from the publisher
From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, a mesmerizing and boldly inventive novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.
Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworth's on Bexford High Street in southeast London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.
Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the life arcs of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption.
Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory and expectation, and the preciousness of life.
My husband ordered a signed copy of Stacy Abram's new novel While Justice Sleeps!
I received a free book through Amazon Vine. My review is fair and unbiased.
See other books in the series by clicking on these links
And I kept on reading.
I missed this when it came out because I was graduating from high school and going to college at the time of its publication. And for years, my reading was mostly 'looking backwards' to the 19th c.--The century in which this novel is set!
Si Morely is a vet and bored commercial artist when he is recruited into a top secret government experiment--traveling back in time. He is an excellent student and becomes the best at time travel.
He sets out to solve the mystery of his girlfriend's grandfather's death and strange headstone, with a half burnt letter her only clue.
The story becomes a mystery, and a romance, and a study of what civilization has given us and what it has taken away.
Finney excels at description. Every costume, every horse drawn vehicle, every building, and every activity is recreated in such detail, it's like seeing a movie play in one's head. The streets filled with their cacophony of noise and smells, congested with pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages. The city at play in the snow. A devastating fire and daring rescues. An escape from police.
And, the book is filled with Si's drawings and photographs, illustrating what he has seen.
Enger said if he had a book club, this would be his first choice.
We absolutely loved Hanks interpretation of the text. He brought the story alive. When I read the novel I did not catch the humor as strongly as Hanks delivers it. I will listen to anything read by Hanks.
The characters love or hate the Dutch House. Ownership is coveted by a second wife who steals it from her step-kids and then kicks them out. They can never quite get over its loss; they spend hours remembering their childhood there. Their inability to move on curtails their growth and harms their relationships.
I recalled my own lost childhood home. I fantasized about growing up and buying it back. When it was torn down while I was still a teenager, I was broken-hearted.
This is a story of family and brokenness and loving the wrong things and regret and forgiveness. In the end, our family becomes the people who we choose and who choose us to be family.
Read my review of the novel here.
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| Seasons of Life by Sandra Mollon |
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| Flora and Fauna by Lora Zamk |
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| Remembering Mary by Judy Green |
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| Flora, Fauna, Butterflies, and Bugs by Beth Butura |
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| Seasons of Life by Tina McConnell |
Take on your next quilting feat with a champion quilt! From expert quilter Sandra Mollon, recreate the “Seasons of Life” quilt, which is now a part of a permanent collection of the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky. Learn techniques for incorporating unusual fabrics, creating dimensional flowers, as well as shading with inks and embellishing blocks. In true “Baltimore” style, each of the 13 blocks features a different tribute to nature in highly stylized fashion: baskets, wreaths, flowers, leaves and vines, and small garden or forest animals. Appliqué each block for your very own stunning creation.Learn tons of techniques with appliqué, embroidery, ribbon work, beading, and more!Includes full-sized pattern and instructions to the award-winning “Seasons of Life” quiltMake 13 unique blocks with a pieced and scalloped border encircling the blocks
Sandra is an award winning quilter living in Northern California. She has been quilting for over 30 years, and teaching for 18 years.Sandra began as a traditional quilter, specializing in hand appliqué for a couple of decades. You can see a few of my quilts in the book, “500 Traditional Quilts” by Lark Publications. She is currently working on a book to be released in 2021 with C & T Publication for her original designed quilt, “Seasons of Life.She has had many quilts juried into large international and regional juried shows. Her traditional quilt, “Season’s of Life” won a major award in 2019 both at Road to California (Outstanding Large Quilt), and at the 2019 AQS Paducah show it won a purchase award and is in the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY.Additionally her work in art quilting has wonderful many place awards, a “Best Pictorial” award and a 3rd place award in 2019 at PIQF, a 1st Place in Wall at MQX 2019, Best of Show Award and 1st place at the RCQG show in Sacramento Ca, 2018, and a 3rd place at Road to California in 2020.She enjoys teaching as well as working on her art, and loves to travel and meet new people.
A hypnotic debut of broken love on the run, from a blazingly original young writer
“A road novel, a love story, a coming-of-age tale, but with sentences so sharply wrought, characters so achingly precise, that it feels new and fresh and utterly alive.”—Lynn Steger Strong, author of Want
“In front of me the long length of the road wound out, wound out and wound on under hot sky. And I drove . . .”
In the lonely town of San Padua, Anne Marie can never get the sound of the ocean out of her head. And it’s here—dog-walking by day, working bars by night—where she tries to forget about her ex-husband, Cal: both their brief marriage and their long estrangement.
When Cal shows up on Anne Marie’s doorstep one day, clearly in trouble, she reluctantly agrees to a drink. But later that night a gun goes off in a violent accident and the young couple are forced to hit the open road together in escape.
Crammed in a beat-up car with their broken past, so begins a journey across a vast, mythical American landscape, through the dark seams of the country, toward a city that may or may not represent salvation.
Highway Blue is a story of being lost and found—and of love, in all its forms. Written in spare, shimmering prose, it introduces the arrival of an electrifyingly singular new voice.
