Book Lover Place

Preface Everyone has inside himself a piece of good news! The good news is that you really don’t know how great you can be, how much you can love, what you can accomplish, and what your potential is! —ANNE FRANK, teenage author (1929–1945) Life is an artistic process. Whether we are aware of it or [...]

Covington Ranch, Flint Hills, Kansas Emily and Caesar chased some cattle out of a small canyon and they joined the growing herd of cattle she had assembled on the prairie. In the distance, she could see wisps of dust drifting into the air from the large herd of cattle that Zeke, Jake, and the others [...]

PREFACE Back in the animal shelter, he resumes a life of sordid, empty days. Dogs come and go. Filling the hours, a welter of sensory overload gives way to boredom. Harsh Florida sun hangs all day in front of his crate; at night, shards of lightning stab down through the skylight. Being brought back this [...]

CHAPTER ONE Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive / But to be young was very heaven! –William Wordsworth, The Prelude, xi. 1, 108. Even in August London streets could be clogged. Two drivers locked the wheels of their dray carts, blocking the turn from Piccadilly to Old Bond Street. Hoping to profit from the stalled traffic, boys [...]

July Cancer: I am (re)born. How did I get here? Who is responsible? These are some, but not all, of the questions I ask myself as I park my stuff at a desk that defines nondescript, its beige prefab contours blending seamlessly into the slightly darker beige (yet fully carpeted) walls of my new home—a cubicle [...]

KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDE ARE EVERYTHING: QUESTION AUTHORITY “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” — Benjamin Franklin The Fear of Losing Your Home Defaulting on your mortgage and facing foreclosure is a very nerve-racking experience. Just keep in mind that the more stressed out and anxious you are about your situation, the [...]

PART IV In New England, a house gets called by your name only after you’ve lived there for a good while and then left it. Usually, that’s by death. Unpainted and derelict, nestled against hills thick with pine and alder, the Mallow place took on a blind-eyed look. Nothing had ever been square or symmetrical, [...]

Garret and Eldred Antiques was not in the main part of town. They had to wind their way through a couple of shopping arcades, past the Seabourne International Arena and walk the length of St Beade’s Street to a less familiar area. Here, what once had been a thriving shopping area now had an abandoned, [...]

Mary came home from the hospital a week after Dad died. It was Tuesday, August 28, 2007. As we were driving home from the hospital, she told me that this was probably why she was still here, why she had lived longer than the doctors’ expectations. She was here to help me get over losing [...]

What Really Matters by Dr. Karen Wyatt, MD Why This Book Matters As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, uneasiness abounds and a sense of doom is prevalent everywhere we turn. Scholars, philoso- phers, seers, sages, and prophets all tell us that our planet is on the verge of some sort of [...]