Beautiful, Sad and Tragic Romance Novel –– Valentine’s Month Recommendation
Despite me having relatively cut off my romance novel consumption the past few weeks and slowly transitioning to reading more thriller/mystery novels, when it comes to the month of love, your girl apparently still craves some of those good lovingand humping that only romance novels could provide.
So lately, I have been back on the look out for some more romance novels –– as if I don’t already have enough of that in my e-reader. Now, weird thing is, normal classical romance novels doesn’t seem to be able to entice me. You know what I’m talking about. Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy chase girl, boy have girl, boy did an oopsie, boy apologizes, and wallah, happily ever after.
Yes, those kind of normal classical romance novels.
Apparently, I’m not about that this year. For the month of love in 2019, maybe some screw popped loose in my head after I start reading thriller novels, but I realized that if I am to read romance novels, I want them angsty. I want them to hurt, to take my heart and twist it every which way. To leave an impression.
Their love could be taboo, it could be forbidden and angst filled. They could be star-crossed lovers, their love never meant to be. As long as there is a chance that it will hurt me good, I want them all in my TBR.
And you know what they say; the heart wants what it wants. Me? I’m just a slave to my own wants and desires.
1. All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Genre : Romance, Adult Fiction, Contemporary
Type : Standalone
Status : Published
BLURB :
As the daughter of a meth dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. Struggling to raise her little brother, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible “adult” around. She finds peace in the starry Midwestern night sky above the fields behind her house. One night everything changes when she witnesses one of her father’s thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold, wreck his motorcycle. What follows is a powerful and shocking love story between two unlikely people that asks tough questions, reminding us of all the ugly and wonderful things that life has to offer
”Excerpt”
March 1975
My mother always started the story by saying, “Well, she was born in the backseat of a stranger’s car,” as though that explained why Wavy wasn’t normal. It seemed to me that could happen to anybody. Maybe on the way to the hospital, your parents’ respectable, middle-class car broke down. That was not what happened to Wavy. She was born in the backseat of a stranger’s car, because Uncle Liam and Aunt Val were homeless, driving through Texas when their old beat-up van broke down. Nine months pregnant, Aunt Val hitchhiked to the next town for help. If you ever consider playing Good Samaritan to a pregnant woman, think about cleaning that up.
I learned all this from eavesdropping on Mom’s Tuesday night book club. Sometimes they talked about books, but mostly they gossiped. That was where Mom first started polishing The Tragic and Edifying Story of Wavonna Quinn.
After Wavy was born, Mom didn’t hear from Aunt Val for almost five years. The first news she had was that Uncle Liam had been arrested for dealing drugs, and Aunt Val needed money. Then Aunt Val got arrested for something Mom wouldn’t say, leaving no one to take care of Wavy.
The day after that second phone call, Grandma visited, and argued with Mom behind closed doors about “reaping what you sow,” and “blood is thicker than water.” Grandma, my soft-in-the-middle, cookie-baking grandma shouted, “She’s family! If you won’t take her, I will!”
We took her. Mom promised Leslie and me new toys, but we were so excited about meeting our cousin that we didn’t care. Wavy was our only cousin, because according to Mom, Dad’s brother was gay. Leslie and I, at nine and going on seven, made up stories about Wavy that were pure Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Starved, kept in a cage, living in the wilderness with wolves.
The day Wavy arrived, the weather suited our gloomy theories: dark and rainy, with gusting wind. Of course, it would have been more fitting if Wavy had arrived in a black limo or a horse-drawn carriage instead of the social worker’s beige sedan.
Sue Enaldo was a plump woman in a blue pantsuit, but for me she was Santa Claus, bringing me a marvelous present. Before Sue could get a rain bonnet over her elaborate Dolly Parton hair, Wavy hopped out of the backseat, dangling a plastic grocery bag in one hand. She was delicate, and soaked to the skin by the time she reached the front door.
Leslie’s face fell when she saw our cousin, but I wasn’t disappointed. As soon as my mother opened the door, Wavy stepped in and surveyed her new home with a bottomless look I would grow to love, but that would eventually drive my mother to despair. Her eyes were dark, but not brown. Grey? Green? Blue? You couldn’t really tell. Just dark and full of a long view of the world. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were translucent, to match her hair. Silver-blond, it clung to her head and ran trails of water off her shoulders onto the entryway tile.
“Wavonna, sweetie, I’m your Aunt Brenda.” It was a mother I didn’t recognize, the way she pitched her voice high, falsely bright, and gave Sue an anxious look. “Is she—is she okay?”
“As okay as she ever is. She didn’t say a word to me on the drive over. The foster family she’s been with this week, they said she was quiet as a mouse.”
“Has she been to see a doctor?”
“She went, but she wouldn’t let anyone touch her. She kicked two nurses and punched the doctor.”
My mother’s eyes went wide and Leslie took a step back.
“Okay, then,” Mom cooed. “Do you have some clothes in your bag there, Wavonna? Let’s get you into something dry, okay?”
She must have expected Wavy to fight her, but when she reached for the grocery bag, Wavy let it go. My mother opened it and frowned at the contents.
“Where are the rest of her clothes?”
“That’s it,” Sue said. “She came to us wearing a man’s undershirt. Those are the clothes the foster family got together for her.”
2. The Storyteller
Genre : Contemporary Romance, Young Adult, Mystery, Fantasy
Type : Standalone
Status : Published
BLURB :
A good girl. A bad boy. A fairy tale that’s true. A truth that is no fairy tale.
It begins the day Anna finds the child’s doll on the floor of the student lounge. When it’s claimed by Abel, the school drug dealer, Anna becomes determined to learn more about this mysterious boy with the military haircut and deep blue eyes. She follows him after school and discovers a secret: Abel is caring for his six-year-old sister, Micha, alone. Anna listens in as he tells her a fairy tale, the story of a little orphan queen pursued by hunters across the oceans for the treasure she carries: her pure, diamond heart.
It’s a story with parallels to reality. Social services and Micha’s abusive father could take her from Abel if they discover the truth.
Despite friend’s warnings, Anna is drawn to Abel and Micha, and falls under the spell of the story of the little queen and her desperate voyage.
But when people Abel has woven into his tale turns up dead, it’s Anna whose heart is in danger. Is she in love with a killer? And has she set out on a journey from which there is no return?
”Excerpt”
BLOOD.
There is blood everywhere. On his hands, on her hands, on his shirt, on his face, on the tiles, on the small round carpet. The carpet used to be blue; it never will be blue again. The blood is red. He is kneeling in it. He hadn’t realized it was so bright … big, burst droplets, the color of poppies. They are beautiful, as beautiful as a spring day in a sunny meadow … But the tiles are cold and white as snow, and it is winter.
It will be winter forever.
Strange thought: Why should it be winter forever?
He’s got to do something. Something about the blood. A sea—a red, endless sea: crimson waves, carmine froth, splashing color. All these words in his head!
How long has he been kneeling here, with these words in his head? The red is starting to dry, it is forming edges, losing a little of its beauty; the poppies are wilting, yellowing, like words on paper … He closes his eyes. Get a hold of yourself. One thought at a time. What must be done? What first? What is most important?
It’s most important that nobody finds out.
Towels. He needs towels. And water. A rag. The splatters on the wall are hard to remove … the grout between the tiles will be stained forever. Will anybody find out? Soap. There’s dried blood under his fingernails, too. A brush. He scrubs his hands until the skin is red—a different red, a warm, living red flushed with pain.
She’s not looking at him. She’s turned her eyes away, but she always turned away, didn’t she? That’s how she lived—with her eyes turned away. He throws the dirty towels into the dark, greedy mouth of the washing machine.
She’s just sitting there, leaning against the wall, refusing to speak to him. He kneels down in front of her, on the clean floor, takes her hands in his. He whispers a question, a single word, “Where?”
And he reads the answer in her cold hands.
“Do you remember? The woods? It was spring, and under the beeches, small white flowers were blooming … we were walking hand in hand and you asked me the name of the flowers … I didn’t know … the woods. The woods were the only place we had to ourselves, a place just for us … back in the only time we had together, just the two of us … do you remember, do you remember, do you remember? “I do,” he whispers. “I remember. The woods. Anemones. I know what they’re called now. Anemones …”
He lifts her up in his arms like a child. She is heavy and light at the same time. His heart is beating in the rhythm of fear as he carries her outside, into the night. Hold onto me so I don’t drop you. Hold on, will you? Why won’t you help me? Help me! Please … just this once!
The cold envelops him like an icy robe; he smells the frost in the air. The ground hasn’t frozen yet. He’s lucky. A strange thought … that he’s lucky on this February night. The woods aren’t far. They are too far. He looks around. There is no one. No one knows … no one will remember what happened tonight.
There aren’t any small white flowers blooming in the woods. The ground is muddy and brown, and the gray beeches are bare, leafless. He can’t make out the details … it is too dark. Just dark enough. There aren’t streetlights here. The earth gives way, reluctantly, to the blunt spade. He swears under his breath. She still won’t look at him. Propped against a tree, she seems far away in her thoughts. And suddenly, anger wells up in him.
He kneels in front of her for the third time. He shakes her, tries to pull her up, make her stand on her feet; he wants to shout at her, and he does, but only in his head, silently, with his mouth open wide. You’re the most selfish, thoughtless person I’ve ever known! What you’ve done is unforgivable. You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? You knew it all along. But you didn’t care. Of course not. All you thought about was yourself and your small, pitiful world. You found a solution for yourself, though not a solution for me … for us. You didn’t think about us for a second … and then he’s crying, crying like a child, with his head on her shoulder.
He feels her stroke his hair, her touch light as the breeze. No … it is only a branch.
3. Reason to Breathe (Breathing #1)
Genre : Contemporary Romance, Young Adult, New Adult
Type : Trilogy
Status : Completed Series
BLURB :
“No one tried to get involved with me, and I kept to myself. This was the place where everything was supposed to be safe and easy. How could Evan Mathews unravel my constant universe in just one day?”
In the affluent town of Weslyn, Connecticut, where most people worry about what to be seen in and who to be seen with, Emma Thomas would rather not be seen at all. She’s more concerned with feigning perfection while pulling down her sleeves to conceal the bruises – not wanting anyone to know how far from perfect her life truly is. Without expecting it, she finds love. It challenges her to recognize her own worth – but at the risk of revealing the terrible secret she’s desperate to hide.
Reason to Breathe is an electrifying page turner from start to finish, a unique tale of life-changing love, unspeakable cruelty, and one girl’s fragile grasp of hope.
”Excerpt”
Breathe. My eyes swelled as I swallowed against the lump in my throat. Frustrated with my weakness, I swiftly brushed the tears that had forced their way down my cheeks with the back of my hand. I couldn’t think about it anymore – I would explode.
I looked around the room that was mine, but had no true connection to me – a hand-me-down desk with a mismatched chair against the wall across from me with a three tiered bookcase that had seen too many homes in too many years next to it. There were no pictures on the walls. No reminder of who I was before I came here. It was just a space where I could hide – hide from the pain, the glares and the cutting words.
Why was I here? I knew the answer. It wasn’t a choice to be here; it was a necessity. I had nowhere else to go, and they couldn’t turn their backs on me. They were the only family I had, and for that I couldn’t be grateful.
I lay on my bed, attempting to divert my attention to my homework. I winced as I reached for my Trigonometry book. I couldn’t believe it was sore already. Great! It looked like I’d be wearing long sleeves again this week.
The aching pain in my shoulder caused the images of the horrific exchange to flash through my head. I felt the anger rising, making me clench my jaw and grit my teeth. I took a deep breath and allowed the dull wash of nothingness to envelop me. I needed to push it out of my head, so I forced myself to concentrate on my homework.
I was awoken by a soft tap at my door. I propped myself up on my elbows and tried to focus in my dark room. I must have been asleep for about an hour, but didn’t remember dozing off.
“Yeah,” I answered, my voice caught in my throat.
“Emma?” the small cautious voice called out as my door slowly opened.
“You can come in Jack.” I tried to sound welcoming despite my crushed disposition.
His hand gripped the doorknob, as his head – not much taller than the knob – peaked in. Jack’s enlarged brown eyes scanned the room until they connected with mine – I could tell he was nervous about what he might find – and smiled at me in relief. He knew way too much for his six years.
“Dinner’s ready,” he said, looking down. I realized it wasn’t the message he wanted to be responsible to give me.
“Okay, I’ll be right there.” I tried to smile back to assure him it was okay. He walked toward the voices in the other room. The clatter of platters and bowls being set on the table along with Leyla’s excited voice awaited me down the hall. If anyone were to observe this routine, they would think this was the picture perfect American family sitting down to enjoy dinner together.
The picture changed when I crept out of my room. The air became thick with discord with the crushing reminder that I existed, a blemish to their portrait. I took another deep breath and tried to convince myself I could get through this. It’s just another night, right? But that was the problem.
I walked slowly down the hall and into the light of the dining room. My stomach turned as I crossed the threshold. I kept my gaze down at my hands that I twisted in anticipation. To my relief, I wasn’t noticed when I entered the room.
“Emma!” Leyla exclaimed, running to me. I bent down, allowing her to jump into my arms. She gave me a tight embrace around my neck. I released a breathy grunt when the pain shot up my arm.
“Did you see my picture?” she asked, so proud and excited of her swirls of pink and yellow. I felt the glare on my back, knowing that if it were a knife, I’d be incapacitated instantly.
“Mom, did you see my drawing of Tyrannosaurs Rex?” I heard Jack ask, attempting to distract the attention away from my disruption.
“That’s wonderful, honey,” she praised, redirecting her attention to her son.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said softly to Leyla, looking into her dancing brown eyes. “Why don’t you go ahead and sit for dinner, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, having no idea that her affectionate gesture had caused tension at the dinner table. How could she? She was four, and to her I was the older cousin she idolized, while she was my sun in this dark house. I could never blame her for the added grief her fondness for me caused. The conversation picked up and I thankfully became invisible once again.
After waiting until everyone was served, I helped myself to the chicken, peas and potatoes. I could sense that my every move was being scrutinized, so I kept my focus on my plate while I ate. I knew that what I’d taken wasn’t enough to satisfy my hunger, but I didn’t dare take more.
I didn’t listen to the words coming from her mouth as she went on and on about her trying day at work. Her voice raked through me, making my stomach turn. George responded with a comforting remark, attempting to re-assure her as he always did. The only acknowledgement I received was when I asked to be excused. George looked across the table with his ambivalent eyes and dryly granted my request.
I gathered my plate, along with Jack and Leyla’s, since they’d already left to watch TV in the living room. I began my nightly routine of scraping plates and placing them in the dishwasher, along with scrubbing the pots and pans George used to prepare the dinner.
I waited for the voices to move into the living room before I returned to the table to finish clearing. After washing the dishes, taking out the trash and sweeping the floor, I headed back to my room. I passed by the living room with the sounds of the TV and the kids laugher in the background. I slipped by unnoticed, as usual.
I lay on my bed, plugging in the ear buds to my iPod, and turned up the volume so my mind was too preoccupied with the music to think. Tomorrow I would have a game after school that would keep me late, missing our wonderful family dinner. I breathed deep and closed my eyes. Tomorrow was another day – one day closer to leaving this all behind.
I rolled on my side, forgetting about my shoulder for a moment, until painfully reminded of what I was leaving behind. I shut off my light and let the music drone me to sleep.
4. All the Bright Places
Genre : Contemporary Romance, Young Adult
Type : Standalone
Status : Published
BLURB :
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.
This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, Gayle Forman, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven.
”Excerpt”
Finch
I am awake again. Day 6.
Is today a good day to die?
This is something I ask myself in the morning when I wake up. In third period when I’m trying to keep my eyes open while Mr. Schroeder drones on and on. At the supper table as I’m passing the green beans. At night when I’m lying awake because my brain won’t shut off due to all there is to think about.
Is today the day?
And if not today–when?
I am asking myself this now as I stand on a narrow ledge six stories above the ground. I’m so high up, I’m practically part of the sky. I look down at the pavement below, and the world tilts. I close my eyes, enjoying the way everything spins. Maybe this time I’ll do it–let the air carry me away. It will be like floating in a pool, drifting off until there’s nothing.
I don’t remember climbing up here. In fact, I don’t remember much of anything before Sunday, at least not anything so far this winter. This happens every time–the blanking out, the waking up. I’m like that old man with the beard, Rip Van Winkle. Now you see me, now you don’t. You’d think I’d have gotten used to it, but this last time was the worst yet because I wasn’t asleep for a couple days or a week or two–I was asleep for the holidays, meaning Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. I can’t tell you what was different this time around, only that when I woke up, I felt deader than usual. Awake, yeah, but completely empty, like someone had been feasting on my blood. This is day six of being awake again, and my first week back at school since November 14.
I open my eyes, and the ground is still there, hard and permanent. I am in the bell tower of the high school, standing on a ledge about four inches wide. The tower is pretty small, with only a few feet of concrete floor space on all sides of the bell itself, and then this low stone railing, which I’ve climbed over to get here. Every now and then I knock one of my legs against it to remind myself it’s there.
My arms are outstretched as if I’m conducting a sermon and this entire not-very-big, dull, dull town is my congregation. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I shout, “I would like to welcome you to my death!” You might expect me to say “life,” having just woken up and all, but it’s only when I’m awake that I think about dying.
I am shouting in an old-school-preacher way, all jerking head and words that twitch at the ends, and I almost lose my balance. I hold on behind me, happy no one seems to have noticed, because, let’s face it, it’s hard to look fearless when you’re clutching the railing like a chicken.
“I, Theodore Finch, being of unsound mind, do hereby bequeath all my earthly possessions to Charlie Donahue, Brenda Shank-Kravitz, and my sisters. Everyone else can go f—- themselves.” In my house, my mom taught us early to spell that word (if we must use it) or, better yet, not spell it, and, sadly, this has stuck.
Even though the bell has rung, some of my classmates are still milling around on the ground. It’s the first week of the second semester of senior year, and already they’re acting as if they’re almost done and out of here. One of them looks up in my direction, as if he heard me, but the others don’t, either because they haven’t spotted me or because they know I’m there and Oh well, it’s just Theodore Freak.
Then his head turns away from me and he points at the sky. At first I think he’s pointing at me, but it’s at that moment I see her, the girl. She stands a few feet away on the other side of the tower, also out on the ledge, dark-blond hair waving in the breeze, the hem of her skirt blowing up like a parachute. Even though it’s January in Indiana, she is shoeless in tights, a pair of boots in her hand, and staring either at her feet or at the ground–it’s hard to tell. She seems frozen in place.
In my regular, nonpreacher voice I say, as calmly as possible, “Take it from me, the worst thing you can do is look down.”
Very slowly, she turns her head toward me, and I know this girl, or at least I’ve seen her in the hallways. I can’t resist: “Come here often? Because this is kind of my spot and I don’t remember seeing you here before.”
She doesn’t laugh or blink, just gazes out at me from behind these clunky glasses that almost cover her face. She tries to take a step back and her foot bumps the railing. She teeters a little, and before she can panic, I say, “I don’t know what brings you up here, but to me the town looks prettier and the people look nicer and even the worst of them look almost kind. Except for Gabe Romero and Amanda Monk and that whole crowd you hang out with.”
Her name is Violet Something. She is cheerleader popular–one of those girls you would never think of running into on a ledge six stories above the ground. Behind the ugly glasses she’s pretty, almost like a china doll. Large eyes, sweet face shaped like a heart, a mouth that wants to curve into a perfect little smile. She’s a girl who dates guys like Ryan Cross, baseball star, and sits with Amanda Monk and the other queen bees at lunch.
“But let’s face it, we didn’t come up here for the view. You’re Violet, right?”
She blinks once, and I take this as a yes.
“Theodore Finch. I think we had pre-cal together last year.”
She blinks again.
“I hate math, but that’s not why I’m up here. No offense if that’s why you are. You’re probably better at math than I am, because pretty much everyone’s better at math than I am, but it’s okay, I’m fine with it. See, I excel at other, more important things–guitar, sex, and consistently disappointing my dad, to name a few. By the way, it’s apparently true that you’ll never use it in the real world. Math, I mean.”
I keep talking, but I can tell I’m running out of steam. I need to take a piss, for one thing, and so my words aren’t the only thing twitching. (Note to self: Before attempting to take own life, remember to take a leak.) And, two, it’s starting to rain, which, in this temperature, will probably turn to sleet before it hits the ground.
“It’s starting to rain,” I say, as if she doesn’t know this. “I guess there’s an argument to be made that the rain will wash away the blood, leaving us a neater mess to clean up than otherwise. But it’s the mess part that’s got me thinking. I’m not a vain person, but I am human, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to look like I’ve been run through the wood chipper at my funeral.”
She’s shivering or shaking, I can’t tell which, and so I slowly inch my way toward her, hoping I don’t fall off before I get there, because the last thing I want to do is make a jackass out of myself in front of this girl. “I’ve made it clear I want cremation, but my mom doesn’t believe in it.” And my dad will do whatever she says so he won’t upset her any more than he already has, and besides, You’re far too young to think about this, you know your Grandma Finch lived to be ninety-eight, we don’t need to talk about that now, Theodore, don’t upset your mother.
“So it’ll be an open coffin for me, which means if I jump, it ain’t gonna be pretty. Besides, I kind of like my face intact like this, two eyes, one nose, one mouth, a full set of teeth, which, if I’m being honest, is one of my better features.” I smile so she can see what I mean. Everything where it should be, on the outside at least.
When she doesn’t say anything, I go on inching and talking. “Most of all, I feel bad for the undertaker. What a shitty job that must be anyway, but then to have to deal with an asshole like me?”
From down below, someone yells, “Violet? Is that Violet up there?”
“Oh God,” she says, so low I barely hear it. “OhGodohGodohGod.” The wind blows her skirt and hair, and it looks like she’s going to fly away.
There is general buzzing from the ground, and I shout, “Don’t try to save me! You’ll only kill yourself!” Then I say, very low, just to her, “Here’s what I think we should do.” I’m about a foot away from her now. “I want you to throw your shoes toward the bell and then hold on to the rail, just grab right onto it, and once you’ve got it, lean against it and then lift your right foot up and over. Got that?”
“Okay.” She nods and almost loses her balance.
“Don’t nod.”
“Okay.”
“And whatever you do, don’t go the wrong way and step forward instead of back. I’ll count you off. On three. Okay?”
“Okay.” She throws her boots in the direction of the bell, and they fall with a thud, thud onto the concrete.
“One. Two. Three.”
She grips the stone and kind of props herself against it and then lifts her leg up and over so that she’s sitting on the railing. She stares down at the ground and I can see that she’s frozen again, and so I say, “Good. Great. Just stop looking down.”
She slowly looks at me and then reaches for the floor of the bell tower with her right foot, and once she’s found it, I say, “Now get that left leg back over however you can. Don’t let go of the wall.” By now she’s shaking so hard I can hear her teeth chatter, but I watch as her left foot joins her right, and she is safe.
So now it’s just me out here. I gaze down at the ground one last time, past my size-thirteen feet that won’t stop growing–today I’m wearing sneakers with fluorescent laces–past the open windows of the fourth floor, the third, the second, past Amanda Monk, who is cackling from the front steps and swishing her blond hair like a pony, books over her head, trying to flirt and protect herself from the rain at the same time.
I gaze past all of this at the ground itself, which is now slick and damp, and imagine myself lying there.
I could just step off. It would be over in seconds. No more “Theodore Freak.” No more hurt. No more anything.
I try to get past the unexpected interruption of saving a life and return to the business at hand. For a minute, I can feel it: the sense of peace as my mind goes quiet, like I’m already dead. I am weightless and free. Nothing and no one to fear, not even myself.
Then a voice from behind me says, “I want you to hold on to the rail, and once you’ve got it, lean against it and lift your right foot up and over.”
5. On the Jellicoe Road
Genre : Young Adult, Realistic Fiction, Mystery
Type : Standalone
Status : Published
BLURB :
I’m dreaming of the boy in the tree. I tell him stories. About the Jellicoe School and the Townies and the Cadets from a school in Sydney. I tell him about the war between us for territory. And I tell him about Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river. Hannah, who is too young to be hiding away from the world. Hannah, who found me on the Jellicoe Road six years ago.
Taylor is leader of the boarders at the Jellicoe School. She has to keep the upper hand in the territory wars and deal with Jonah Griggs – the enigmatic leader of the cadets, and someone she thought she would never see again.
And now Hannah, the person Taylor had come to rely on, has disappeared. Taylor’s only clue is a manuscript about five kids who lived in Jellicoe eighteen years ago. She needs to find out more, but this means confronting her own story, making sense of her strange, recurring dream, and finding her mother – who abandoned her on the Jellicoe Road.
”Excerpt”
Prologue
My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.
I counted.
It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-la. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, “What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?” and my father said, “Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,” and that was the last thing he ever said.
We heard her almost straightaway. In the other car, wedged into ours so deep that you couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. She told us her name was Tate and then she squeezed through the glass and the steel and climbed over her own dead—just to be with Webb and me; to give us her hand so we could clutch it with all our might. And then a kid called Fitz came riding by on a stolen bike and saved our lives.
Someone asked us later, “Didn’t you wonder why no one came across you sooner?”
Did I wonder?
When you see your parents zipped up in black body bags on the Jellicoe Road like they’re some kind of garbage, don’t you know?
Wonder dies.
6. Anna Karenina
Genre : Classics,
Type : Standalone
Status : Published
BLURB :
Acclaimed by many as the world’s greatest novel, Anna Kareninaprovides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. In it Tolstoy uses his intense imaginative insight to create some of the most memorable characters in literature. Anna is a sophisticated woman who abandons her empty existence as the wife of Karenin and turns to Count Vronsky to fulfil her passionate nature – with tragic consequences. Levin is a reflection of Tolstoy himself, often expressing the author’s own views and convictions.
Throughout, Tolstoy points no moral, merely inviting us not to judge but to watch. As Rosemary Edmonds comments, ‘He leaves the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope to bring home the meaning of the brooding words following the title, ‘Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.
”Excerpt”
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
All was confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had found out that the husband was having an affair with their former French governess, and had announced to the husband that she could not live in the same house with him. This situation had continued for three days now, and was painfully felt by the couple themselves, as well as by all the members of the family and household. They felt that there was no sense in their living together and that people who meet accidentally at any inn have more connection with each other than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife would not leave her rooms, the husband was away for the third day. The children were running all over the house as if lost; the English governess quarrelled with the housekeeper and wrote a note to a friend, asking her to find her a new place; the cook had already left the premises the day before, at dinner-time; the kitchen-maid and coachman had given notice.
On the third day after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky — Stiva, as he was called in society — woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o’clock in the morning, not in his wife’s bedroom but in his study, on a morocco sofa. He rolled his full, well-tended body over on the springs of the sofa, as if wishing to fall asleep again for a long time, tightly hugged the pillow from the other side and pressed his cheek to it; but suddenly he gave a start, sat up on the sofa and opened his eyes.
‘Yes, yes, how did it go?’ he thought, recalling his dream. ‘How did it go? Yes! Alabin was giving a dinner in Darmstadt — no, not in Darmstadt but something American. Yes, but this Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, yes — and the tables were singing Il mio tesoro, only it wasn’t Il mio tesoro but something better, and there were some little carafes, which were also women,’ he recalled.
Stepan Arkadyich’s eyes glittered merrily, and he fell to thinking with a smile. ‘Yes, it was nice, very nice. There were many other excellent things there, but one can’t say it in words, or even put it into waking thoughts.’ And, noticing a strip of light that had broken through the side of one of the heavy blinds, he cheerfully dropped his feet from the sofa, felt for the slippers trimmed with gold morocco that his wife had embroidered for him (a present for last year’s birthday), and, following a nine-year-old habit, without getting up, reached his hand out to the place where his dressing gown hung in the bedroom. And here he suddenly remembered how and why he was sleeping not in his wife’s bedroom but in his study: the smile vanished from his face, and he knitted his brows.
‘Oh, oh, oh! Ohh! …’ he moaned, remembering all that had taken place. And in his imagination he again pictured all the details of his quarrel with his wife, all the hopelessness of his position and, most painful of all, his own guilt.
‘No, she won’t forgive me and can’t forgive me! And the most terrible thing is that I’m the guilty one in it all — guilty, and yet not guilty. That’s the whole drama,’ he thought. ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ he murmured with despair, recalling what were for him the most painful impressions of this quarrel.
Worst of all had been that first moment when, coming back from the theatre, cheerful and content, holding a huge pear for his wife, he had not found her in the drawing room; to his surprise, he had not found her in the study either, and had finally seen her in the bedroom with the unfortunate, all-revealing note in her hand.
She — this eternally preoccupied and bustling and, as he thought, none-too-bright Dolly — was sitting motionless, the note in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror, despair and wrath.
‘What is this? this?’ she asked, pointing to the note.
And, in recalling it, as often happens, Stepan Arkadyich was tormented not so much by the event itself as by the way he had responded to these words from his wife.
What had happened to him at that moment was what happens to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very shameful. He had not managed to prepare his face for the position he found himself in with regard to his wife now that his guilt had been revealed. Instead of being offended, of denying, justifying, asking forgiveness, even remaining indifferent — any of which would have been better than what he did! — his face quite involuntarily (‘reflexes of the brain’, thought Stepan Arkadyich, who liked physiology) smiled all at once its habitual, kind and therefore stupid smile.
That stupid smile he could not forgive himself. Seeing that smile, Dolly had winced as if from physical pain, burst with her typical vehemence into a torrent of cruel words, and rushed from the room. Since then she had refused to see her husband.
‘That stupid smile is to blame for it all,’ thought Stepan Arkadyich.
‘But what to do, then? What to do?’ he kept saying despairingly to himself, and could find no answer.
7. Atonement
Genre : Romance, Historical Fiction, Classics
Type : Standalone
Status : Published
BLURB :
Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.
On a hot summer day in 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.
”Excerpt”
CHAPTER ONE
The play, for which Briony had designed the posters, programmes and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper, was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch. When the preparations were complete, she had nothing to do but contemplate her finished draft and wait for the appearance of her cousins from the distant north. There would be time for only one day of rehearsal before her brother arrived. At some moments chilling, at others desperately sad, the play told a tale of the heart whose message, conveyed in a rhyming prologue, was that love which did not build a foundation on good sense was doomed. The reckless passion of the heroine, Arabella, for a wicked foreign count is punished by ill fortune when she contracts cholera during an impetuous dash towards a seaside town with her intended. Deserted by him and nearly everybody else, bed-bound in a garret, she discovers in herself a sense of humour. Fortune presents her a second chance in the form of an impoverished doctor–in fact, a prince in disguise who has elected to work among the needy. Healed by him, Arabella chooses judiciously this time, and is rewarded by reconciliation with her family and a wedding with the medical prince on `a windy sunlit day in spring’.
Mrs Tallis read the seven pages of The Trials of Arabella in her bedroom, at her dressing table, with the author’s arm around her shoulder the whole while. Briony studied her mother’s face for every trace of shifting emotion, and Emily Tallis obliged with looks of alarm, snickers of glee and, at the end, grateful smiles and wise, affirming nods. She took her daughter in her arms, onto her lap–ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered from its infancy, and still not gone from her, not quite yet–and said that the play was ‘stupendous’, and agreed instantly, murmuring into the tight whorl of the girl’s ear, that this word could be quoted on the poster which was to be on an easel in the entrance hall by the ticket booth.
Briony was hardly to know it then, but this was the project’s highest point of fulfilment. Nothing came near it for satisfaction, all else was dreams and frustration. There were moments in the summer dusk after her light was out, burrowing in the delicious gloom of her canopy bed, when she made her heart thud with luminous, yearning fantasies, little playlets in themselves, every one of which featured Leon. In one, his big, good-natured face buckled in grief as Arabella sank in loneliness and despair. In another, there he was, cocktail in hand at some fashionable city watering hole, overheard boasting to a group of friends: Yes, my younger sister, Briony Tallis the writer, you must surely have heard of her. In a third he punched the air in exultation as the final curtain fell, although there was no curtain, there was no possibility of a curtain. Her play was not for her cousins, it was for her brother, to celebrate his return, provoke his admiration and guide him away from his careless succession of girlfriends, towards the right form of wife, the one who would persuade him to return to the countryside, the one who would sweetly request Briony’s services as a bridesmaid.
She was one of those children possessed by a desire to have the world just so. Whereas her big sister’s room was a stew of unclosed books, unfolded clothes, unmade bed, unemptied ashtrays, Briony’s was a shrine to her controlling demon: the model farm spread across a deep window ledge consisted of the usual animals, but all facing one way–towards their owner–as if about to break into song, and even the farmyard hens were neatly corralled. In fact, Briony’s was the only tidy upstairs room in the house. Her straight-backed dolls in their many-roomed mansion appeared to be under strict instructions not to touch the walls; the various thumb-sized figures to be found standing about her dressing table–cowboys, deep-sea divers, humanoid mice–suggested by their even ranks and spacing a citizen’s army awaiting orders.
A taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit. Another was a passion for secrets: in a prized varnished cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint, and here she kept a diary locked by a clasp, and a notebook written in a code of her own invention. In a toy safe opened by six secret numbers she stored letters and postcards. An old tin petty cash box was hidden under a removable floorboard beneath her bed. In the box were treasures that dated back four years, to her ninth birthday when she began collecting: a mutant double acorn, fool’s gold, a rain-making spell bought at a funfair, a squirrel’s skull as light as a leaf.
But hidden drawers, lockable diaries and cryptographic systems could not conceal from Briony the simple truth: she had no secrets. Her wish for a harmonious, organised world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. Mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel. Her effective status as an only child, as well as the relative isolation of the Tallis house, kept her, at least during the long summer holidays, from girlish intrigues with friends. Nothing in her life was sufficiently interesting or shameful to merit hiding; no one knew about the squirrel’s skull beneath her bed, but no one wanted to know. None of this was particularly an affliction; or rather, it appeared so only in retrospect, once a solution had been found.
At the age of eleven she wrote her first story–a foolish affair, imitative of half a dozen folk tales and lacking, she realised later, that vital knowingness about the ways of the world which compels a reader’s respect. But this first clumsy attempt showed her that the imagination itself was a source of secrets: once she had begun a story, no one could be told. Pretending in words was too tentative, too vulnerable, too embarrassing to let anyone know. Even writing out the she saids, the and thens, made her wince, and she felt foolish, appearing to know about the emotions of an imaginary being. Self-exposure was inevitable the moment she described a character’s weakness; the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself. What other authority could she have? Only when a story was finished, all fates resolved and the whole matter sealed off at both ends so it resembled, at least in this one respect, every other finished story in the world, could she feel immune, and ready to punch holes in the margins, bind the chapters with pieces of string, paint or draw the cover, and take the finished work to show to her mother, or her father, when he was home.
Her efforts received encouragement. In fact, they were welcomed as the Tallises began to understand that the baby of the family possessed a strange mind and a facility with words. The long afternoons she spent browsing through dictionary and thesaurus made for constructions that were inept, but hauntingly so: the coins a villain concealed in his pocket were ‘esoteric’, a hoodlum caught stealing a car wept in ‘shameless auto-exculpation’, the heroine on her thoroughbred stallion made a ‘cursory’ journey through the night, the king’s furrowed brow was the ‘hieroglyph’ of his displeasure. Briony was encouraged to read her stories aloud in the library and it surprised her parents and older sister to hear their quiet girl perform so boldly, making big gestures with her free arm, arching her eyebrows as she did the voices, and looking up from the page for seconds at a time as she read in order to gaze into one face after the other, unapologetically demanding her family’s total attention as she cast her narrative spell.
Even without their attention and praise and obvious pleasure, Briony could not have been held back from her writing. In any case, she was discovering, as had many writers before her, that not all recognition is helpful. Cecilia’s enthusiasm, for example, seemed a little overstated, tainted with condescension perhaps, and intrusive too; her big sister wanted each bound story catalogued and placed on the library shelves, between Rabindranath Tagore and Quintus Tertullian. If this was supposed to be a joke, Briony ignored it. She was on course now, and had found satisfaction on other levels; writing stories not only involved secrecy, it also gave her all the pleasures of miniaturisation. A world could be made in five pages, and one that was more pleasing than a model farm. The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word–a glance. The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained. Her passion for tidiness was also satisfied, for an unruly world could be made just so. A crisis in a heroine’s life could be made to coincide with hailstones, gales and thunder, whereas nuptials were generally blessed with good light and soft breezes. A love of order also shaped the principles of justice, with death and marriage the main engines of housekeeping, the former being set aside exclusively for the morally dubious, the latter a reward withheld until the final page.
8. Wuthering Heights
Genre : Romance, Classics, Fiction, Literature
Type : Standalone
Status : Published
BLURB :
Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine’s father. After Mr. Earnshaw’s death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine’s brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.
”Excerpt”
Mr. Hindley came home to the funeral; and—a thing that amazed us, and set the neighbours gossiping right and left—he brought a wife with him. What she was, and where she was born, he never informed us: probably, she had neither money nor name to recommend her, or he would scarcely have kept the union from his father.
She was not one that would have disturbed the house much on her own account. Every object she saw, the moment she crossed the threshold, appeared to delight her; and every circumstance that took place about her: except the preparing for the burial, and the presence of the mourners. I thought she was half silly, from her behaviour while that went on: she ran into her chamber, and made me come with her, though I should have been dressing the children: and there she sat shivering and clasping her hands, and asking repeatedly—’Are they gone yet?’ Then she began describing with hysterical emotion the effect it produced on her to see black; and started, and trembled, and, at last, fell a-weeping—and when I asked what was the matter, answered, she didn’t know; but she felt so afraid of dying! I imagined her as little likely to die as myself. She was rather thin, but young, and fresh-complexioned, and her eyes sparkled as bright as diamonds. I did remark, to be sure, that mounting the stairs made her breathe very quick; that the least sudden noise set her all in a quiver, and that she coughed troublesomely sometimes: but I knew nothing of what these symptoms portended, and had no impulse to sympathise with her. We don’t in general take to foreigners here, Mr. Lockwood, unless they take to us first.
Young Earnshaw was altered considerably in the three years of his absence. He had grown sparer, and lost his colour, and spoke and dressed quite differently; and, on the very day of his return, he told Joseph and me we must thenceforth quarter ourselves in the back-kitchen, and leave the house for him. Indeed, he would have carpeted and papered a small spare room for a parlour; but his wife expressed such pleasure at the white floor and huge glowing fireplace, at the pewter dishes and delf-case, and dog-kennel, and the wide space there was to move about in where they usually sat, that he thought it unnecessary to her comfort, and so dropped the intention.
She expressed pleasure, too, at finding a sister among her new acquaintance; and she prattled to Catherine, and kissed her, and ran about with her, and gave her quantities of presents, at the beginning. Her affection tired very soon, however, and when she grew peevish, Hindley became tyrannical. A few words from her, evincing a dislike to Heathcliff, were enough to rouse in him all his old hatred of the boy. He drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead; compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm.
Heathcliff bore his degradation pretty well at first, because Cathy taught him what she learnt, and worked or played with him in the fields. They both promised fair to grow up as rude as savages; the young master being entirely negligent how they behaved, and what they did, so they kept clear of him. He would not even have seen after their going to church on Sundays, only Joseph and the curate reprimanded his carelessness when they absented themselves; and that reminded him to order Heathcliff a flogging, and Catherine a fast from dinner or supper. But it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and the after punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at. The curate might set as many chapters as he pleased for Catherine to get by heart, and Joseph might thrash Heathcliff till his arm ached; they forgot everything the minute they were together again: at least the minute they had contrived some naughty plan of revenge; and many a time I’ve cried to myself to watch them growing more reckless daily, and I not daring to speak a syllable, for fear of losing the small power I still retained over the unfriended creatures. One Sunday evening, it chanced that they were banished from the sitting-room, for making a noise, or a light offence of the kind; and when I went to call them to supper, I could discover them nowhere. We searched the house, above and below, and the yard and stables; they were invisible: and, at last, Hindley in a passion told us to bolt the doors, and swore nobody should let them in that night. The household went to bed; and I, too, anxious to lie down, opened my lattice and put my head out to hearken, though it rained: determined to admit them in spite of the prohibition, should they return. In a while, I distinguished steps coming up the road, and the light of a lantern glimmered through the gate. I threw a shawl over my head and ran to prevent them from waking Mr. Earnshaw by knocking. There was Heathcliff, by himself: it gave me a start to see him alone.
9. The Thorn Birds
Genre : Romance, Historical Fiction, Classics
Type : Standalone
Status : Published
BLURB :
The Thorn Birds is a robust, romantic saga of a singular family, the Clearys. It begins in the early part of this century, when Paddy Cleary moves his wife, Fiona, and their seven children to Drogheda, the vast Australian sheep station owned by his autocratic and childless older sister; and it ends more than half a century later, when the only survivor of the third generation, the brilliant actress Justine O’Neill, sets a course of life and love halfway around the world from her roots.
The central figures in this enthralling story are the indomitable Meggie, the only Cleary daughter, and the one man she truly loves, the stunningly handsome and ambitious priest Ralph de Bricassart. Ralph’s course moves him a long way indeed, from a remote Outback parish to the halls of the Vatican; and Meggie’s except for a brief and miserable marriage elsewhere, is fixed to the Drogheda that is part of her bones – but distance does not dim their feelings though it shapes their lives.
Wonderful characters people this book; strong and gentle, Paddy, hiding a private memory; dutiful Fiona, holding back love because it once betrayed her, violent, tormented Frank, and the other hardworking Cleary sons who give the boundless lands of Drogheda the energy and devotion most men save for women; Meggie; Ralph; and Meggie’s children, Justine and Dane. And the land itself; stark, relentless in its demands, brilliant in its flowering, prey to gigantic cycles of drought and flood, rich when nature is bountiful, surreal like no other place on earth.
”Excerpt”
Chapter One
On December 8th, 1915, Meggie clearly had her fourth birthday. After the breakfast dishes were put away her mother silently thrust a brown paper parcel into her arms and ordered her outside. So Meggie squatted down behind the gorse bush next to the front gate and tugged impatiently. Her fingers were clumsy, the wrapping heavy; it smelled faintly of the Wahine general store, which told her that whatever lay inside the parcel had miraculously been bought, not homemade or donated.
Something fine and mistily gold began to poke through a corner; she attacked the paper faster, peeling it away in long, ragged strips.
“Agnes! Oh, Agnes!” she said lovingly, blinking at the doll lying there in a tattered nest.
A miracle indeed. Only once in her life had Meggie been into Wahine; all the way back in May, because she had been a very good girl. So perched in the buggy beside her mother, on her best behavior, she had been too excited to see or remember much. Except for Agnes, the beautiful doll sitting on the store counter, dressed in a crinoline of pink satin with cream lace frills all over it. Right then and there in her mind she had christened it Agnes, the only name she knew elegant enough for such a peerless creature. Yet over the ensuing months her yearning after Agnes contained nothing of hope; Meggie didn’t own a doll and had no idea little girls and dolls belonged together. She played happily with the whistles and slingshots and battered soldiers her brothers discarded, got her hands dirty and her boots muddy.
It never occurred to her that Agnes was to play with. Stroking the bright pink folds of the dress, grander than any she had ever seen on a human woman, she picked Agnes up tenderly. The doll had jointed arms and legs which could be moved anywhere; even her neck and tiny, shapely waist were jointed. Her golden hair was exquisitely dressed in a high pompadour studded with pearls, her pale bosom peeped out of a foaming fichu of cream lace fastened with a pearl pin. The finely painted bone china face was beautiful, left unglazed to give the delicately tinted skin a natural matte texture. Astonishingly lifelike blue eyes shone between lashes of real hair, their irises streaked and circled with a darker blue; fascinated, Meggie discovered that when Agnes lay back far enough, her eyes closed. High on one faintly flushed cheek she had a black beauty mark, and her dusky mouth was parted slightly to show tiny white teeth. Meggie put the doll gently on her lap, crossed her feet under her comfortably, and sat just looking.
She was still sitting behind the gorse bush when Jack and Hughie came rustling through the grass where it was too close to the fence to feel a scythe. Her hair was the typical Cleary beacon, all the Cleary children save Frank being martyred by a thatch some shade of red; Jack nudged his brother and pointed gleefully. They separated, grinning at each other, and pretended they were troopers after a Maori renegade. Meggie would not have heard them anyway, so engrossed was she in Agnes, humming softly to herself.
“What’s that you’ve got, Meggie?” Jack shouted, pouncing. “Show us!”
“Yes, show us!” Hughie giggled, outflanking her.
She clasped the doll against her chest and shook her head: “No, she ‘s mine! I got her for my birthday!”
“Show us, go on! We just want to have a look.”
Pride and joy won out. She held the doll so her brothers could see. “Look, isn’t she beautiful? Her name is Agnes.”
“Agnes? Agnes?” Jack gagged realistically. “What a soppy name! Why don’t you call her Margaret or Betty?”
“Because she’s Agnes!”
Hughie noticed the joint in the doll’s wrist, and whistled. “Hey, Jack,look! It can move its hand!”
“Where? Let’s see.”
“No!” Meggie hugged the doll close again, tears forming. “No, you’ll break her! Oh, Jack, don’t take her away—you’ll break her!”
“Pooh!” His dirty brown hands locked about her wrists, closing tightly. “Want a Chinese burn? And don’t be such a crybaby, or I’ll tell Bob.” He squeezed her skin in opposite directions until it stretched whitely, as Hughie got hold of the doll’s skirts and pulled. “Gimme, or I’ll do it really hard!”
“No! Don’t, Jack, please don’t! You’ll break her, I know you will! Oh, please leave her alone! Don’t take her, please!” In spite of the cruel grip on her wrists, she clung to the doll, sobbing and kicking.
“Got it,” Hughie whooped, as the doll slid under Meggie ‘s crossed forearms.
Jack and Hughie found her just as fascinating as Meggie had; off came the dress, the petticoats and long, frilly drawers. Agnes lay naked while the boys pushed and pulled at her, forcing one foot round the back of her head, making her look down her spine, every possible contortion they could think of. They took no notice of Meggie as she stood crying; it did not occur to her to seek help, for in the Cleary family those who could not fight their own battles got scant aid or sympathy, and that went for girls, too.
The doll’s golden hair tumbled down, the pearls flew winking into the long grass and disappeared. A dusty boot came down thoughtlessly on the abandoned dress, smearing grease from the smithy across its satin. Meggie dropped to her knees, scrabbling frantically to collect the miniature clothes before more damage was done them, then she began picking among the grass blades where she thought the pearls might have fallen. Her tears were blinding her, the grief in her heart new, for until now she had never owned anything worth grieving for.
Frank threw the shoe hissing into cold water and straightened his back; it didn’t ache these days, so perhaps he was used to smithying. Not before time, his father would have said, after six months at it.
The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord…1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
”Excerpt”
He took a deep breath, and his fists flexed briefly, then relaxed.
“No. Forgiveness doesna make things go away. Ye ken that as well as I do.” He turned his head to look at me, in curiosity. “Don’t ye?”
There were no more than a few inches between us, but the aching distance between our hearts reached miles. Jamie was silent for a long time. I could hear my heart, beating in my ears…
“Listen,” he said at last.
“I’m listening.” He looked sideways at me, and the ghost of a smile touched his mouth. He held out a broad, pitch-stained palm to me.
“Give me your hands while ye do it, aye?”
“Why?” But I put my hands into his without hesitation, and felt his grip close on them. His fingers were cold, and I could see the hairs on his forearm ruffled with chill where he’d rolled up his sleeves to help Fanny with the gun.
“What hurts you cleaves my heart,” he said softly. “Ye ken that, aye?”
“I do,” I said, just as softly. “And you know it’s true for me, too. But—” I swallowed, and bit my lip. “It—it seems…”
“Claire,” he interrupted, and looked at me straight. “Are ye relieved that he’s dead?”
“Well…yes,” I said unhappily. “I don’t want to feel that way, though; it doesn’t seem right. I mean—” I struggled to find some clear way to put it. “On the one hand—what he did to me wasn’t…mortal. I hated it, but it didn’t physically hurt me; he wasn’t trying to hurt me or kill me. He just…”
“Ye mean, if it had been Harley Boble ye met at Beardsley’s, ye wouldna have minded my killing him?” he interrupted, with a tinge of irony.
“I would have shot him myself, on sight.” I blew out a long, deep breath. “But that’s the other thing. There’s what he—the man—do you know his name, by the way?”
“Yes, and you’re not going to, so dinna ask me,” he said tersely.
I gave him a narrow look, and he gave it right back. I flapped my hand, dismissing it for the moment.
“The other thing,” I repeated firmly, “is that if I’d shot Boble myself—you wouldn’t have had to. I wouldn’t feel that you were…damaged by it.”
His face went blank for a moment, then his gaze sharpened again.
“Ye think it damaged me to kill him?”
I reached for his hand, and held it.
“I bloody know it did,” I said quietly. And added in a whisper, looking down at the scarred, powerful hand in mine, “what hurts you cleaves my heart, Jamie.”
His fingers curled tight over mine.
11. Gone With the Wind
Genre : Romance, Classics, Historical Fiction
Type : Standalone
Status : Published
BLURB :
Margaret Mitchell’s epic saga of love and war has long been heralded as The Great American Novel. Gone With the Windexplores the depths of human passions with indelible depictions of the burning fields and cities of Civil War and Reconstruction America. In the two main characters, the irresistible, tenacious Scarlett O’Hara and the formidable, debonair Rhett Butler, Margaret Mitchell gives us a timeless story of survival and two of the most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet. Gone With the Wind is a thrilling, haunting, and vivid book that readers will remember for the rest of their lives.
”Excerpt”
CHAPTER ONE
SCARLETT O’HARA was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin–that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.
Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation, that bright April afternoon of I861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years. But for all the modesty of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mother’s gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own.
On either side of her, the twins lounged easily in their chairs, squinting at the sunlight through tall mint-garnished glasses as they laughed and talked, their long legs, booted to the knee and thick with saddle muscles, crossed negligently. Nineteen years old, six feet two inches tall, long of bone and hard of muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their eyes merry and arrogant, their bodies clothed in identical blue coats and mustard-colored breeches, they were as much alike as two bolls of cotton.
Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted down in the yard, throwing into gleaming brightness the dogwood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms against the background of new green. The twins’ horses were hitched in the driveway, big animals, red as their masters’ hair; and around the horses’ legs quarreled the pack of lean, nervous possum hounds that accompanied Stuart and Brent wherever they went. A little aloof, as became an aristocrat, lay a black-spotted carriage dog, muzzle on paws, patiently waiting for the boys to go home to supper.
Between the hounds and the horses and the twins there was a kinship deeper than that of their constant companionship. They were all healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, the boys as mettlesome as the horses they rode, mettlesome and dangerous but, withal, sweet-tempered to those who knew how to handle them.
Although born to the ease of plantation life, waited on hand and foot since infancy, the faces of the three on the porch were neither slack nor soft. They had the vigor and alertness of country people who have spent all their lives in the open and troubled their heads very little with dull things in books. Life in the north Georgia county of Clayton was still new and, according to the standards of Augusta, Savannah and Charleston, a little crude. The more sedate and older sections of the South looked down their noses at the upcountry Georgians, but here in north Georgia, a lack of the niceties of classical education carried no shame, provided a man was smart in the things that mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring the ladies with elegance and carrying one’s liquor like a gentleman were the things that mattered.
In these accomplishments the twins excelled, and they were equally outstanding in their notorious inability to learn anything contained between the covers of books. Their family had more money, more horses, more slaves than any one else in the County, but the boys had less grammar than most of their poor Cracker neighbors.
It was for this precise reason that Stuart and Brent were idling on the porch of Tara this April afternoon. They had just been expelled from the University of Georgia, the fourth university that had thrown them out in two years; and their older brothers, Tom and Boyd, had come home with them, because they refused to remain at an institution where the twins were not welcome. Stuart and Brent considered their latest expulsion a fine joke, and Scarlett, who had not willingly opened a book since leaving the Fayetteville Female Academy the year before, thought it just as amusing as they did.
“I know you two don’t care about being expelled, or Tom either,” she said. “But what about Boyd ? He’s kind of set on getting an education, and you two have pulled him out of the University of Virginia and Alabama and South Carolina and now Georgia. He’ll never get finished at this rate.”
“Oh, he can read law in Judge Parmalee’s office over in Fayetteville,” answered Brent carelessly. “Besides, it don’t matter much. We’d have had to come home before the term was out anyway.”
“Why?”
“The war, goose! The war’s going to start any day, and you don’t suppose any of us would stay in college with a war going on, do you ?”
“You know there isn’t going to be any war,” said Scarlett, bored. “It’s all just talk. Why, Ashley Wilkes and his father told Pa just last week that our commissioners in Washington would come to-to-an-amicable agreement with Mr. Lincoln about the Confederacy. And anyway, the Yankees are too scared of us to fight. There won’t be any war, and I’m tired of hearing about it.”
“Not going to be any war!” cried the twins indignantly, as though they had been defrauded.
“Why, honey, of course there’s going to be a war,” said Stuart. “The Yankees may be scared of us, but after the way General Beauregard shelled them out of Fort Sumter day before yesterday, they’ll have to fight or stand branded as cowards before the whole world. Why, the Confederacy –“
Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience.
“If you say ‘war’ just once more, I’ll go in the house and shut the door. I’ve never gotten so tired of any one word in my life as ‘war,’ unless it’s ‘secession.’ Pa talks war morning, noon and night, and all the gentlemen who come to see him shout about Fort Sumter and States’ Rights and Abe Lincoln till I get so bored I could scream! And that’s all the boys talk about, too, that and their old Troop. There hasn’t been any fun at any party this spring because the boys can’t talk about anything else. I’m mighty glad Georgia waited till after Christmas before it seceded or it would have ruined the Christmas parties, too. If you say ‘war’ again, I’ll go in the house.”
She meant what she said, for she could never long endure any conversation of which she was not the chief subject. But she smiled when she spoke, consciously deepening her dimple and fluttering her bristly black lashes as swiftly as butterflies’ wings. The boys were enchanted, as she had intended them to be, and they hastened to apologize for boring her. They thought none the less of her for her lack of interest. Indeed, they thought more. War was men’s business, not ladies’, and they took her attitude as evidence of her femininity.
12. Forbidden
Genre : Contemporary Romance, Young Adult, Fiction
Type : Standalone
Status : Published
BLURB :
She is pretty and talented – sweet sixteen and never been kissed. He is seventeen; gorgeous and on the brink of a bright future. And now they have fallen in love. But… they are brother and sister.
Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.
”Excerpt”
LOCHAN
.
I tell Maya that she needs to sleep but I know I can’t – I’m too afraid to go upstairs and sit on my bed and go crazy in that tiny room, alone with my terrifying thoughts. She says she wants to stay with me: she’s frightened that if she goes away, I’ll disappear. She doesn’t need to explain – I feel it too: the fear that if we part now, this incredible night will just vanish, evaporate like a dream, and we will wake in the morning back in our separate bodies, back in our ordinary lives. Yet here on the couch, my arms around her as she sits curled up against me, head resting against my chest, I still feel frightened – more frightened than I’ve ever been before. What just happened was unbelievable yet somehow completely natural, as if deep down I always knew this moment would come, even though I never once allowed myself to consciously think about it, to imagine it in any way. Now that it has arrived, I can only think of Maya, sitting right here against me, her breath warm against my bare arm.
..
It’s as if there is a great wall preventing me from crossing to the other side, from casting my mind out into the external world, the world beyond the two of us. Nature’s security valve is at work, preventing me from even contemplating the implications of what just happened, keeping me, for the moment at least, safe from the horror of what I have done. It’s as if my mind knows it cannot go there yet, knows that right now I’m not strong enough to deal with the outcome of these overwhelming feelings, these momentous actions. But the fear remains – the fear that in the cold light of day we will be forced to come to terms with what was, quite simply, an awful mistake; the fear that we will have no choice but to bury this night as if it never took place, a shameful secret to be filed away for the rest of our lives until, brittle with age, it crumbles to dust – a faint, distant memory, like the powder of a moth’s wings on a windowpane, the spectre of something that perhaps never occurred, existing solely in our imagination.
.
I cannot bear the thought of this being just one moment in time, over almost before it started, already retreating into the past. I must hold onto it with all my might. I cannot allow Maya to slip away because, for the first time in my life, my love for her feels whole, and everything that has led up to this point suddenly makes sense, as if all this was meant to be. But as I gaze down at her sleepy face, the freckled cheekbones, the white skin, the dark curl of her eyelashes, I feel an overwhelming ache, like acute homesickness – a longing for something I can never have. Sensing my eyes on her, she looks up and smiles, but it is a sad smile, as if she too knows how precarious our new love is, how dangerously threatened by the outside world. The ache inside me deepens, and all I can think of is what it felt like to kiss her, how brief that moment was and how desperately I want to live it once more.
.
She keeps on looking at me with that little wistful smile, as if waiting, as if she knows. And the blood is hot in my face, my heart racing, my breath quickening, and she notices that too. Raising her head from my chest, she asks, ‘Do you want to kiss me again?’ I nod, mute, heart pounding anew. She looks at me expectantly, hopefully. ‘Go on, then.’ I close my eyes, my breathing laboured, my chest filling with a mounting sense of despair. ‘I don’t – I don’t think I can.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I’m worried . . . Maya, what if we can’t stop?’ ‘We don’t have to . . . ’ I breathe deeply and turn away, the air around me thrumming with heat. ‘Don’t even think like that!’ Her expression sobers and she brushes her fingers up and down the inside of my arm, her eyes heavy with sadness. Yet her touch fills me with longing. I never thought that the mere touch of a hand could stir so much. ‘All right, Lochie, we’ll stop.’ ‘You have to stop. Promise me.’ ‘I promise.’ She touches my cheek, turning me back towards her. I take her face in my hands and start to kiss her, gently at first; and as I do so, all the pain and worry and loneliness and fear start to evaporate until all I can think of is the taste of her lips, the warmth of her tongue, the smell of her skin, her touch, her caresses. And then I’m struggling to keep calm and her hands are pressing against the sides of my face, her breath hot and rapid against my cheek, her mouth warm and wet. My hands want to touch her all over, but I can’t, I can’t, and we’re kissing so hard it hurts – it hurts that I can’t do more, it hurts that however hard I kiss her I can’t … I can’t – ‘Lochie . . . ’ I don’t care about the promise. I don’t remember why I even suggested it. I don’t care about anything – anything except for-‘ ‘Easy, Lochie – ’ I press my lips back down over her mouth, holding her tight to stop her from moving away. ‘Lochie, stop.’ This time she pulls away and pushes me back, holding me at arm’s length, her fingers gripping my shoulders. Her lips are red – she looks flushed and wild and exquisite. I’m breathing too fast. Much too fast. ‘You made me promise.’ She looks upset. ‘I know, all right!’ Jumping up, I start pacing the room. I wish there was an icy pool of water for me to dive into. ‘Are you OK?’ No, I’m not. I’ve never felt like this before and it scares me. My body seems to have taken over. I’m so aroused I can hardly think. I’ve got to calm down. I’ve got to stay in control. I can’t let this happen. I run my hands through my hair repeatedly and the air escapes from my lungs in a rush. ‘I’m sorry. I should have said it sooner.’ ‘No!’ I spin round. ‘It’s not your fault, for God’s sake!’ ‘All right, all right! Why are you angry?’ ‘I’m not! I’m just – ’ I stop and lean my forehead against the wall, fighting the urge to head-butt it. ‘Oh, Jesus, what are we going to do?’ ‘Nobody would have to find out,’ she says softly, chewing the tip of her thumb. ‘No!’ I shout.