Brooks Novel Quotes

It's better to die in pursuit of your dreams than to live a life without hope.

My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly. I used to wonder if it was so because the memory of Heaven still lived within them, so that in leaving here they do not fear death as we do, who no longer know with certainty where it is our spirits go. This, I thought, must be the kindness that God does for them and for us, since He gives so many infants such a little while to bide with us.

Well," he said softly, "in this life you're often born one thing and die another. You don't have to accept that what you're given when you come in is all you'll have when you leave.

It seems strange to want to find yourself. Wouldn’t you want to find somebody else? Aren’t you the one thing you can be sure of?

Sweetheart, I have no intention of denying you a thing.

The simplest and the most incredible thing in the world had come true again: two people speaking to each other, each for himself; and sounds, called words, shaped the same images and feelings in that palpitating mass behind the skull, and out of meaningless vibrations of the vocal chords and their unexplainable reactions in the viscous gray convolutions, skies suddenly grew again in which were mirrored clouds, brooks, past times, growth and decay and hard-won wisdom.

The start date and the end date are always the important bits on the gravestones, written in big letters. The dash in between is always so small you can barely see it. Surely the dash should be big and bright and amazing, or not, depending on how you had lived.

I hope what I’ve learned helps you find your way. Most of all, I hope you’ve learned that in this world of mines and crafting, the most important thing you can craft is you.

exist in this h… I couldn’t finish the word, even in my own head. It was a rude word, especially among those of my people who believed a place like this existed as punishment after death.

Obi-Wan's young face clouded. "Some secrets are best left concealed, Master." He shook his head. "Besides, why must you always be the one to do the uncovering? You know how the Council feels about these... detours. Perhaps, just once, the uncovering should be left to someone else." Qui-Gon looked suddenly sad. "No, Obi-Wan. Secrets must be exposed when found. Detours must be taken when encountered. And if you are the one who stands at the crossroads or the place of concealment, you must never leave it to another to act in your place.

One does not have to be a priest to be a man!

Podemos estar numa sala cheia de gente e ainda assim sentirmo-nos sozinhos.

Its gold boots are, in fact, glowing.” “Glowing with what?” “Can’t say. Some sort of magic, I guess.

You may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?

Worry rose up on a bubble of realization.

the other?” I tried using the new whatchamacallit

very terrifying strip of double netherrack that ran from our speck to the edge of the main plain.

That’s a Z,” I corrected, making sure to pronounce it “zee.” “I’m afraid that’s a zed,” she counter-corrected,

It didn’t matter that she didn’t live here, that a relationship was out of the question. It was probably because a relationship wouldn’t happen that he could let himself get this close. He wrapped his arms tighter around her as though this were all that existed in the world. Just the two of them, the mountain, the clean winter air. The taste of her tongue on his lips.

Conventional wisdom holds that Arthur Conan Doyle invented the detective story but in fact Green’s first book featuring detective Ebenezer Gryce – in which Miss Butterworth does not appear – The Leavenworth Case came out in 1878, almost a decade before Sherlock Holmes made his debut in A Study in Scarlet. This is why Green is often referred to as The Mother of the Detective Novel.

She couldn’t stop kissing him. Literally could not. There could be an earthquake, a fire, an explosion—who would notice? The whole world could come crashing down and it wouldn’t be enough for her to pull away.

I focus on representing life as close to reality as I can. Sometimes, (ok ok most of the time) it isn’t the most glorifying images of humanity. However, it points to our need for a Savior more than anything else I could write.

This was no coincidence. The best short stories and the most successful jokes have a lot in common. Each form relies on suggestion and economy. Characters have to be drawn in a few deft strokes. There's generally a setup, a reveal, a reversal, and a release. The structure is delicate. If one element fails, the edifice crumbles. In a novel you might get away with a loose line or two, a saggy paragraph, even a limp chapter. But in the joke and in the short story, the beginning and end are precisely anchored tent poles, and what lies between must pull so taut it twangs.

Because if one starts from the premise that a stage is a stage -not a convenient place for the unfolding of a staged novel or a staged poem or a staged lecture or a staged story- then the word that is spoken on this stage exists, or fails to exist, only in relation to the tensions it creates on that stage within the given stage circumstances.

Geraldine Brooks is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March and the international bestsellers The Secret Chord, Caleb’s Crossing, People of the Book, and Year of Wonders. She has also written the acclaimed nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Born and raised in Australia, Brooks lives in Massachusetts.

An author who adds a prologue to his novel is kidding himself if he thinks the reader won’t recognize it for what it is: backstory.

Fewer people today see artists as oracles and novels as a form of revelation.

Where do you go if you’re good and bad? What? I don’t know. IKEA?

You can't stop change any more than you can stop the suns from setting.

She was beautifully broken, and he could tell it was her faith that made her whole. It was her faith that made the brokenness beautiful.

They also wouldn’t let me climb the waist-thick trunk up to the square bunches of small,

A quick and dirty whatever-it-was in the stolen minutes in the middle of the day was one thing. The quiet crackle of the fire, smell of warm bread, the home she knew was so important to him—this was something else altogether.

He was so jealous of that boy yesterday, the one with the chest like Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur. He wanted everything he had, that body, that girl, that car, that freedom, that way of thinking. That hair, that bloody hair. What he would give to have hair that moved so freely in the wind. But shouldn’t that boy be jealous of Karl? Shouldn’t he wonder what Karl had seen and done? Shouldn’t he look at Karl and think, If only I get to lead a life like yours?

Today’s young adult readers, having grown up using the Internet and playing high-speed computer games, will skip those paragraphs and pages of dense prose, flipping ahead to find where the story action starts again—or skip the whole novel.

The large strings hummed like rain, The small strings whispered like a secret, Hummed, whispered—and then were intermingled Like a pouring of large and small pearls into a plate of jade. We heard an oriole, liquid, hidden among flowers. We heard a brook bitterly sob along a bank of sand. . . . By the checking of its cold touch, the very string seemed broken As though it could not pass; and the notes, dying away Into a depth of sorrow and concealment of lament, Told even more in silence than they had told in sound. . . . A silver vase abruptly broke with a gush of water, And out leapt armored horses and weapons that clashed and smote— And before she laid her pick down, she ended with one stroke, And all four strings made one sound, as of rending silk.

What if everything about me is totally made up? What if I’m actually…I don’t know. A wanted fugitive in the States.” “Julia.” He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “Nobody makes up being a high school math teacher.” “That’s why it’s the perfect disguise!” He shook his head. “Nobody.

You don’t get it just like you don’t get yourself. Sometimes the simple beauty of a woman is more powerful than anything. It doesn’t need to be a massive painting, it doesn’t need to be filled with a lot of things going on in the canvas space, and it doesn’t need a lot of fancy art techniques. It’s just her. Her beauty. Her in her raw form with those intangible attributes that drove men crazy. Those intangible qualities that could topple kings. Those made Leonardo paint her. Those are still bringing people here to look at her and ponder over. It’s real love. An unfiltered and non-romanticized version. It’s real because it doesn’t need to be anything more. Just like you don’t need to be anything more. You’ve got those intangible qualities to bring millions of people to visit a museum to see you every year. You in your raw form have that power. People don’t forget someone like that. They’re etched into your bones and molded into your core.

To possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others: this I think captures our love of and our need for novels, for fictional accounts of the world that let us experience it beyond the limits of our own pair of eyes, to imagine it, provisionally, as it is seen and felt by someone else, however different that person may be.

At places where protruding rocks blocked its flow, the river hissed, eddying in ripples and foams, and then wrested its way forward with renewed rigor. For a while Bumbutai stood still, enchanted by the struggling brook, her spirits lifted and were imbued with a refreshing sense of hope. Mother Earth's healing hand could always do wonders to a world-wearied soul.

Clarissa Harlowe is a larger form than all the heroines of the Protestant will descended from her: Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, Anne Elliot; Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne; George Eliot’s Dorothea Brooke; Thomas Hardy’s Sue Bridehead; Henry James’s Isabel Archer, Milly Theale; D. H. Lawrence’s Ursula Brangwen; E. M. Forster’s Margaret Schlegel; and Virginia Woolf’s Lily Briscoe.

I’ll handle it,” I boasted, reaching for my sword. She might dismiss my philosophical revelations, but she couldn’t dispute my warrior skills. “If you wish,” said Summer, “even though it might be safer with a bow.” “You’re worried about safety?” I snorted. “With that bopping bag o’ jelly?” “Oh, by all means,” Summer giggled, “save the day.” I hesitated. “What’s the matter?” “No, nothing”—Summer stifled another giggle—“unless you’d like a little help?” “Puh-lease,” I sneered. “I got this.

Described by Harold Bloom as "the beginning of the end of the traditional novel of social morality" (xii), George Eliot's Middlemarch is nonetheless replete with a kind of authorial intervention that modern readers might find tiresome. Readers today are accustomed to the contemporary fictional maxim of "show, don't tell" but Eliot had different aesthetic ideas, for she always tells us right away who we are dealing with. At the beginning of Middlemarch, the character of one of its protagonists, Dorothea Brooke, is laid out. Eliot writes,

The house fostered an easier and more candid exchange of ideas and opinions, encouraged by the simple fact that everyone had left their offices behind and by a wealth of novel opportunities for conversation—climbs up Beacon and Coombe Hills, walks in the rose garden, rounds of croquet, and hands of bezique, further leavened by free-flowing champagne, whiskey, and brandy. The talk typically ranged well past midnight. At Chequers, visitors knew they could speak more freely than in London, and with absolute confidentiality. After one weekend, Churchill’s new commander in chief of Home Forces, Alan Brooke, wrote to thank him for periodically inviting him to Chequers, and “giving me an opportunity of discussing the problems of the defense of this country with you, and of putting some of my difficulties before you. These informal talks are of the very greatest help to me, & I do hope you realize how grateful I am to you for your kindness.” Churchill, too, felt more at ease at Chequers, and understood that here he could behave as he wished, secure in the knowledge that whatever happened within would be kept secret (possibly a misplaced trust, given the memoirs and diaries that emerged after the war, like desert flowers after a first rain). This was, he said, a “cercle sacré.” A sacred circle. General Brooke recalled one night when Churchill, at two-fifteen A.M., suggested that everyone present retire to the great hall for sandwiches, which Brooke, exhausted, hoped was a signal that soon the night would end and he could get to bed. “But, no!” he wrote. What followed was one of those moments often to occur at Chequers that would remain lodged in visitors’ minds forever after. “He had the gramophone turned on,” wrote Brooke, “and, in the many-colored dressing-gown, with a sandwich in one hand and water-cress in the other, he trotted round and round the hall, giving occasional little skips to the tune of the gramophone.” At intervals as he rounded the room he would stop “to release some priceless quotation or thought.” During one such pause, Churchill likened a man’s life to a walk down a passage lined with closed windows. “As you reach each window, an unknown hand opens it and the light it lets in only increases by contrast the darkness of the end of the passage.” He danced on. —

This was no coincidence. The best short stories and the most successful jokes have a lot in common. Each form relies on suggestion and economy. Characters have to be drawn in a few deft strokes. There's generally a setup, a reveal, a reversal, and a release. The structure is delicate. If one element fails, the edifice crumbles. In a novel you might get away with a loose line or two, a saggy paragraph, even a limp chapter. But in the joke and in the short story, the beginning and end are precisely anchored tent poles, and what lies between must pull so taut it twangs. I'm not sure if there is any pattern to these selections. I did not spend a lot of time with those that seemed afraid to tell stories, that handled plot as if it were a hair in the soup, unwelcome and embarrassing. I also tended not to revisit stories that seemed bleak without having earned it, where the emotional notes were false, or where the writing was tricked out or primped up with fashionable devices stressing form over content. I do know that the easiest and the first choices were the stories to which I had a physical response. I read Jennifer Egan's "Out of Body" clenched from head to toe by tension as her suicidal, drug-addled protagonist moves through the Manhattan night toward an unforgivable betrayal. I shed tears over two stories of childhood shadowed by unbearable memory: "The Hare's Mask," by Mark Slouka, with its piercing ending, and Claire Keegan's Irishinflected tale of neglect and rescue, "Foster." Elizabeth McCracken's "Property" also moved me, with its sudden perception shift along the wavering sightlines of loss and grief. Nathan Englander's "Free Fruit for Young Widows" opened with a gasp-inducing act of unexpected violence and evolved into an ethical Rubik's cube. A couple of stories made me laugh: Tom Bissell's "A Bridge Under Water," even as it foreshadows the dissolution of a marriage and probes what religion does for us, and to us; and Richard Powers's "To the Measures Fall," a deftly comic meditation on the uses of literature in the course of a life, and a lifetime. Some stories didn't call forth such a strong immediate response but had instead a lingering resonance. Of these, many dealt with love and its costs, leaving behind indelible images. In Megan Mayhew Bergman's "Housewifely Arts," a bereaved daughter drives miles to visit her dead mother's parrot because she yearns to hear the bird mimic her mother's voice. In Allegra Goodman's "La Vita Nuova," a jilted fiancée lets her art class paint all over her wedding dress. In Ehud Havazelet's spare and tender story, "Gurov in Manhattan," an ailing man and his aging dog must confront life's necessary losses. A complicated, only partly welcome romance blossoms between a Korean woman and her demented

But the thing that made it most interesting is what it had to say about books and religion. I love how Brooks shows that every great religion shares a love of books, of reading, of knowledge. The individual books may be different, but reverence for books is what we all have in common. Books are what bring all the different people in the novel together, Muslims and Jews and Christians. That’s why everyone in the book goes to such lengths to save this one book—one book stands for all books. When I think back on all the refugee camps I visited, all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter—they wanted books for their children.

Cecily.” His gaze wandered from her unbound hair to her disheveled gown, to her fingers still laced with Luke’s. “I . . . I was just about to go searching for you.” “There you are!” Portia called from behind him. “Come in, come in.” She lay swaddled in blankets on the divan, with her bandaged leg propped on a nearby ottoman. Brooke sat beside her, balancing a teacup in either hand. Cecily turned to Denny. “I’m sorry to have worried you, but . . .” She squeezed Luke’s hand for courage. “You see, Luke and I—” “I understand,” he replied. The serious expression on his face told her he did understand, completely. To his credit, he took it well. He turned to Luke. “When will you be married?” “Married?” Portia exclaimed. Cecily sighed. Just like Denny, to take his responsibilities as her third cousin twice removed— and only male relation in the vicinity— so seriously. But did he have to force the issue now? Certainly, she hoped that she and Luke might one day— “As soon as possible.” Luke’s arm slid around her waist. Cecily’s gaze snapped up to his. Are you certain? she asked him silently. He answered her with a quick kiss. “Well, then. When can we be married?” Brooke directed his question to Portia. “Married!” Blushing furiously, Portia made a dismissive gesture with both hands. “Why, I’m only just learning to enjoy being a widow. I don’t want to be married. I want to write scandalous novels and take dozens of lovers.” Brooke raised an eyebrow. “Can that be negotiated to lover, singular?” “That,” she said, giving him a coy smile, “would depend on your skill at negotiation.” “What an evening you’ve had, Portia,” Cecily said. “A brush with death, a proposal of marriage, an indecent proposition . . . Surely you have sufficient inspiration for your gothic novel?” “Too much inspiration!” Portia wailed, gesturing toward her bandaged foot. “I am done with gothics completely. No, I shall take a cue from my insipid wallpaper and write a bawdy little tale about a wanton dairymaid and her many lovers.” “Lover, singular.” Brooke flopped on the divan and settled her feet in his lap. “Oh,” she sighed, as he massaged her uninjured foot. “Oh, very well.” Luke tugged on Cecily’s hand, drawing her toward the doorway. “Let’s make our escape.” As they left, she heard Denny say in his usual jocular tone, “Do me a favor, Portia? Model your hero after me. Just once, I should like to get the girl.

When she at last pressed her mouth to his, it felt like coming home. He tasted of fire and smoke and earth, and fresh bread and soap and something so clean, so pure, it was like spring water to her lips.

History is an ongoing novel, but if we don't learn from what we read and see we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of history.

Both Bradbury and Cantrill behaved in an insulting manner," Brookes continued. "Shouldn't they have some comeuppance?" "I am turning Lord Bradbury into the villain in my next novel," Harriet interrupted in a helpful tone. "With a different name, of course." "And what good will that do?" Brooke's eyes widened in astonishment. "Literary revenge is the best sort of reprisal," Harriet answered placidly.

there was so much room in her, for him, and for everybody else. She was always putting down her guns and raising her arms in the air, inviting a vulnerability that most couldn’t.

People who seek to serve the community end up falsifying their work, she wrote, whether the work is writing a novel or baking bread, because they are not single-mindedly focused on the task at hand. But if you serve the work—if you perform each task to its utmost perfection—then you will experience the deep satisfaction of craftsmanship and you will end up serving the community more richly than you could have consciously planned. And one sees this in people with a vocation—a certain rapt expression, a hungry desire to perform a dance or run an organization to its utmost perfection.

We need novels in order to enter the minds of others. But that project can run up against the opacities of other minds and spirits. When a man tells us of a woman’s desiring, we should beware of blindness.

I’ve got some tonic brooks!” Steve said, holding up the comics to show Dave. “Yes, very nice,” said Dave, and he gently pushed Steve through the blue portal.

Just because someone doesn’t look like you doesn’t automatically make them an enemy.

As the iron door swung open, I followed Summer into a plain, gray stone room that held the strangest object I’d ever seen by far. A giant frame, four by four of nothing but obsidian blocks. But instead of a picture, this frame encased a curtain of energy. At least, that’s the best way I can describe it. Swirling, purplish pink eddies attracted glowing violet flakes that seemed to appear out of nowhere. And the sound: a high, echoing rasp. Was it breathing? Was it alive?

Mary Shelley, who at only nineteen years of age conceived her immortal Gothic novel, Frankenstein. Needless to say, Gene Wilder and I will always be in her debt.

The nonliteral uses of literally are quite traditional, of all things. Literally had gone past meaning “by the letter” in any sense as early as the eighteenth century, when, for example, Francis Brooke wrote The History of Emily Montague (1769), which contains this sentence: “He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.” One cannot feed among anything “by the letter.” Or, in 1806, when the philosopher David Hume wrote, “He had the singular fate of dying literally of hunger,” in his signature history of England, despite the fact that there are no letters via which to starve. Yet this was an authoritative and highly popular volume, more widely read at the time than Hume’s philosophical treatises, equivalent to modern histories by Simon Schama and Peter Ackroyd. The purely figurative usage is hardly novel, either: the sentence I literally coined money was written by Fanny Kemble in 1863. Kemble, a British stage actress, hardly considered herself a slangy sort of person.

Dead end!” I shouted at the netherrack wall as Summer said something rude I will not copy in these pages!

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner; Some Horses: Essays by Thomas McGuane; Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison; Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry; The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy; The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana by Rick Bass; The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich; She Had Some Horses: Poems by Joy Harjo; The Meadow by James Galvin; The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig; The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick; The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World’s First Artists by Gregory Curtis; From the Heart of the Crow Country: The Crow Indians’ Own Stories by Joseph Medicine Crow; The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation by Mark

A love beyond boundaries of space and of time. A love with a purpose. A love that will bring great change.

She knew that, in her family, Lydia was always the first to gallop off to do something, and rarely, if ever, did any of her sisters run along with her. Even Kitty would follow in a more ladylike fashion. It was just how Lydia was. Exuberance poured from her in streams or, more precisely, like loud, babbling brooks that hopped here and there.

following

diamonds,

We’ve gotta take care of our environment so it can take care of us.

Together they read plays and poems by William Shakespeare and Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, and Bianca translated some of Ovid's poetry for her as well as parts of Homer's great works. They relished the poems of Andrew Marvell, John Dryden and John Milton. They read excerpts from the King James Bible, as well as passages from books of history, gardening, medicine and more. The closet wasn't much, but it was Rosamund's, especially now it bore no resemblance to its former owner. It was her cave in which, like Ali Baba, she kept her trove of treasured ideas and growing knowledge, but could open and close it at will with the key hanging around her neck. It was in this room that Rosamund finally started to feel a sense of belonging.

Okay, now, fair warning: If you’re super-sensitive to words, skip this paragraph. But I’m telling you, this smell, this growing stink drifting down toward me, could only be described as that word that’s created when F meets Art.

Moo,” called an approaching cow, its voice heavy with criticism.

What else can go wrong,” I grumbled, just as it began to rain.

Don’t say it,” I said, floundering ashore and into the judgmental gaze of Moo.

He was an authentic man in a sea of shallow boys.

There was a stare down between us that seemed to last for a small infinity. Like a lifetime of understanding was being lived in it.

I stood in front of the black dress, staring it down. I felt like it had taken an aggressive stance against me instead of merely hanging limply from the hanger. It was like a scene from a film noir. One of us wasn’t going to make it out alive.

When he touched my hand for the first time, it was like a piece of my heart went to him. And I'm afraid if we keep going, he’s going to collect all the pieces.

He had to know, on some level, that this trip was either a celebration of improvement in health, or a last hurrah. And he still had yet to find out which one it was.

Are you seriously going to kiss her for the first time on an airplane? That has to be the most unromantic thing I’ve ever heard. Even Humphrey knew to kiss Bergman outside the plane. You need to follow the classics like Casablanca.

I knew he was too in tune with the rhythm of my heart to be fooled.

Apparently, it wasn't every day there was such a spectacle in the Louvre. Funny, I thought the Mona Lisa would have brought it out in them. It sure did in me.

Absolutely perfect, Mona Lisa,” he said and pulled me by my waist back inside.

He would have gladly given her anything she named, but he was completely certain all she wanted was him.

He not only completed me, but he showed me how to complete myself.

It was like I was sick with a new disorder and the diagnosis was Colin.

SERENNA - "The scene before me resembles a vista from an E.M. Forster novel, a quintessentially English countryside. A meandering brook winds through the meadow catching glittering sunlight from above as it passes through the boughs of weeping willows. To my right, a tall oak tree stands solitary on a rise. I can see a rope swing hanging from one of its boughs

cold brook,

We pivot on relationships that endure, those that shape our lives, and those we're meant to build.

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place;

Panic drowns thought,” I told the zombie, “so it’s time to stop panicking and start figuring out how to survive.

into

So when I’m listening to someone tell their story, I’m also asking myself, What characters does this person have in his head? Is this a confident voice or a tired voice, a regretful voice or an anticipating voice? For some reason, I like novels where the narrator has an elegiac voice. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, and Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, the narrators have a world-weary tone. It’s like they’re looking back on glorious past events when dreams were fresh and the world seemed new and the disappointments of life had not yet settled in. That voice sounds to me like writing done in the minor key, and I find it tremendously moving. But I guess I wouldn’t like to be around people with that voice in real life. In real life I’d prefer to be around my friend Kate Bowler’s voice. As I mentioned, Kate got cancer a few years ago, when she was a young mother, and her voice is filled with vulnerability and invites vulnerability, but mostly it says: Life can suck, but we’re going to be funny about it. She has a voice that pulls you into friendship and inspires humor; in her voice, laughter is never very far away.

I bolted away, across the desert, with an ancient war cry from my world. “Meep! Meep!

She felt that, before she went back, she must slip along the pasture fence and explore a certain path which she saw entering the grove of spruce and maple further down. She did—and found that it led straight into Fairyland,—along the bank of a wide, lovely brook—a wild, dear, little path with lady-ferns beckoning and blowing along it, the shyest of elfin June-bells under the firs, and little whims of loveliness at every curve. She breathed in the tang of fir-balsam and saw the shimmer of gossamers high up in the boughs, and everywhere the frolic of elfin lights and shadows. Here and there the young maple branches interlaced as if to make a screen for dryad faces—Emily knew all about dryads, thanks to her father—and the great sheets of moss under the trees were meet for Titania’s couch. “This is one of the places where dreams grow,” said Emily happily.

Flck

This is the real world, Brooks, not a fucking romance novel.

Do you like to read?' Emerie's mouth curled upward. 'I live alone, up in the mountains. I have nothing to do with my spare time except work in my garden and read whatever books I order through the mail service. And in the winter, I don't even have the distraction of my gardening. So, yes, I like to read. I cannot survive without reading.' Nesta grunted her agreement. 'What manner of books?' Gwyn asked. 'Romantics,' Emerie said, adjusting her own hair, the thick black braid full of reds and browns in the sunlight. Nesta started. Emerie's eyes lit. 'You too? Which ones?' Nesta rattled off her top five, and Emerie grinned, so broadly it was like seeing another person. 'Have you read Sellyn Drake's novels?' Nesta shook her head. Emerie gasped, so dramatically that Cassian muttered something about sparing him from smut-obsessed females before heading further into the ring. 'You must read her books. You must. I'll bring the first one tomorrow. You'll stay up all night reading it, I swear.' 'Smut?' Gwyn asked, catching Cassian's muttered words. There was enough hesitation in her voice to make Nesta draw up straight. Nesta glanced at Emerie, realising the female didn't know about Gwyn- her history, or why the priestesses lived in the library. But Emerie asked. 'What do you read?' 'Adventure, sometimes mysteries. But mostly I read whatever Merrill, the priestess I work with, has written that day. Not as exciting as romance, not by a long shot. Emerie said casually. 'I can bring one of Drake's brooks for you, too- one of her milder ones. An introduction to the wonders of romance.' Emerie winked at Nesta. Nesta waited for Gwyn to refuse, but the priestess smiled. 'I'd like that.

So, all I really want to say is: live your best life. Live it every single day. Don’t make bucket lists you won’t stick to. Don’t feel you need to jump out of a plane or bungee jump into a canyon. If living your best life is simply going for a walk with your dog every day – do that. If living your best life is drinking white wine that you haven’t bothered to chill. Do that. Hug your family. When you’re finished telling your family how much they annoy you, be sure to tell them how much you love them, too. And every morning when you wake up, take a big, deep breath and be grateful for the air in your lungs. Don’t just be alive. Live.

CRACK

Backtothelibrarian—” “Don’thaveanyemeralds—” “Sellsomethinganythinggogogo!

The new Brooks novel is called People of the Book,

When will you be married?” “Married?” Portia exclaimed. Cecily sighed. Just like Denny, to take his responsibilities as her third cousin twice removed—and only male relation in the vicinity—so seriously. But did he have to force the issue now? Certainly, she hoped that she and Luke might one day— “As soon as possible.” Luke’s arm slid around her waist. Cecily’s gaze snapped up to his. Are you certain? she asked him silently. He answered her with a quick kiss. “Well, then. When can we be married?” Brooke directed his question to Portia. “Married!” Blushing furiously, Portia made a dismissive gesture with both hands. “Why, I’m only just learning to enjoy being a widow. I don’t want to be married. I want to write scandalous novels and take dozens of lovers.” Brooke raised an eyebrow. “Can that be negotiated to lover, singular?” “That,” she said, giving him a coy smile, “would depend on your skill at negotiation.” “What an evening you’ve had, Portia,” Cecily said. “A brush with death, a proposal of marriage, an indecent proposition . . . Surely you have sufficient inspiration for your gothic novel?” “Too much inspiration!” Portia wailed, gesturing toward her bandaged foot. “I am done with gothics completely. No, I shall take a cue from my insipid wallpaper and write a bawdy little tale about a wanton dairymaid and her many lovers.” “Lover, singular.” Brooke flopped on the divan and settled her feet in his lap. “Oh,” she sighed, as he massaged her uninjured foot. “Oh, very well.” Luke

A man-beast?” Portia asked, her eyes widening. “Oh, I do like the sound of this.” She put pencil to paper again. Brooke leaned over her shoulder. “Are you taking notes for your novel or adding to your list?” “That depends,” she said coolly, “on what manner of beast we’re discussing.” She looked to Denny. “Some sort of large, ferocious cat, I hope? All fangs and claws and fur?” “Once again I must disappoint you,” Denny replied. “No fangs, no claws. It’s a stag.” “Oh, prongs! Even better.” More scribbling. “What do they call this . . . this man-beast? Does it have a name?” “Actually,” said Denny, “most people in the region avoid speaking of the creature at all. It’s bad luck, they say, just to mention it. And a sighting of the beast . . . well, that’s an omen of death.” “Excellent. This is all so inspiring.” Portia’s pencil was down to a nub. “So is this a creature like a centaur, divided at the waist? Four hooves and two hands?” “No, no,” Cecily said. “He’s not half man, half beast in that way. He transforms, you see, at will. Sometimes he’s a man, and other times he’s an animal.” “Ah. Like a werewolf,” Portia said. Brooke laughed heartily. “For God’s sake, would you listen to yourselves? Curses. Omens. Prongs. You would honestly entertain this absurd notion? That Denny’s woods are overrun with a herd of vicious man-deer?” “Not a herd,” Denny said. “I’ve never heard tell of more than one.” “We don’t know that he’s vicious,” Cecily added. “He may be merely misunderstood.” “And we certainly can’t call him a man-deer. That won’t do at all.” Portia chewed her pencil thoughtfully. “A werestag. Isn’t that a marvelous title? The Curse of the Werestag.” Brooke turned to Luke. “Rescue me from this madness, Merritt. Tell me you retain some hold on your faculties of reason. What say you to the man-deer?” “Werestag,” Portia corrected. Luke circled the rim of his glass with one thumb. “A cursed, half-human creature, damned to an eternity of solitude in Denny’s back garden?” He shot Cecily a strange, fleeting glance. “I find the idea quite plausible.

Everyone in my family loves novels,” Poppy finally said, pushing the conversation back into line. “We gather in the parlor nearly every evening, and one of us reads aloud. Win is the best at it—she invents a different voice for each character.” “I’d like to hear you read,” Harry said. Poppy shook her head. “I’m not half as entertaining as Win. I put everyone to sleep.” “Yes,” Harry said. “You have the voice of a scholar’s daughter.” Before she could take offense, he added, “Soothing. Never grates. Soft . . .” He was extraordinarily tired, she realized. So much that even the effort to string words together was defeating him. “I should go,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “Finish your sandwiches first,” Poppy said authoritatively. He picked up a sandwich obediently. While he ate, Poppy paged through the book until she found what she wanted . . . a description of walking through the countryside, under skies filled with fleecy clouds, past almond trees in blossom and white campion nestled beside quiet brooks. She read in a measured tone, occasionally stealing a glance at Harry while he polished off the entire plate of sandwiches. And then he settled deeper into the corner, more relaxed than she had ever seen him. She read a few pages more, about walking past hedges and meadows, through a wood dressed with a counterpane of fallen leaves, while soft pale sunshine gave way to a quiet rain . . . And when she finally reached the end of the chapter, she looked at Harry once more. He was asleep. His chest rose and fell in an even rhythm, his long lashes fanned against his skin. One hand was palm down against his chest, while the other lay half open at his side, the strong fingers partially curled. “Never fails,” Poppy murmured with a private grin.