the Death of Branwell Brontë and the Shadow of Grief It Cast Upon His Literary Family. This essay is by Deborah Lutz, the author of the wonderful book The Brontë Cabinet, which tells the Brontës’ story through nine objects they owned: Charlotte’s sewing box, their tiny books, mourning jewelry. I’m excited to read her new biography of Emily, This Dark Night.

• Novels That Unfold Like Personal Revolutions. ‘Some books entertain. Others transform. The ones in this gallery do something rarer still. They unfold in private, turning readers gently, almost imperceptibly, into someone slightly new.’

• Dua Lipa’s songs are great for a dance break in the middle of a workday, and this makes me like her even more:

• The director Baz Luhrmann — who favors lush sets drenched in texture and color — has designed a new train car for Belmond’s British Pullman train. It’s just as sumptuous and romantic as you might expect. It’s open for bookings, if you’ve got some extra dollars to splash around!

• Newly added to my lifetime wish list: 10 UK lighthouses where you can stay overnight. ‘The jagged edges of the United Kingdom are dotted with more than 300 operational lighthouses, strung along the coastline from Lizard Point in Cornwall to Muckle Flugga, at the very top of the Shetland Islands. For centuries, they’ve warned ships away from rocky shores – but those that have since been decommissioned or automated have found a rather brilliant second life as places to stay.’ (The brilliant romantic adventure novel The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley was partially inspired by Muckle Flugga.)

• Hmmm. French Children Were Served Wine at School on Their Lunch Breaks, All the Way Up Until 1956.

• On our recent trip to Saint-Malo, France, Dave and I enjoyed a self-guided audiotour from TouringBee. The app is great, the storytelling is top-notch, and the narrators’ voices are very pleasant. Highly recommended.

• This brutalist church in Trieste, Italy, looks like a honeycomb.

• The 2026 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards nominees have been announced.

• CrimeReads’ best reviewed books of spring 2026. I’m very excited to read The Ending Writes Itself: Six struggling authors are invited to deceased author Arthur Fletch’s private Scottish island and presented with a challenge: whoever writes a worthy ending will receive a game-changing book deal and two million dollars. They have 72 hours and a blank page.

• Author Lucy Andrew explores the history of detective tropes in Jane Austen’s Emma. ‘Austen’s own work carries many of the hallmarks of detective fiction. Her novels are set in enclosed environments where gossip is currency, and people present a public identity to their neighbors that is designed to conceal their private selves. There is no murder in Austen’s work… but there are plenty of secrets, scandals and mysteries.’

• 5 Movies To Watch If You Like 2026’s Wuthering Heights. Adding Marie Antoinette to my queue.

‘Everything in life is unusual until you get accustomed to it.’ — L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz

Top image courtesy of W.W. Denslow.