Rebuilding

A beautifully written story that flows through ravaged loss, desolation, resilience, hope, and the promise of a future with love and peace. The Phone Box at the End of the World by Laura Imai Messina is a book that gently enriches the soul and beats with a loving serenity.

The harrowing aftermath…

“It wouldn’t make for sanity would it, living with the devil.”― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

From the moment I began this enigmatic story, I felt as if I were a naughty houseguest who had slipped into a closed room to peek at someone’s diary. It was wicked and forbidden, so of…

Disposition

Julian Barnes’ writing in this short novel speaks loudly in an often quiet reflective allegory of memory and loss. Overtly philosophical, Tony Webster, tells of his youth as a schoolboy, with two old friends Alex and Colin, and the new kid, Adrian Finn. How their ideological sense of the…

“In almost every family there’s a fool or a crazy person.”—Isabel Allende

The House of the Spirits is set in the capital of an unnamed Latin American country during the twentieth century, and that is where I first met the del Valles.

Patriarch, Severo del Valle, has lofty political aspirations, but his…

Distracting

I was intrigued with the title Shadow of the Hunter and its reference to an old Chinese tale by Chuang-Tzu regarding the mantis stalking the cicada, unaware of the oriole stalking him. Chuang-Tzu also indicates that he was illegally hunting the songbird with a cross-bow and unaware that the forester was…