In the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft.
In the style of Griffin and Sabine.
In the woods of Northern Wisconsin . . .
A terrible darkness stirs.
Dr. Charles Marsh arrives at the Kriegmoor Psychiatric Institute in Bayfield Wisconsin, eager to take on his new duties as a means of distancing himself from a scandal that erupted at his previous post in Texas.
During Marsh’s first days at the Institute, he is assigned the case of Kari Hansen, a young girl teetering on the edge of madness, haunted by visions of shadows that only she can see.
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Newly divorced and feeling the pain of separation from his family, Hud Smith channels his regret into writing country-western songs, contemplating life on the lam with his 8-year-old daughter, and searching cryptic postcards for news of his teenage son, who has run off with The Daughters of God, an alternative Gospel-punk band of growing fame.
In this endearing misadventure that threatens to turn out right in spite of it all, Schaffert writes a thin line between tragedy and hilarity, turning wry humor and a keen sense of the paradoxical onto characters who deserve all the tender care he gives them.
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Bernard Schwartz has lost his wife, his career, and finally, thanks to the accidental combination of two classes of antidepressants, his consciousness. He emerges from a coma to find his son Chris, the perpetual smart-ass, and his daughter Cathy, a Jewish teen turned self-martyred Catholic, stumbling headlong toward trauma-induced maturity. The Sleeping Father is about the loss of innocence, the disorienting innocence of second childhood, the biochemical mechanics of sanity and love, the nature of language and meaning, and the spirituality of selfhood. But most of all it is about the Schwartzes, a typical American family making their way the best way they know how in a small town called Bellwether,
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As dementia overtakes Hannah Pearl, she slips backward in memory to her escape from France in 1940; boarding the ferry with her heavy bags; the whistle of bombs raining down on London; the family she left behind. Her daughter Miranda, distraught by Hannah’s fading lucidity and sudden switch to her childhood French, tries desperately to hold her in the present. Fiona, a new mother and the older of Hannah’s two granddaughters, ignores the ghosts of her grandmother’s past, while her sister, fiery Ida, seeks to delve into Hannah’s story, eventually returning to France to find the roots of her grandmother’s life—and her own.
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Sara Foster has left America for the adventure of lifetime— teaching English to the sons and daughters of statesmen in Hungary—but her idyllic adventure instead reveals a dark world of pain and redemption when she ends up teaching in a refugee camp. Sara discovers that one of her students is a celebrated composer and soon finds herself crossing the border to his war-torn homeland, determined to exonerate him for the death of his brother.
In a journey that takes her to Dubrovnik, a magnificent stone city on the Croatian Riviera, Sara contemplates her own identity, struggling to understand why the region’s ancient and extraordinary beauty belies a history of grief.
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Despite their disastrous first meeting, complete with a ruined birthday cake and insulting remarks, it was obvious to bystanders, even then, that Morgan, aged 89, and Dixie, 79, were fated for each other. The two begin to date and ultimately move in together—for economic reasons, they agree. But the business-only relationship changes and strengthens as the couple unite to combat illness, scandal, and a near-fatal accident.
The story is about finding love at any age, but also reveals how past insecurities, humiliations, and fears can haunt a person throughout his days. Dixie fears intimacy. Morgan has concealed important details about his divorce,
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