In a dusty, turn-of-the-century Catalan village, the bequest of a cello bow sets young Feliu Delargo on the unlikely path of becoming a musician. Anarchist Barcelona and the court of the embattled monarchy in Madrid teach him his first serious lessons in creativity, principle, and passion—and their consequences. When he meets up with the charming and eccentric piano prodigy Justo Al-Cerraz, their lifelong friendship and rivalry orchestrate a tumultuous course for them both. Over the span of half a century of creative struggle and international turmoil that sees them paying house calls on Picasso one year and being courted by dictators the next, they make glorious music together, and clash over virtually everything else: love, politics, and the purpose of art. When the tensions propelling a war-torn world toward catastrophe bring Aviva, an Italian violinist with a haunted past, into their lives, Feliu and Justo embark upon their final and most dangerous collaboration.

Author

Andromeda Romano-Lax has been a journalist, a travel writer, and an amateur cellist, as well as the author of numerous nonfiction books. The Spanish Bow is her first novel. For further information on the author, go to her Web site at www.RomanoLax.com

London, 1931. On the night before the opening of his new and much-anticipated exhibition at a famed Mayfair gallery, Nicholas Bassington-Hope falls to his death. The police declare it an accident, but the dead man’s twin sister, Georgina, isn’t convinced. When the authorities refuse to conduct further investigations and instead close the case, Georgina takes matters into her own hands, seeking out a fellow graduate from Girton College: Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator.

The case soon takes Maisie to the desolate beaches of Dungeness in Kent, and through the sinister underbelly of the city’s art world. But to solve the mystery of the artist’s death, she will have to remain steady as the forces behind his fall come out of the shadows to silence her.

Messenger of Truth is another vivid, thrilling, and utterly unique episode in the life of Maisie Dobbs.

Author

Jacqueline Winspear is the author of three previous Maisie Dobbs novels, Maisie Dobbs, Birds of a Feather, and Pardonable Lies. A finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel, Maisie Dobbs won the Agatha, Alex, and Macavity Awards, and Birds of a Feather won the Agatha Award. Originally from the United Kingdom, Winspear now lives in California.

For more information, please visit www.jacquelinewinspear.com

Cal Burton backed his red Porsche Carrera 911 cabriolette near a pine tree in front of the Armstrongs’ to prevent a bump or scratch from a drunk or careless partier. He strolled through the front door without a knock, looking for John. Cal was always impeccably dressed, and today he was dapper in his polo shirt and pressed pants. He arrived just in time to catch the end of Rick’s diatribe.

“Then who would attend these wonderful parties?” Cal said. He smiled as he reached up and placed his hand on his host John Armstrong’s shoulder. John noticed that Cal’s short brown hair now had grey streaks in it. Had that many years passed?

“Rick, meet Cal Burton. Trial lawyer and medical malpractice expert. No one is better.”

Rick gave Cal an embarrassed smile. “I sort of got carried away there. I hope I didn’t offend you.”

Cal smiled back as only a practiced litigation attorney can. Rick could have cursed Cal’s mother and he would have just grinned. The party was a prime source for his referrals and leads, and he was not going to let a half-drunk redneck radiologist screw it up. “No offense taken. I understand your anger. There’s plenty of resentment between malpractice attorneys and doctors. One thing you have to understand is that we are the only watch-dog there is. Doctors have never policed themselves well enough to prevent bad doctors from practicing. Only bad doctors and people with bad judgment ever have legal problems. Wouldn’t you agree, John?”

John smiled. “Don’t look at me to make your case, counselor.” John moved away and made himself another drink. “Can I get you one, Cal? Or are you working?”

Cal waved Armstrong off with his hand. “Anyway, look at our former President; taken down not by a psychotic younger lover, but by his own bad judgment. Taken another way, by his own air of invincibility. When men start to believe they are above the law, they will inevitably make a mistake and are doomed to failure.”

“Clinton was trying to be like Kennedy, but Monica was no Monroe,” Rick said. “As for malpractice, I only half agree with you. I agree we don’t police ourselves well, but part of that is the government’s fault. They allow bad doctors from every third world country to train here, then stay. If we could keep out these bad foreign doctors, we would be okay.

“You think? Most of the work I get is from regular doctors like yourself. Not foreigners.”

John stepped in smoothly. “Cal is working on an interesting case now where I’m an expert witness. Maybe it’s something you could do in the future.”

Cal’s smile eased the tension. “Yeah. John loves it and thinks it’s very interesting because he gets three hundred dollars an hour!”

John glanced at Cal, anger still in his eyes.

“Oops, I guess I was not supposed to tell you that. Pretend you didn’t hear that from me.”

John managed a smile. “Cal, you’re a real classy guy.”

“I don’t think I could do it,” Rick said. “I would feel like a traitor.”

“Rick, you could work for the defense, helping the doctor defend him or herself. You don’t have to be an expert witness for the plaintiff.” Cal said.

There was a long, awkward pause. “Well, enough shop talk. Let’s get some food.” John led them out into the yard.

Excerpted from LOCKED IN by Mike Esposito. Copyright © 2007 by Mike Esposito. All rights reserved. Excerpted by permission of the publisher. www.mikeespositomd.com

Author

Growing up in NYC, Mike Esposito never imagined that he would end up in Florida. After graduating high school on Staten Island, he attended the University of Florida and then went on to medical school at University of South Florida in Tampa.

After his radiology residency in Tampa he finished up his training in fellowship at Duke University. Soon after he took up a job as a radiologist in a Tampa area practice.

“My career in radiology has been rewarding but I needed a new challenge. Writing provided me an outlet but soon became an obsession and a second job. The end was LOCKED IN, my first completed full-length novel. I hope you enjoy it.” - Mike Esposito

For more information, please visit www.mikeespositomd.com

The following is an excerpt from the book A Nail Through the Heart
by Timothy Hallinan
Published by William Morrow; July 2007;$24.95US/$31.50CAN; 978-0-06-125580-9
Copyright © 2007 Timothy Hallinan

The Story: Poke Rafferty is an American expatriate living in Bangkok and the author of a number of “rough travel” books aimed at young, hip travelers who want to go off — way off — the usual tourist paths. He came to Bangkok to write the third book in the series, Looking for Trouble in Thailand, and falls in love with the city and the Thai people, two of them in particular: a former Patpong go-go dancer named Rose, with whom he now lives off and on, and whom he wants to marry; and a wary eight-year-old former street child named Miaow, whom he is trying formally to adopt.

The adoption process for Miaow is complicated and expensive, and to offset the expenses not too long ago, Poke wrote a piece for a magazine in which he demonstrated that virtually all the “missing” Western men in Thailand had gone missing voluntarily and were living very happily somewhere in the Kingdom. The article brought him a young Australian woman whose uncle has disappeared. This quest in turn leads him to a rundown mansion on the banks of the Chao Phraya River and a mysterious older woman — much feared, if others’ reactions to her are to be trusted — named Madame Wing. Poke is now in the house and about to meet Madame Wing for the first time.

***

The silence is pierced by a thin, insistent squealing from somewhere in the house. Rafferty backs away from the fragment of temple wall and seats himself in the armchair. The sound grows louder, and a woman comes around the corner and into view. She is tiny and angular, her sharp joints folded batlike into a wheelchair that is too big for her. The chair stops in the doorway, without entering the room, and the squealing stops with it.

She regards him without expression. For a moment he actually wonders if she is blind, simply directing her eyes where she knows the armchair will be.

“Madame Wing,” he says, just to break the silence.

Her chin comes up a quarter of an inch, and all the planes of her face shift. Her eyes actually register him for the first time. She is thin to the point of being gaunt, the bones of her face as sharp as a Cubist painting, the skull slowly surfacing beneath the flesh. The hands grasping the rubber wheels are all knuckles. The skin stretched over them has turned a peculiar bruised-looking purple.

“You came,” she says with a hint of satisfaction. The voice, low and rough, scrapes Rafferty’s ears. Despite the grandeur of her home, there is nothing refined about the way she sounds. She rolls herself a foot or so into the room. The wheelchair squeals again.

“You should get Jeeves to oil that thing.”

She stops the chair’s motion and regards him coldly. He has been regarded coldly before — he thinks of himself as an expert at being regarded coldly — but this is something entirely new. She looks at him as he might look at a snake coiled on his pillow. “His name is Pak, and you do not tell me what to do.”

“Just a suggestion.”

“Not ever,” she says. Now that he can see her eyes more clearly, he wishes he could not. They are extraordinarily luminous eyes, but the light in them seems all to be reflected. They have the shine of an animal that can see in the dark. He can see the white all the way around the circles of her irises. “You have questions to ask me before I come to my business. Ask them.”

Her business? Rafferty does want any part of this woman’s business, whatever it is. “You had a maid here,” he says. “She may know something about a man I’m trying to find.”

She draws herself up in the chair. It makes her seem both larger and heavier, despite her apparent frailty. “What man?”

“An Australian named–”

“No,” she says, closing the subject. She sits back. “I know nothing of Australians.”

“Actually,” he says, “it’s the maid you can probably help me with.” He holds up the note from Bangkok Domestics. “You wrote a letter about her.”

She extends a skeletal hand, a knot of knuckles and rings. It is absolutely still. Whatever health problems she may have, none of them causes her hands to tremble.

Rafferty begins to unfold the letter, but she gives the hand a peremptory shake and he finds himself getting up to give it to her. “Sit,” she says, the moment she has it. She does not look up to see if he does as he is told.

As she unfolds the letter, he gets a chance to look at her without having to face those unsettling eyes. Her hair, still mostly black, is pulled back into a bun so tight it looks like it hurts. The emaciated face is dark but not heavily lined, and Rafferty revises his estimate of her age. At first sight he thought seventy. Now he thinks she could be anywhere from fifty to sixty.

“This girl,” she says at last, precisely refolding the letter. “She is of no account.”

“She may have information I need.”

She drops the letter into her lap. “Why should I care?”

“Not a reason in the world. You said you’d see me, so I thought–”

“I do not care what you thought. The girl was dismissed because she could not accept discipline. I have no idea where she went.”

“How long did she work here before you fired her?”

The gaze she gives him says the question is an impertinence. “Seven weeks, eight weeks.”

“If you fired her, why did you write her a letter of reference?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It’s a natural question. The letter got her hired by someone else, and now that person is missing, and so is she.”

Something very unpleasant happens to her mouth. “Are you suggesting that this might involve me?”

“It involves you to the extent that it brought me here.”

“I brought you here,” she says imperiously. “Not this stupid girl.”

“And if I came, so will others. Who knows who’ll they’ll be?”

The hands drop to the chair’s wheels as though she intends to leave the room. Instead, she moves it forward several inches, squealing her way closer to Rafferty. When she is close enough to make him wish he could move the chair backward, the squealing stops and the silence of the house once again presses against his ears, like water.

“And who do you think they might be?” she asks.

The intensity of the question unnerves him. “Could be anyone. The police, the Australian embassy.”

She nods a tenth of an inch. Her lids drop slightly, hooding the eyes for a merciful moment, and then she turns to the carved stone on the wall. Her gaze travels left to right, like those of someone reading a newspaper. When she has finished, she says, without looking at him, “That’s hardly anyone.” Then she lifts her hands and claps once. The sound is still ringing in Rafferty’s ears when Jeeves steps into the doorway.
(more…)

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The following is an excerpt from the book The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse
by Jonathan Selwood
Published by Harper Perennial; August 2007;$13.95US/$17.50CAN; 978-0-06-117387-5
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan Selwood

Just as I’m touching up the manic glint in Tom Cruise’s eyes, another aftershock hits. I stumble back from the easel to try and keep from toppling over, but with the hardwood floor shifting violently in all three dimensions at once, it’s like trying to cross a cobblestone street blind drunk in stiletto heels. Fortunately, a waist-high pile of old Celeb magazines breaks my fall.

The tremor ends just seconds after it starts, but a dry fog of lead paint dust continues to sift down from the ceiling. I wait a minute to make sure the ground isn’t going to start moving again, then limp over to turn on the clock radio next to the futon couch. A male DJ’s voice blares out in midstream.

“ . . . is roughly equivalent to dropping a bowling ball off the Eiffel Tower. Please remember that phones should be used only in the case of an emergency, and not to call up the station and request the ‘Earthquake Song’ by the Little Girls. Let me also remind the two or three of you who haven’t heard this before to refrain from firing up that crack pipe until you’re absolutely positively sure you don’t smell gas, to boil any tap water before drinking, and to slip on those Ugg boots before strolling over the broken glass and shards of jagged metal that most likely carpet your floor. . . . In other disaster news, one of our deservedly unpaid interns managed to spill wheat grass juice in all three CD players, so I’ll be dipping into the vinyl vaults as we wait with bated breath for the always riveting Cal Tech report. . . .”

X’s “Los Angeles” starts crackling through the clock radio speaker. I turn up the volume, and take a minute to look around at the disaster that was once my apartment.

Dirty plates and cereal bowls are stacked everywhere, improvised ashtrays spill out over piles of old tabloid magazines, and layers of spattered paint cake the hardwood floor in a riot of clown colors. For the past two weeks I haven’t seen my boyfriend, Javier, haven’t checked the mail, haven’t left the apartment for more than half an hour at a time. For the past week I’ve been too nauseated to eat anything but Trader Joe’s pot stickers. And for the past three days I haven’t changed out of my paint-spattered black T-shirt and jeans. All of this the result of my attempt to (in the words of my sociopathic art dealer Juan Dahlman) “launch my meteoric rise to fame.”

Of course, in addition to the mess are the five new canvases that Dahlman plans to sell for a whopping fifty thousand dollars apiece come my opening Sunday afternoon (he claims Sunday afternoon is the new Thursday). Paintings I originally conceived as a satiric bayonet into the partially hydrogenated heart of contemporary society, but which my two-hundred-dollar-an-hour media training coach has reprogrammed me to call “transcendently kitschy.”

Propped against my desk is Raphael’s Madonna and Child with the original faces replaced by Britney Spears and her son Sean. Hanging over the futon is David’s The Death of Marat featuring a turbaned and bloody Kurt Cobain in the bathtub. And on the easel itself is American Gothic redone with a smiling Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. As usual, the reproductions are technically flawless (with the exception, obviously, of the celebrity substitutions). I suppose if my new career as a sellout artist/media whore implodes, I can always move to Ibiza and become a professional forger.

The aftershock scattered my paintbrushes all over the floor, so I pick them up and carry them into the bathroom to clean. A new earthquake crack has appeared, running diagonally across the mildewed blue shower tile, but the two finished canvases I did with cobalt drier are still miraculously balanced on the towel rack. Placing the brushes in a coffee can on the soap dish ledge, I turn on the faucet. Rust-colored water spurts down into the basin, stops, then starts again with a shuddering of pipes, only to begin immediately pooling up from the paint-clogged drain. I shut the faucet back off, grab a bottle of “eco-friendly” drain cleaner from the ledge of the toilet, and pour the last of it in.

It takes a full minute of staring at the gaunt woman’s face in the mirror above the sink for me to recognize it. My skin has drained from what I’ve always thought of as an SPF 15 pale to a tubercular pallor, my cheeks have sunken in painfully, and the dark circles under my eyes now match my black hair and T-shirt. Jesus, even my eyes themselves seem to be darkening.

The sink finally drains, and I’m about to begin cleaning the brushes, when there’s a knock at the front door.

Copyright © 2007 Jonathan Selwood

Author
Jonathan Selwood — evil incarnate or poseur extraordinaire?

I was born in Hollywood, California. In other words, the first time I played doctor as a kid was on a neighbor’s circular fur-covered waterbed with a mirror on the ceiling. The girl’s parents and two younger siblings were busy out by the pool hosting a nude cocaine party.

My own parents, in contrast, were from back east, and did not partake in nude cocaine parties. I was thus instilled from a young age with a strong New England-style Puritan ethic, while at the same time being raised in what is arguably the most depraved and wantonly hedonistic neighborhood in the world. When I finally graduated high school and left to attend college in Vermont, I was completely ill-prepared for the relative lack of debauchery (i.e., the nude parties had no cocaine, and the cocaine parties had no nudity).

After college, I moved down to Chiapas, Mexico, and tried my best to write on the cheap. It lasted about four months. Then I moved to New York City and tried my best to write on the expensive. It lasted about five years. Eventually I moved to Portland, Oregon, in search of a happy medium.

Portland’s been pretty good to me so far, but I must admit that in the dead of a rainy winter, I’m still inclined to wax nostalgic for those carefree sunny southern California days, and the nude cocaine parties of my youth.

Age: 27 (give or take any number of years)

Height: 4 foot 8 inches (seated)

Weight: Enough to throw around

Politics: Lapsed Anarchist

Religion: Evangelical Absurdist

Sport: Shot put

Hobbies: Talking very loudly when intoxicated, composting kitchen scraps, excessively rolling my R’s when ordering burrrrrritos . . . using ellipses . . .

Favorite Movie: Without bourbon, Lost in Translation. With bourbon, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Favorite Album: El Poder de New York by Oro Solido

Worst Job: HMO medical equipment denial guy (i.e., “I realize your son has no legs, sir, but I’m afraid his insurance plan doesn’t cover wheelchairs. Have you considered duct-taping him to some sort of a skateboard?”)

Best Job: Writer

Strangest Job: Bouncer at a bar in Chiapas, Mexico. Despite growing up in Los Angeles, my knowledge of Mexican slang is limited at best. I often resorted to waving a baseball bat in the air and screaming things like, “I throw feces at your slatternly granddaughter’s chicken tamales, you obese pubic hair!”

Best Drink I Ever Invented: The Eyeball. (Two ounces Everclear, two ounces water, ice, and three dashes Angostura bitters. Why yes, it is strong . . .)

Worst Drink I Ever Invented: The Exxon Valdez. (Two ounces Kahlua, two ounces Jagermeister. Garnish with an anchovy.)

Reviews
“Read this book, because laughing yourself to death is the second best way to go.”
–Arthur Nersesian, author of The Fuck-Up and Chinese Takeout

South Beach Chicas Catch Their Man, the latest book by award-winning Romance novelist Caridad Pineiro, is due for release in September. Visit her website at http://www.caridad.com to learn more about her books.

by Chrissy Dionne
Romance Junkies

An ancient relic granted by Divine Decree to a Noble Knight who had been mortally wounded is buried beneath the foundation of a home - this home had once been named Pierce House but now is known as THE HOUSE ON THE BLUFF. Only a direct descendant of the Noble Knight may take possession of the house - and even he or she will be tested by the house to deem if he or she is worthy.

Abigail and her consort, Ethan, have fulfilled the prophecy surrounding their current dwelling which they’ve converted into an Inn. It’s a beautiful house steeped in mystery and ghostly wonders - who cling to the old ways. There’s no electricity, no running water, no central heating system, no phone and no television. Abigail’s a bit apprehensive about their first guests. There’s a possibility they’ll get spooked and want to leave especially once the ghosts make themselves known. There’s no way of telling how the ghosts will react to guests at the Inn and Jacob, the apparitions’ “Ambassador,” knows it will just depend. Many of the ghosts have been living there for centuries and may not like having visitors in their house.

As soon as the first guests arrives a shapeless apparition appears over the Inn. Abigail, Ethan, and Tony (town sheriff and sometime permanent resident of the Inn when he’s not working) quickly realize that this apparition is not one of the ‘Others’ and they question who it is and what it wants. The ghostly appearance doesn’t scare off the guests though and is just the beginning of the bizarre appearances which will be taking place over the next couple of days. What will happen when the guests unexplainably begin to start disappearing - one or two at a time? Is the house holding them hostage?

I don’t normally read ghost stories but I have to tell you I was fascinated by this one! Elena Dorothy Bowmen’s GATEKEEPER’S REALM takes an ancient prophecy and brings it into a modern day setting with results that will steal your breath. I was enthralled by the ghost scenes and the guests reactions to each of them and couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next or to whom it would happen. The storyline moved along at a quick pace but it never lacked enough descriptive information that I was easily able to imagine each of the scenes.

I would highly recommend reading HOUSE ON THE BLUFF first simply because I believe it goes into more of the details of what Abigail had to endure in order to claim the house. Of course, I’m also going to recommend the third book, ADAM’S POINT, because there are questions that are left unanswered in this story and I’m dying to find out the answers. HOUSE ON THE BLUFF, GATEKEEPER’S REALM and ADAM’S POINT are all available now.

SNIPPET:
The HOUSE ON THE BLUFF has been converted into an Inn and the ghostly spirits who inhabit the house seem to have taken offense at the guests presence amongst them. Are any of them safe from the ghostly wrath? What will happen when the guests start mysteriously disappearing?

Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from the book History Lesson for Girls
by Aurelie Sheehan
Published by Penguin; June 2007;$14.00US/$17.50CAN; 978-0-14-311190-0
Copyright © 2006 Aurelie Sheehan

Chapter One

One Day I saw them, our dream horses, and on that day I pulled over to the side of the road and cried. There they were, Appaloosas and roans and bays, and I thought I saw, squinting into the last bit of sunlight, a gray. All the horses moved together, a makeshift herd — maybe they’d heard my car, or maybe it was a chill, the first winter breeze, almost imperceptible on a summer day. So many years later and now here they were in front of me. The horses trembled, shifted, and then became calm and separated out again, twelve or twenty of them, more than enough for the Alison and Kate Horse Training Company.

She saved me. That’s the first thing you should know about Kate. It was the year we moved to Weston, the year my parents went haywire, the year my back started curving out of control as if it were the life of the party. She was five feet seven and had long brown hair bleached by the sun, and her father was an Egyptian emperor. Was he for real? Real enough for a small suburban dynasty. Real enough to pass on a legacy.

I think of Kate all the time. I think of her like I’ve got this little silver Egyptian cat in my pocket, a little silver talisman that won’t go away. I think of her, and then I think of him, too, Tut Hamilton, sham shaman in suburbia. I can’t forget him, any more than I can forget her.

The thing is, she saved me that year, and then it was my turn. That’s what friendship is. That’s how to make history.

I was thirteen when my parents and I moved to the fancy town of Weston from maligned and honorable Norwalk, two towns over. We were ready for anything, ready for the good things to start happening, and the first thing that went wrong was the blue room.

Mom wanted her studio to be blue, despite the fact that most painters prefer a room absent of color, a blank wall, a clean palette. She’d had a vision, you see, a dream of a blue room.

My father offered to paint the room for her, but she would choose the color, of course. She and I went to the paint store together.

“These men — they’re painting the world, creating color wheels, color contrasts, color inspirations — without any real conception, no awareness at all, of what they’re doing. They could be artists — but no, no — instead of using these glorious choices — all the glory, all the opportunity, Alison — they just sit around drinking coffee out of a thermos and painting houses tan, tan, and tan again. How dreary . . . ”

She continued talking as we got out of our Corolla (it also happened to be tan) and walked the short distance from the parking lot to the shopping center. I did hope she’d stop, or at least lower her voice, before we got to the store. She had a way of causing a commotion, despite her size. She was a tiny, fragile person, swathed in scarves and perfumes and charms.

Men of uncertain age and weight looked our way as we came in: Scheherazade and the too tall, too bony, too elbowy stalk, in a back brace, beside her.

My mother breezed by their troubling, huntery expressions, and we settled in before the paint chips. I’d just turned thirteen, my back was curved, and my parents were curved, too — bohemians in Connecticut, the Land of Plenty. Either all the colors looked good to me or none of them did. Somehow it seemed that this, like everything else, could go either way.

Mom, however, was confident. She hummed with satisfaction, picking out various small, hopeful cards from the rack, cocking her head, pursing her lips — rejecting one, then the other, until she came to her blue.
(more…)

The following is an excerpt from the book The Last Summer (of You & Me)
by Ann Brashares
Published by Riverhead Books; June 2007;$24.95US/$31.00CAN; 978-1-59448-917-4
Copyright © 2007 Ann Brashares

One

Waiting

Alice waited for Paul on the ferry dock. He’d left a crackly message on the answering machine saying he’d be coming in on the afternoon boat. That was like him. He couldn’t say the 1:20 or the 3:55. She’d spent too long staring at the ferry schedule, trying to divine his meaning.

With some amount of self-hatred, Alice had first walked out onto the dock for the 1:20, knowing he wouldn’t be on it. She’d looked only vaguely at the faces as they emerged from the boat, assuring herself she wasn’t expecting anything. She’d sat with her bare feet on the bench at the periphery, her book resting on her knees so she wouldn’t have to interact with anyone. I know you’re not going to be on it, so don’t think I think you are, she’d told the Paul who lived in her mind. Even there, under her presumed control, he was teasing and unpredictable.

For the 3:55, she put Vaseline on her lips and brushed her hair. The boat after that wasn’t until 6:10, and though Paul could miss the so-called afternoon ferry, he couldn’t call 6:10 the afternoon.

How often she did attempt to process his thoughts in her mind. She took his opinions too seriously, remembered them long after she suspected he’d forgotten them.

It was one thing, trying to think his thoughts when he was close by, his words offering clues, corrections, and confirmations by the hour. But three years of silence made for complex interpolations. It made it harder, and in another way it made it easier. She was freer with his thoughts. She made them her own, thought them to her liking.

He had missed two summers. She couldn’t imagine how he could do that. Without him, they had been shadow seasons. Feelings were felt thinly, there and then gone. Memories were not made. There was nothing new in sitting on this dock, on this or that wooden bench, watching for his boat to come. In some ways, she was always waiting for him.

She couldn’t picture his face when he was gone. Every summer he came back wearing his same face that she could not remember.

Absently, she saw the people on the dock who came, went, and waited. She waved to people she knew, mostly her parents’ friends. She felt the wind blow the pounding sun off her shoulders. She slowly dug her thumbnail along a plank of the seat, provoking a splinter but caking up mold and disintegration instead.

When it came to waiting, Riley always had something else to do. Paul was Riley’s best friend. Alice knew Riley missed him, too, but she said she didn’t like waiting. Alice didn’t like it. Nobody did.

But Alice was a younger sister. She didn’t have the idea of not doing things because you didn’t like them.

She watched for the ferry, the way it started out as a little white triangle across the bay. when it wasn’t there, she could hardly imagine it. It was never coming. And then it appeared. It took shape quickly. It was always coming.

She stood. She couldn’t help it. She left her book on the bench with its paper cover fluttering open in the wind. Would this be him? Was he on there?

(more…)

Chapter One

It has been years since anyone has asked Clara if she’s Ruth Dunne’s daughter—you know, the girl in those pictures. But it has also been years—fourteen, precisely—since Clara has set foot in New York. The Upper West Side is a foreign country. The butcher, the shoe repair guy, even the Korean grocer have been replaced by multilevel gyms with juice bars, restaurants with one-syllable French names. Aix, Ouest. The deli where Clara and Robin used to stop on Saturday mornings—that deli is now some sort of boutique. The mannequin in the window is wearing blue jeans and a top no bigger than a cocktail napkin.

This is not the neighborhood of her childhood, though she can still see bits and pieces if she looks hard enough. There’s the door to what was once Shakespeare & Co. She spent hours in that bookstore, hiding in the philosophy section, until one summer they gave her a job as a cashier. She lasted three days. Every other person, whether they were buying Wittgenstein or Updike, seemed to stare at her, as if trying to figure out why she looked familiar. So she quit.

Shakespeare & Co. is now an Essentials Plus. The window displays shampoos, conditioners, a dozen varieties of magnifying mirrors. A small child bundled up in winter gear is riding a mechanical dinosaur next to the entrance, slowly moving up and down to a tinny version of the Flintstones theme song.

Since the taxi dropped her off at the corner of Broadway and 79th Street, she has counted five wireless cellular stores, three manicure parlors, four real estate brokers. So this is now the Upper West Side: a place where people in cute outfits, their bellies full of steak-frites, talk on brand-new cell phones while getting their nails done on their way to look at new apartments.

It is as if a brightly colored transparency has been placed over the neighborhood of Clara’s memory, which had been the color of a sparrow: tan, brown, gray as smudged newsprint. Now, everything seems large and neon. Even the little old Jewish men who used to sit on the benches in the center islands in the middle of Broadway, traffic whizzing around them in both directions—even they seem to be a thing of the past.

She crosses Broadway quickly, the DON’T WALK sign already flashing. Outside the old Shakespeare & Co., a man has set up a tray table piled with books. A large cardboard sign announces PHILIP ROTH—SIGNED COPIES!!! Above the sign, a poster-sized photograph of Roth himself peers disapprovingly over the shoppers, the mothers pushing strollers, the teenagers checking their reflections in the windows of Essentials Plus.

She has brought nothing with her. No change of clothes, no clean underwear, not even a toothbrush. She’s not staying, no way in hell. That’s what she told herself the whole flight down from Bangor. Ridiculous, of course. She’s going to have to stay at least overnight. Broadway is already cast in a wintry shadow, the sun low in the sky, setting across the Hudson River. Her body—the same body that spent her whole childhood in this place—knows the time by the way the light falls over the avenue. She doesn’t need to look at her watch. It’s four o’clock. That much—the way the sun rises and sets—has not changed.

She’s been circling for an hour. Killing time. Down Columbus, across brownstone-lined side streets, over to West End Avenue with its stately gray buildings, heavy brass doors, uniformed doormen just inside.

A man in an overcoat hurries by her. He glances at her as he passes, holding her gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Why does he bother? She looks like a hundred other women on the Upper West Side: pale, dark-haired, lanky. A thirtyish blur. She could be pretty if she tried, but she has long since stopped trying. Clara stares back at the man. Stop looking at me. This, too, she has forgotten about the city: the brazen way that people size each other up, constantly weighing, judging, comparing. So very different from the Yankee containment of Maine, where everybody just minds their own business.

The phone call came at about eleven o’clock, a few nights ago. No one ever called that late; it was as if the ring itself had a slightly shriller tone to it. (Of course, this could be what her memory is supplying to the moment now—now that she is here.) Everybody was asleep. Jonathan, Sam, Zorba, the puppy, in his crate downstairs in the kitchen.

Jonathan groped for the phone.

“Hello?”

A long pause—too long—and then he reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. It was freezing in their bedroom, the bed piled with four blankets. One of the windowsills was rotting, but to fix it meant ripping the whole thing out, which meant real construction, which cost money, which they didn’t have.

Jonathan handed her the phone.

“Who is it?” she mouthed, hand over the receiver.

He shook his head.

“Hello?” She cleared her throat, hoarse from sleep. “Hello?”

“Clara?”

With a single word—her own name—her head tightened. Robin almost never called her, and certainly not at this hour. They talked exactly once a year, on the anniversary of their father’s death. Clara sank deeper beneath the pile of blankets, the way an animal might try to camouflage itself, sensing danger. Her mind raced through the possibilities. Something had happened, something terrible. Robin would not be calling with good news. And there was only one person, really, whom they shared.

“What’s wrong?” Clara’s voice was a squeak. A pathetic little mouse.

“I’m going to tell you something—and I want you to promise me you won’t hang up.”

Clara was silent. The mirror over the dresser facing the bed was hanging askew, and she could see herself and Jonathan, their rumpled late-night selves. Through the receiver, on Robin’s end, she heard office sounds. The muted ring of corporate telephones, even at this hour.

“Don’t hang up. Promise?”

How like Robin to want to seal the deal, to control the situation, before Clara even knows what the situation is.

“Okay.”

“Say ‘promise.’ ”

Clara squeezed her hands into fists.

“Christ! I promise.”

“Ruth is . . . she’s sick. She’s—oh, shit, Clara. It’s bad. She’s very sick.”

“What do you mean?” Clara responded. The words didn’t make sense. She was stupid with shock.

“Listen. I’m just calling to say that you need to come home,” Robin said.

There it was. Fourteen years—and there it was. Home. She was home, goddammit.

“I’ve made myself insane, going around and around in circles.” Robin paused. “My therapist finally said it wasn’t up to me—that you had a right to know.”

“How long has this been going on?” Clara managed to ask.

“Awhile,” Robin said. She sounded tired. Three kids, partner in a midtown law firm; of course she was tired. Clara couldn’t imagine her sister’s life.

Clara climbed out of bed and walked over to the window. She was suddenly suffocatingly hot in the freezing room. The lights from the harbor beckoned in the distance.

“Look, the truth is—I can’t deal with this by myself,” Robin said. Never, in Clara’s memory, had Robin ever admitted such a thing. She was the queen of competence.

“I have to think about it,” Clara said. Her sister was silent on the other end of the phone. Clara tried to picture her, but the image wasn’t clear: round brown eyes, a tense mouth. “Okay, Robin? This is— I never thought I would ever even consider—”

“I know,” said Robin. “But please.”

After she hung up the phone, Clara climbed back into bed and twined her legs around Jonathan’s, her hands on his belly. She closed her eyes tight and burrowed her face into the crease of his neck. He was asking her something—What are you going to do?—but his voice sounded muffled, as if suddenly there were something, something thick and cottony, separating her from her real life. She breathed Jonathan in, fighting the avalanche of thoughts.

Dani Shapiro’s most recent book’s include Black & White (Knopf, 2007), Family History (Knopf, 2003) and the best-selling memoir Slow Motion. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta,Tin House, Elle, Bookforum, Oprah, Ploughshares, among others, and have been broadcast on National Public Radio. Her books have been translated into seven languages.

She is a visiting writer at Wesleyan University and a contributing editor at Travel & Leisure.She lives with her husband and young son in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Visit her website at http://www.danishapiro.com/