Jaws Book Quotes

A man touched me:  his hand... my thigh. I touched him too:  my fist... his jaw.

You seem to know a lot about that book.” “I love that fucking book,” he said, and my jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it.

Sometimes what we don't want is actually what we need.

Sought we the Scrivani word-work of Surthur Long-lost in ledger all hope forgotten. Yet fast-found for friendship fair the book-bringer Hot comes the huntress Fela, flushed with finding Breathless her breast her high blood rising To ripen the red-cheek rouge-bloom of beauty. “That sort of thing,” Simmon said absently, his eyes still scanning the pages in front of him. I saw Fela turn her head to look at Simmon, almost as if she were surprised to see him sitting there. No, it was almost as if up until that point, he’d just been occupying space around her, like a piece of furniture. But this time when she looked at him, she took all of him in. His sandy hair, the line of his jaw, the span of his shoulders beneath his shirt. This time when she looked, she actually saw him. Let me say this. It was worth the whole awful, irritating time spent searching the Archives just to watch that moment happen. It was worth blood and the fear of death to see her fall in love with him. Just a little. Just the first faint breath of love, so light she probably didn’t notice it herself. It wasn’t dramatic, like some bolt of lightning with a crack of thunder following. It was more like when flint strikes steel and the spark fades almost too fast for you to see. But still, you know it’s there, down where you can’t see, kindling.

What did she say?” asked Matthias. Nina coughed and took his arm, leading him away. “She said you’re a very nice fellow, and a credit to the Fjerdan race. Ooh, look, blini! I haven’t had proper blini in forever.” “That word she used: babink,” he said. “You’ve called me that before. What does it mean?” Nina directed her attention to a stack of paper-thin buttered pancakes. “It means sweetie pie.” “Nina—” “Barbarian.” “I was just asking, there’s no need to name-call.” “No, babink means barbarian.” Matthias’ gaze snapped back to the old woman, his glower returning to full force. Nina grabbed his arm. It was like trying to hold on to a boulder. “She wasn’t insulting you! I swear!” “Barbarian isn’t an insult?” he asked, voice rising. “No. Well, yes. But not in this context. She wanted to know if you’d like to play Princess and Barbarian.” “It’s a game?” “Not exactly.” “Then what is it?” Nina couldn’t believe she was actually going to attempt to explain this. As they continued up the street, she said, “In Ravka, there’s a popular series of stories about, um, a brave Fjerdan warrior—” “Really?” Matthias asked. “He’s the hero?” “In a manner of speaking. He kidnaps a Ravkan princess—” “That would never happen.” “In the story it does, and”—she cleared her throat—“they spend a long time getting to know each other. In his cave.” “He lives in a cave?” “It’s a very nice cave. Furs. Jeweled cups. Mead.” “Ah,” he said approvingly. “A treasure hoard like Ansgar the Mighty. They become allies, then?” Nina picked up a pair of embroidered gloves from another stand. “Do you like these? Maybe we could get Kaz to wear something with flowers. Liven up his look.” “How does the story end? Do they fight battles?” Nina tossed the gloves back on the pile in defeat. “They get to know each other intimately.” Matthias’ jaw dropped. “In the cave?” “You see, he’s very brooding, very manly,” Nina hurried on. “But he falls in love with the Ravkan princess and that allows her to civilize him—” “To civilize him?” “Yes, but that’s not until the third book.” “There are three?” “Matthias, do you need to sit down?” “This culture is disgusting. The idea that a Ravkan could civilize a Fjerdan—” “Calm down, Matthias.” “Perhaps I’ll write a story about insatiable Ravkans who like to get drunk and take their clothes off and make unseemly advances toward hapless Fjerdans.” “Now that sounds like a party.” Matthias shook his head, but she could see a smile tugging at his lips. She decided to push the advantage. “We could play,” she murmured, quietly enough so that no one around them could hear. “We most certainly could not.” “At one point he bathes her.” Matthias’ steps faltered. “Why would he—” “She’s tied up, so he has to.” “Be silent.” “Already giving orders. That’s very barbarian of you. Or we could mix it up. I’ll be the barbarian and you can be the princess. But you’ll have to do a lot more sighing and trembling and biting your lip.” “How about I bite your lip?” “Now you’re getting the hang of it, Helvar.

Bastards have pissed me off," Reed snarled, out of breath, as he backed into the open armory door. "They hit me in the face." Lang grabbed Reed's jaw, turned his face toward him. "It's just a scratch." It's just my fucking face," Reed sputtered. "It needs to look good on a book jacket when I write my memoirs someday.

Charlie threads his fingers through mine and lifts the back of my hand to his lips. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “I doubt I will ever like anyone else in the world as much as I like you.” I slip my arms around his neck and climb into his lap, kissing his temples, his jaw, his mouth. Love, I think, a tremor in my hands as they move into his hair, as he kisses me. The last-page ache. The deep breath in after you’ve set the book aside. When he walks me to the door sometime later, he takes my face in his hands and says, “You, Nora Stephens, will always be okay.

Please,” I gasped out. He just brushed his lips against my jaw, my neck, my mouth. “Tamlin,” I begged. He palmed my breast, his thumb flicking over my nipple. I cried out, and he buried himself in me with a mighty stroke. For a moment, I was nothing, no one. Then we were fused, two hearts beating as one, and I promised myself it always would be that way as he pulled out a few inches, the muscles of his back flexing beneath my hands, and then slammed back into me. Again and again. I broke and broke against him as he moved, as he murmured my name and told me he loved me. And when that lightning once more filled my veins, my head, when I gasped out his name, his own release found him. I gripped him through each shuddering wave, savoring the weight of him, the feel of his skin, his strength. For a while, only the rasp of our breathing filled the room. I frowned as he withdrew at last—but he didn’t go far. He stretched out on his side, head propped on a fist, and traced idle circles on my stomach, along my breasts.

There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things. A Confession was a book like that. In it, Tolstoy related a Russian fable about a man who, being chased by a monster, jumps into a well. As the man is falling down the well, however, he sees there's a dragon at the bottom, waiting to eat him. Right then, the man notices a branch sticking out of the wall, and he grabs on to it, and hangs. This keeps the man from falling into the dragon's jaws, or being eaten by the monster above, but it turns out there's another little problem. Two mice, one black and one white, are scurrying around and around the branch, nibbling it. It's only a matter of time before they will chew through the branch, causing the man to fall. As the man contemplates his inescapable fate, he notices something else: from the end of the branch he's holding, a few drops of honey are dripping. The man sticks out his tongue to lick them. This, Tolstoy says, is our human predicament: we're the man clutching the branch. Death awaits us. There is no escape. And so we distract ourselves by licking whatever drops of honey come within our reach.

Geez, woman, you're gonna dislocate my jaw." "Well, don't do that in public, you brute!" "Wow." Renfield adjusted his glasses. He was sitting across the table from them with a book. "I feel so privileged, being an audience to this-" "Shut up, Ren," the other two said simultaneously.

Consider ourselves fortunate." Maldynado's jaw slackened. "How so?" "Amaranthe's birthday is next week and, with our limited funds, I didn't think I'd be able to find her a gift." "So, you're getting her...dead bodies?" "Perfect, don't you think?" Books smiled. "Most women like jewelry and flowers." "Do you honestly believe she would prefer jewelry over a mystery to solve?" Maldynado jiggled the key fob thoughtfully, then nodded toward the bodies. "Can we say one is from me?

Look through people,” I tell her, my voice muffled by the helmet. “Smile without kindness. No small talk, no court talk. Act as if you have a million secrets, and you’re the only one important enough to know them all.” She nods, taking this all in stride. After all, Cal and I have both instructed her on how to pass as Maven. This is merely a reminder, a last glance at the book before the test. “I’m not a fool,” she replies coldly, and I almost punch her in the jaw. She is not Maven rings in my head, louder than a bell. “I think you’ve got it,” Kilorn says as he stands. He grabs my arm, pulling me slightly away. “Mare nearly killed you.

Footsteps approach the kitchen. Garrett wanders in, wiping sweat off his brow. When he notices Sabrina, he brightens. “Oh good. You’re here. Hold on—gotta grab something.” She turns to me as if to say, Is he talking to me? He’s already gone, though, his footsteps thumping up the stairs. At the table, Hannah runs a hand through her hair and gives me a pleading look. “Just remember he’s your best friend, okay?” That doesn’t sound ominous. When Garrett returns, he’s holding a notepad and a ballpoint pen, which he sets on the table as he sits across from Sabrina. “Tuck,” he says. “Sit. This is important.” I’m so baffled right now. Hannah’s resigned expression doesn’t help in lessening the confusion. Once I’m seated next to Sabrina, Garrett flips open the notepad, all business. “Okay. So let’s go over the names.” Sabrina raises an eyebrow at me. I shrug, because I legitimately don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. “I’ve put together a solid list. I really think you’re going to like these.” But when he glances down at the page, his face falls. “Ah crap. We can’t use any of the boy names.” “Wait.” Sabrina holds up a hand, her brow furrowed. “You’re picking names for our baby?” He nods, busy flipping the page. My baby mama gapes at me. I shrug again. “Just out of curiosity, what were the boy names?” Grace hedges, clearly fighting a smile. He cheers up again. “Well, the top contender was Garrett.” I snicker loud enough to rattle Sabrina’s water glass. “Uh-huh,” I say, playing along. “And what was the runner-up?” “Graham.” Hannah sighs. “But it’s okay. I have some kickass girl names too.” He taps his pen on the pad, meets our eyes, and utters two syllables. “Gigi.” My jaw drops. “Are you kidding me? I’m not naming my daughter Gigi.” Sabrina is mystified. “Why Gigi?” she asks slowly. Hannah sighs again. The name suddenly clicks in my head. Oh for fuck’s sake. “G.G.,” I mutter to Sabrina. “As in Garrett Graham.” She’s silent for a beat. Then she bursts out laughing, triggering giggles from Grace and eventually Hannah, who keeps shaking her head at her boyfriend. “What?” Garrett says defensively. “The godfather should have a say in the name. It’s in the rule book.” “What rule book?” Hannah bursts out. “You make up the rules as you go along!” “So?

Stop putting yourself in danger. Stop trying to handle everything yourself instead of trusting me to help you.” His gaze wandered, too, lingering on her mouth, her hair, even her breasts, leaving tingling sensations everywhere it touched. Shadows moved along his jaw as muscles tensed. “Stop making me crazy, Janet.

Yes. I was just telling Elyse here... frankly, kids, I'm not sure it's even legal to have a female first mate. We'd have to consult the rule book, but as far as I know, regatta's a man's race." Christian's jaw ticked, just like it had with his father the night of the party. "Damn. Must have hit my head on the way out of that time machine. 1850, are we? I might need some new clothes. Elyse, you sew right? Don't all girls sew?

You are now aware that your lower jaw has weight, and that it requires effort for you to hold it up. Good evening.

She was a fairy-tale princess out of his comic book fantasies. She glowed like a star. He hated it. It made his jaw clench [...]. It made him want to wreck something, punch walls, hurl plates. He wanted to drag her into a corner and rip off her glittering veil of illusions. Remind her that she was his beautiful wild animal, not this remote, perfect being. She was earth and sweat and blood and bone, she was hunger and need and howling at the moon. Just like him. Part of him.

They understood that. They all understood it. This is not the same as comprehension, but it was good enough. When you stop to think, the whole idea of comprehension has a faintly archaic taste, like the sound of forgotten tongues or a look into a Victorian camera obscura. We Americans are much higher on simple understanding. It makes it easier to read the billboards when you're heading into town on the expressway at plus-fifty. To comprehend, the mental jaws have to gape wide enough to make the tendons creak. Understanding, however, can be purchased on every paperback-book rack in America.

The tongue of a woodpecker can extend more than three times the length of its bill. When not in use, it retracts into the skull and its cartilage-like structure continues past the jaw to wrap around the bird’s head and then curve down to its nostril. In addition to digging out grubs from a tree, the long tongue protects the woodpecker’s brain. When the bird smashes its beak repeatedly into tree bark, the force exerted on its head is ten times what would kill a human. But its bizarre tongue and supporting structure act as a cushion, shielding the brain from shock.1 There is no reason you actually need to know any of this. It is information that has no real utility for your life, just as it had none for Leonardo. But I thought maybe, after reading this book, that you, like Leonardo, who one day put “Describe the tongue of the woodpecker” on one of his eclectic and oddly inspiring to-do lists, would want to know. Just out of curiosity. Pure curiosity.

Sometimes I think my ability to concentrate is being nibbled away by the internet; other times I think it's being gulped down in huge, Jaws-shaped chunks. In those quaint days before the internet, once you made it to your desk there wasn't much to distract you. You could sit there working or you could just sit there. Now you sit down and there's a universe of possibilities – many of them obscurely relevant to the work you should be getting on with – to tempt you. To think that I can be sitting here, trying to write something about Ingmar Bergman and, a moment later, on the merest whim, can be watching a clip from a Swedish documentary about Don Cherry – that is a miracle (albeit one with a very potent side-effect, namely that it's unlikely I'll ever have the patience to sit through an entire Bergman film again). Then there's the outsourcing of memory. From the age of 16, I got into the habit of memorising passages of poetry and compiling detailed indexes in the backs of books of prose. So if there was a passage I couldn't remember, I would spend hours going through my books, seeking it out. Now, in what TS Eliot, with great prescience, called "this twittering world", I just google the key phrase of the half-remembered quote. Which is great, but it's drained some of the purpose from my life. Exactly the same thing has happened now that it's possible to get hold of out-of-print books instantly on the web. That's great too. But one of the side incentives to travel was the hope that, in a bookstore in Oregon, I might finally track down a book I'd been wanting for years. All of this searching and tracking down was immensely time-consuming – but only in the way that being alive is time-consuming.

This is it. It’s finally happening. I finally get to dance with him! At that moment—as the music began—Elend reached into his pocket and pulled out a book. He raised it with one hand, the other on her waist, and began to read. Vin’s jaw dropped, then she whacked him on the arm. “What do you think you’re doing? Elend! I’m trying to have a special moment here!” He turned toward her, smiling with a terribly mischievous grin. “Well, I want to make that special moment as authentic as possible. I mean, you are dancing with me, after all.” “For the first time!” “All the more important to be certain that I make the right impression, Miss Valette!” “Oh, for … Will you please just put the book away?

Do you know how to flare your nostrils in anger?” My breakfast almost comes back up. “What?”  “If you see me across the room, talking to another man, I need you to stare intently then flare your nostrils. Or grind your molars together and tic your jaw.”  “Blue—” “Do you know how to growl?” “What?” “Yeah, I don’t really know what that’s supposed to sound like, but every one of my book boyfriends is big into growling. Oh! And can you darken your eyes?”  “Darken my eyes?” “Yeah. When you pretend to get angry or act really turned on, can you darken your eyes?

When I have not rage or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents' room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment comes: I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terror for one who remembers the Name.

Unfortunately, there’s still a market for rubbish. I picked up a recently written fantasy book at the weekend, and one character said of another: “He will grow wroth.” Oh, my God. And the phrase was in a page of similar jaw-breaking, mock-archaic narrative. Belike, i’faith … this is the language we use to turn high fantasy into third-rate romantic literature. “Yonder lies the palace of my fodder, the king.” That’s not fantasy—that’s just Tolkien reheated until the magic boils away.

Valten took a step toward the tent and stopped. He turned back to Gisela, and the look in his gray-green eyes gentled instantly. His jaw relaxed, and her breath hitched in her throat at the sudden transformation.

Even if we die, if we have to become monsters and everyone hates us, we have to read the book because it will teach us how to avoid the alligator’s jaws, the wolves who wait in the forest, the huge snakes, and how to become birds.

You’re awfully quiet.” Her head snapped the other way, heat creeping up into her cheeks as she focused on the ocean below. “Just waiting for all of this to sink in.” “Oh.” He chuckled. “I was hoping you were staring at me because you liked what you saw.” Clio grinned, shaking her head. “I thought you were concentrating on the road.” He pulled into a cobblestone driveway. The truck vibrated as they rumbled over the uneven surface. When he stopped in front of a cottage, he turned off the engine and met her eyes. “I have a hard time concentrating on anything but you when you’re around.” Her heart pounded. “No one’s ever had that problem around me before.” “I call bullshit.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ve been wishing you’d notice me since the day we met.” Her jaw dropped. “I always notice you. Why do you think I’m at the theater site so often?” He reached over to run a finger along her jawline. “You’re beautiful, Clio. But you’re so busy with your books and reading about the past, you must not notice the effect you have on everyone in the present.

I think Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child is one of the books read by nearly every therapist. Everyone's jaw drops when they read Miller's dead-on description of why we became therapists. (...) I wish more people were familiar with her work.

...the wincing sunlight, the ragged gorse and the slow-blinking wings of the moths were witness to an epic Trade in Exotic Terms. Mosca’s opening offer was a number of cant words she had heard pedlars use, words for the drool hanging from a dog’s jaw, words for the greenish sheen on a mouldering strip of bacon. Eponymous Clent responded with some choice descriptions of ungrateful and treacherous women, culled from ballad and classic myth. Mosca countered with some from her secret hoard of hidden words, the terms used by smugglers for tell-alls, and soldiers’ words for the worst kind of keyholestooping spy. Clent answered with crushing and high-sounding examples from the best essays on the natural depravity of unguided youth. Mosca lowered the bucket deep, and spat out long-winded aspersions which long ago she had discovered in her father’s books, before her uncle had over-zealously burned them all. Clent stared at her. ‘This is absurd. I refuse to believe that you have even the faintest idea what an “ethically pusillanimous compromise” is, let alone how one would...’ Clent’s voice trailed away...

For thirty years now I have been studying my fellow-men. I do not know very much about them. I should certainly hesitate to engage a servant on his face, and yet I suppose it is on the face that for the most part we judge the persons we meet. We draw our conclusions from the shape of the jaw, the look in the eyes, the contour of the mouth. I wonder if we are more often right than wrong. Why novels and plays are so often untrue to life is because their authors, perhaps of necessity, make their characters all of a piece. They cannot afford to make them self-contradictory, for then they become incomprehensible, and yet self-contradictory is what most of us are. We are a haphazard bundle of inconsistent qualities. In books on logic they will tell you that it is absurd to say that yellow is tubular or gratitude heavier than air; but in that mixture of incongruities that makes up the self yellow may very well be a horse and cart and gratitude the middle of the week. I shrug my shoulders when people tell me that their first impressions of a person are always right. I think they must have small insight or great vanity. For my own part I find that the longer I know people the more they puzzled me: my oldest friends are just these of whom I can say that I don't know the first thing about them.

Masters, holding aloft a hard-boiled egg from the free lunch as if it were a crystal ball, said, “Have you gentlemen ever considered the question of the true nature of the University? Mr. Stoner? Mr. Finch?” Smiling, they shook their heads. “I’ll bet you haven’t. Stoner, here, I imagine, sees it as a great repository, like a library or a whorehouse, where men come of their free will and select that which will complete them, where all work together like little bees in a common hive. The True, the Good, the Beautiful. They’re just around the corner, in the next corridor; they’re in the next book, the one you haven’t read, or in the next stack, the one you haven’t got to. But you’ll get to it someday. And when you do—when you do—” He looked at the egg for a moment more, then took a large bite of it and turned to Stoner, his jaws working and his dark eyes bright.

But God save me from celery.” “Who doesn’t like celery?” “It’s what sad people eat. It has no taste and it’s hard labor for your jaw,

Charlie looks away first. He rubs the side of his jaw. “You’re right. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to accept this can’t be anything.

No matter how strong you are, you cannot hold open the jaws of a great-white shark with your bare hands... that can do your brain.

She stared up into gold eyes. Bearded jaw. Sandy brown hair. And a face that said, Clint Eastwood is my father

I think you and I ought to publish our letters (they'd be a jolly good book by the way) under the title of lamentations, as we are always jawing about our sorrows.

Your eyes…," she whispered, as her lips were too close to him. "What about them?" He tightened his jaw muscles. "They're intoxicating." He flipped his eyelids continuously, feeling embarrassed.

looking enraptured while Orion murmured to me that their kind could step right into the pages of a story. They didn’t just see it in their head, they lived every word, the whole thing playing out in their minds as if they were the main character, and that sounded pretty awesome. It must have been incredible to experience your favourite books first hand, to fall so deeply between the pages that it seemed as if those worlds really existed. “Which book would you go into?” I asked Orion, brushing my fingers over the thick stubble on his jaw. “There is no story I would choose to live in but ours,” he answered simply, and damn this man to hell for his silver tongue. My heart all but packed up its bags and moved out of my chest to go and live in his instead. He already owned it that completely anyway.

I turn to Libby. "You're kind. Probably the kindest person I know. You're also forgiving, at least a little, but I'm hoping a lot, and in my book that's a superpower." Her eyes are on mine, and there's a lot going on there. "You're smart as hell, and you don't take people's crap, least of all mine. You are who you are. You know who that is, and you aren't afraid of it, and how many of us can say that." She's not smiling, but it's not about what her mouth is doing. It's about her eyes. "You're strong too. It's not just a matter of being able to knock down a guy with a single shot to the jaw." (Everyone laughs, except her.) "I'm talking about inner strength. Like, if I would draw that inner strength it might look a lot like a triangle made of carbyne. That's the world's strongest material. You also make things better for people around you...

Me & my fellow fairies are running away from a huge monster that keeps destroying our home land,sobbed Farina. The monster is terribly scary,has huge jaws, creates clouds of smoke & makes loads of noise everywhere it goes.

I said nothing in my texts. You came up with your own conclusions and you were mad thinking about me being with someone else…’’ “Stop,’’ he said, his jaw tightening. “Touching another man…’’ “Stop it.’’ “Sleeping…’’ He ran to me and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me once, not hard, but enough to make me stop. “Quit it,’’ he whispered, his voice deep and dark.

In a later chapter he describes a massive failure of intuition: Americans elected President Harding, whose only qualification for the position was that he perfectly looked the part. Square jawed and tall, he was the perfect image of a strong and decisive leader. People voted for someone who looked strong and decisive without any other reason to believe that he was. An intuitive prediction of how Harding would perform as president arose from substituting one question for another. A reader of this book should expect such an intuition to be held with confidence.

dishes piled in the sink, books littering the coffee table— are harder than others. Today, my head is packed with cockroaches, dizziness, and everywhere it hurts. Venom in the jaw, behind the eyes, between the blades. Still, the dog is snoring on my right, the cat, on my left. Outside, all those redbuds are just getting good. I tell a friend, The body is so body. And she nods. I used to like the darkest stories, the bleak snippets someone would toss out about just how bad it could get. My stepfather told me a story about when he lived on the streets as a kid, how hed, some nights, sleep under the grill at a fast food restaurant until both he and his buddy got fired. I used to like that story for some reason, something in me that believed in overcoming. But right now all I want is a story about human kindness, the way once, when I couldn’t stop crying because I was fifteen and heartbroken, he came in and made me eat a small pizza he’d cut up into tiny bites until the tears stopped. Maybe I was just hungry, I said. And he nodded, holding out the last piece.

How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tall, and pour the waters of the Nile on every golden scale.” His eyes flicked meaningfully from the book to Alice before he continued. “How cheerfully he seems to grin, how neatly spreads his claws, and welcomes little fishes in, with gently smiling jaws.

I first met Winston Churchill in the early summer of 1906 at a dinner party to which I went as a very young girl. Our hostess was Lady Wemyss and I remember that Arthur Balfour, George Wyndman, Hilaire Belloc and Charles Whibley were among the guests… I found myself sitting next to this young man who seemed to me quite different from any other young man I had ever met. For a long time he seemed sunk in abstraction. Then he appeared to become suddenly aware of my existence. He turned on me a lowering gaze and asked me abruptly how old I was. I replied that I was nineteen. “And I,” he said despairingly, “am thirty-two already. Younger than anyone else who counts, though, “he added, as if to comfort himself. Then savagely: “Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is this allotted span for all we must cram into it!” And he burst forth into an eloquent diatribe on the shortness of human life, the immensity of possible human accomplishment—a theme so well exploited by the poets, prophets, and philosophers of all ages that it might seem difficult to invest it with new and startling significance. Yet for me he did so, in a torrent of magnificent language which appeared to be both effortless and inexhaustible and ended up with the words I shall always remember: “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow worm.” By this time I was convinced of it—and my conviction remained unshaken throughout the years that followed. Later he asked me whether I thought that words had a magic and music quite independent of their meaning. I said I certainly thought so, and I quoted as a classic though familiar instance the first lines that came into my head. Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. His eyes blazed with excitement. “Say that again,” he said, “say it again—it is marvelous!” “But I objected, “You know these lines. You know the ‘Ode to a Nightengale.’ ” He had apparently never read or heard of it before (I must, however, add that next time I met him he had not learned not merely this but all of the odes to Keats by heart—and he recited them quite mercilessly from start to finish, not sparing me a syllable). Finding that he liked poetry, I quoted to him from one of my own favorite poets, Blake. He listened avidly, repeating some lines to himself with varying emphases and stresses, then added meditatively: “I never knew that old Admiral had found so much time to write such good poetry.” I was astounded that he, with his acute susceptibility to words and power of using them, should have left such tracts of English literature entirely unexplored. But however it happened he had lost nothing by it, when he approached books it was “with a hungry, empty mind and with fairly srong jaws, and what I got I *bit*.” And his ear for the beauty of language needed no tuning fork. Until the end of dinner I listened to him spellbound. I can remember thinking: This is what people mean when they talk of seeing stars. That is what I am doing now. I do not to this day know who was on my other side. Good manners, social obligation, duty—all had gone with the wind. I was transfixed, transported into a new element. I knew only that I had seen a great light. I recognized it as the light of genius… I cannot attempt to analyze, still less transmit, the light of genius. But I will try to set down, as I remember them, some of the differences which struck me between him and all the others, young and old, whom I have known. First and foremost he was incalculable. He ran true to no form. There lurked in his every thought and world the ambush of the unexpected. I felt also that the impact of life, ideas and even words upon his mind, was not only vivid and immediate, but direct. Between him and them there was no shock absorber of vicarious thought or precedent gleaned either from books or other minds. His relationship wit

One day, I wish to find a man like in my books. He has to be just like in one of my books. And he has to love me, love me more than anything in the world. Most important of all, he has to think I’m beautiful.” “Lily, I need to tell you something.” Fazire was going to tell her about Becky’s wish and his mistake and let her look forward to something, let her look forward to the incomparable beauty she was going to be. Most of all, he had to stop her wish now. He didn’t want her wasting it on some fool idea. He wanted it to be special, perfect, to make her world better like she had made Becky and Will’s and, indeed, his. But again she didn’t hear him. Her eyes were bright and they were steady on his. “He has to be tall, very tall and dark and broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped.” Fazire stared. He didn’t even know what “narrow-hipped” meant. “And he has to be handsome, unbelievably handsome, impossibly handsome with a strong, square jaw and powerful cheekbones and tanned skin and beautiful eyes with lush, thick lashes. He has to be clever and very wealthy but hardworking. He has to be virile, fierce, ruthless and rugged.” Now she was getting over his head. He didn’t think there was such a thing as impossibly handsome. How cheekbones could be powerful, Fazire didn’t know. He was even thinking he might have to look up “virile” in the dictionary Sarah had given him. “And he has to be hard and cold and maybe a little bit forbidding, a little bit bad with a broken heart I have to mend or one encased in ice I have to melt or better yet… both!” Fazire thought this was getting a bit ridiculous. It was the most complicated wish he’d ever heard. But she wasn’t yet finished. “We have to go through some trials and tribulations. Something to test our love, make it strong and worthy. And… and… he has to be daring and very masculine. Powerful. People must respect him, maybe even fear him. Graceful too and lithe, like a… like a cat! Or a lion. Or something like that.” She was losing steam and Fazire had to admit he was grateful for it. “And he has to be a good lover.” Lily shocked Fazire by saying. “The best, so good, he could almost make love to me just by using his eyes.” Fazire felt himself blush. Perhaps he should have a look at these books she was reading and show them to Becky. Lily was a very sharp girl, sharp as a tack (another one of Sarah’s sayings, although Fazire couldn’t imagine a tack ever being as clever as Lily) but she was too young to be reading about any man making love to her with his eyes. Fazire had never made love, never would, genies just didn’t. But he was pretty certain fourteen year old girls shouldn’t be thinking about it. Though, he was wrong about that, or at least Becky would tell him that later. Then Fazire realised she’d stopped talking. “Is that it?” he asked. She thought for a bit, clearly not wanting to leave anything out. Then she nodded.

I went back to reading Sirr's book, but I leafed through it mechanically. Between the lines I kept seeing fearsome, wide–open jaws.

Fetch looked like someone had crossed the big bad wolf with the shark from Jaws.

lost Wyatt once, and I survived. I may lose your dad, and I will survive. But you?” In her face, I see my eyes, Wyatt’s jaw, strength from us both. “I wouldn’t survive losing you.

Tonight,” I say, “can I just have you, Charlie? Even if it can’t last. Even if we already know how it ends.” He holds my jaw so gingerly. Like I’m something delicate. Or maybe like he is. Like with one wrong move we could crack each other open. My chest squeezes with that heart-crushing final-chapter feeling, only now I know the word for it. I know it even if I can’t bring myself to think it. “You do have me, Nora. I never stood a chance.” For the first time in my life, I know what the hell Cathy was talking about when she said I am Heathcliff. Not just because Charlie and I are so similar, but because he’s right: we belong. In a way I don’t understand, he’s mine, and I’m his. It doesn’t matter what the last page says. That’s the truth. Here, now. His lips brush mine, light, careful, warm. I open to him, knowing how it will feel when I turn the page but unwilling not to turn it at all.

No, it is you who are mistaken,” he said. “Look at you. You are neither man nor beast, but some pathetic creature who is less than both. You hate what you are and want to be what you cannot truly become. Your appearance may change, and you may wear all the fine clothes that you can steal from the bodies of your victims, but you will still be a wolf inside. Even then, what do you think will happen once your outer transformation is complete, when you start to resemble fully what once you hunted? You will look like a man, and the pack will no longer recognize you as its own. What you most desire is the very thing that will doom you, for they will tear you apart and you will die in their jaws as others have died in yours.

What is wrong with you?” I say in lieu of greeting. “You went to Morris’s dorm and declared your intentions?” He offers a faint smile. “Of course. It was the noble thing to do. I can’t be chasing after another guy’s girl without his knowledge.” “I’m not his girl,” I snap. “We went on one date! And now I’m never going to be his girl, because he doesn’t want to go out with me again.” “What the hell?” Logan looks startled. “I’m disappointed in him. I thought he had more of a competitive spirit than that.” “Seriously? You’re going to pretend to be surprised? He won’t see me again because your jackass self told him he couldn’t.” Astonishment fills his eyes. “No, I didn’t.” “Yes, you did.” “Is that what he told you?” Logan demands. “Not in so many words.” “I see. Well, what words did he actually use?” I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. “He said he’s backing off because he doesn’t want to get in the middle of something so complicated. I pointed out that there’s nothing complicated about it, seeing as you and I are not together.” My aggravation heightens. “And then he insisted that I need to give you a chance, because you’re a—” I angrily air-quote Morris’s words “—‘stand-up guy who deserves another shot.’” Logan breaks out in a grin. I stab the air with my finger. “Don’t you dare smile. Obviously you put those words in his mouth. And what the hell was he jabbering about when he told me you and him were ‘family’?” All the disbelief I’d felt during my talk with Morris comes spiraling back, making me pace the bedroom in hurried strides. “What did you say to him, Logan? Did you brainwash him or something? How are you guys family? You don’t even know each other!” Strangled laughter sounds from Logan’s direction. I spin around and level a dark glower at him. “He’s talking about the joint family we created in Mob Boss. It’s this role-playing game where you’re the Don of a mob family and you’re fighting a bunch of other mafia bosses for territory and rackets and stuff. We played it when I went over there, and I ended up staying until four in the morning. Seriously, it was intense.” He shrugs. “We’re the Lorris crime syndicate.” I’m dumbfounded. Oh my God. Lorris? As in Logan and Morris? They fucking Brangelina’d themselves? “What is happening?” I burst out. “You guys are best friends now?” “He’s a cool guy. Actually, he’s even cooler in my book now for stepping down like that. I didn’t ask him to, but clearly he grasps what you refuse to see.” “Yeah, and what’s that?” I mutter. “That you and I are perfect for each other.” No words. There are no words to accurately convey what I’m feeling right now. Horror maybe? Absolute insanity? I mean, it’s not like I’m madly in love with Morris or anything, but if I’d known that kissing Logan at the party would lead to…this, I would have strapped on a frickin’ chastity gag.

William Julius Wilson makes this point in his book, When Work Disappears. In his view, it is massive unemployment and not the lack of family values that has devastated our inner-cities and placed one-third of our young men-denied even menial jobs when they lacked education and skills-in prison or in the jaws of the criminal court system, most of them for nonviolent drug offenses.2

Feet scraped inside-out next to unblemished boots. Black-and-gold Kel uniforms braided into cracked rib cages. Gape-jawed, twisted skulls with eye sockets staring out their sides and strands of tendon knotted through crumbling teeth. A book of profanities written in every futile shade of red the human body had ever devised, its pages upended over the battlefield from horizon to horizon.

While blocks were falling all around us, the elder dragon darted its middle head right at Orion’s body. The head opened up its jaw and snapped up the mech-less driver whole. In an instant, he was gone.

I'm used to people thinking I'm an asshole," he says stiffly. "Less used to them describing my eyes as 'amber'." "That's what color they are," I say. "It's objective. I'm not complimenting you." "In that case, I'll abstain from being flattered. What color are yours?" He leans in without any hint of embarrassment, only curiosity, his warm breath feathering over my jaw. That is pretty much when I realize I think he's hot. I mean, I know I thought he was hot in Mug + Shot when I thought he was someone else, but this is when I realize I think he - specifically Charlie Lastra, not just someone who looks like him - is hot.

I love you.” His voice is gruff, the line of his jaw flexing. “Like a goddamn fanatic. It claws deeper with every breath out of your mouth.” I’m grateful when he pauses so I can attempt to calm my racing heart. But then, “This book has become about you. You are the wife. I’m the man. And he’s slowly going crazy with need for her. He’s obsessed, the way I am with you. So obsessed he might drop dead of misery if she leaves.

One of my delights in these books, on the other hand, has been to include movies not often cited as “great”—some because they are dismissed as merely popular (Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark), some because they are frankly entertainments (Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Rififi), some because they are too obscure (The Fall of the House of Usher, Stroszek). We go to different movies for different reasons, and greatness comes in many forms.

Moray eels have a second set of jaws deep at the back of their throat which shoot forward at high speed, grab the prey and rapidly protract backwards again, pulling the prey down into the oesophagus as the animal closes its mouth.

Jake continues to sing, his voice growing deep and husky as he drawls out words like hotter, loving, and fucking. Raina chuckles against my throat. “When did country music start dropping F bombs?” “This is the dirty version.” “I bet you think this song’s gonna get you laid.” “I think…” I kiss her mouth, her jaw, and swirl my tongue around her earlobe. “I’m going to spend so much time inside you in the infinite future that your panties will get wet at the sound of my zipper.

Hey, wifey. Remember me?” I bite my lip, trying not to laugh as I nod and attempt to fix my hair, swiping it out of my face. But he winks and rubs his jaw, tapping a finger to it as he adds, “Good. Now, give daddy a kiss and make it better.

The difference,” he says, “is Libby asked you to be here. He asked me not to.” “Well, if that’s all you need,” I say quietly, like it’s a secret, “Charlie, will you please be here?” He leans forward, softly kissing me, his fingers fluttering over my jaw as I breathe in his minty breath and warm skin. When he draws back, his eyes are melted gold, my nerve endings quivering under them. “Yes,” he says, and pulls me into him, his arm coiling around me and chin tucking against my shoulder. “I already told you, Nora,” he murmurs, his fingers splaying on my stomach, just beneath my shirt. “I’ll go anywhere with you.” Sometimes, even when you start with the last page and you think you know everything, a book finds a way to surprise you.

I stare up at my cracked ceiling. The water stains that look like jaw-baring beasts seem to have spread since the last time I was here. The yellow light fixture has filled with more moth carcasses, so now there is more moth than light. The towers of books stacked against the walls are all in various stages of collapse, and the walls themselves, thin and piss colored, which are all that separate me from a perverted giant on one side and a sallow-faced girl on the other, appear to have crept even closer together.

I never knew what an extraordinary thing it could be to write a book. In the first place, the characters take the bit between their jaws and canter off with you into places you don't want and never catered for. I had smugly intended my book to be about a family rather like ours, but, lud love you! it's already turned into an account of a barmaid's career in an Edgware Road pub, and I can't squeeze us in anywhere! Odd things happen, too. I had called my pub, 'The Three Feathers,' and counted on there being heaps of pubs in Edgware Road, not called that, but looking a bit like my description. Before we left home, I went down Edgware Road to investigate, and found my pub, even down to the old-fashioned phonograph on the table in the upstairs sitting-room. And I thought, 'I built that place.

I never cared for poetry," I said. "Your loss," Sim said absently as he turned a few pages. "Eld Vintic poetry's thunderous. It pounds at you." "What's the meter like?"I asked, curious despite myself. "I don't know anything about meter," Simmon said distractedly he ran his finger down the page in front of him. "It's like this: "Sought we the Scrivani word-work of Surthur Long-lost in ledger all hope forgotten Yet fast-found for friendship fair the book-bringer Hot comes the huntress Fela, flushed with finding Breathless her breast her high blood rising To ripen the red-cheek rouge-bloom of beauty. "That sort of thing," Simmon said absently, his eyes still scanning the pages in front of him. I saw Fela turn her head to look at Simmon, almost as if she were surprised to see him sitting there. No, it was almost s if up until that point, he'd just been occupying space around her, like a piece of furniture. But this time when she looked at him, she took all of him in. His sandy hair, the line of his jaw, the span of his shoulders beneath his shirt. This time when she looked, she actually *saw* him. Let me say this. It was worth the whole awful , irritating time spent searching the Archives just to watch that moment happen. It was worth blood and the fear of death to see her fall in love with him. Just a little. Just the first faint breath of love, so light she probably didn't notice it herself. It wasn't dramatic, like some bolt of lightning with a crack of thunder following. It was more like when flint strikes steel and the spark fades almost fast for you to see. But still, you know it's there, down where you can't see, kindling.

Or in his case, he’d go to Tartarus, where evil men were sent deep into the darkest pit guarded by a monster with fifty sharp-toothed jaws. I liked the idea of him spending some time there, though it was hardly fair to the monster to have to deal with a venomous man like Brutus.

Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d‘Anton’s temples. “Put your fingers here,” he said. “Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here.” He jabbed at d’Anton’s face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. “I’ll teach you like an actor,” he said. “This city is our stage.” Camille said: “Book of Ezekiel. ‘This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh’ ...” Fabre turned. “This stutter,” he said. “You don’t have to do it.” Camille put his hands over his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he said. “Even you.” Fabre’s face was incandescent. “Even you, I am going to teach.” He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re going to talk properly,” Fabre said. “Even if it kills one of us.” Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fabre continued to perpetrate violence; d’Anton was too tired to intervene.

Are you okay?" Jaw snapped open, revealing a gaping maw of teeth and fire. A primal roar crushed my insides. Wincing, I staggered back a few steps. "You need to work on your indoor voice." Raveling, Emma (2013-09-17). Crest (Ondine Quartet Book 3) (p. 415). Mandorla Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Birth control?” he asks. “Obviously, but—” “Got it,” he says. Of course he does. He’s just like me: even when we’re both out-of-control obsessed with each other there are still a few (dozen) threads holding reason in place. Charlie moves off me, finds his wallet, and comes back with a condom, no further questions asked, no huffing, no hint at frustration, no implied uptight, nag, or bore. He tucks his hand against my jaw and kisses me with a tenderness I feel all through my body, all these little pockets of warmth nestled between bones and muscle and cartilage: Charlie, diffused into my bloodstream

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out into playing fields, the factory, allotments kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan, till you came at last to the edge of the woods. It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw, red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth! In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me, sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink, my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry. The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods, away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake, my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night, breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem. I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf? Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws and went in search of a living bird – white dove – which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth. One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said, licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books. Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood. But then I was young – and it took ten years in the woods to tell that a mushroom stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out, season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones. I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up. Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone. Little Red-Cap

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the base Only sentries were stirring--they guarded the place. At the foot of each bunk sat a helmet and boot For the Santa of Soldiers to fill up with loot. The soldiers were sleeping and snoring away As they dreamed of “back home” on good Christmas Day. One snoozed with his rifle--he seemed so content. I slept with the letters my family had sent. When outside the tent there arose such a clatter. I sprang from my rack to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash. Poked out my head, and yelled, “What was that crash?” When what to my thrill and relief should appear, But one of our Blackhawks to give the all clear. More rattles and rumbles! I heard a deep whine! Then up drove eight Humvees, a jeep close behind… Each vehicle painted a bright Christmas green. With more lights and gold tinsel than I’d ever seen. The convoy commander leaped down and he paused. I knew then and there it was Sergeant McClaus! More rapid than rockets, his drivers they came When he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: “Now, Cohen! Mendoza! Woslowski! McCord! Now, Li! Watts! Donetti! And Specialist Ford!” “Go fill up my sea bags with gifts large and small! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away, all!” In the blink of an eye, to their trucks the troops darted. As I drew in my head and was turning around, Through the tent flap the sergeant came in with a bound. He was dressed all in camo and looked quite a sight With a Santa had added for this special night. His eyes--sharp as lasers! He stood six feet six. His nose was quite crooked, his jaw hard as bricks! A stub of cigar he held clamped in his teeth. And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath. A young driver walked in with a seabag in tow. McClaus took the bag, told the driver to go. Then the sarge went to work. And his mission today? Bring Christmas from home to the troops far away! Tasty gifts from old friends in the helmets he laid. There were candies, and cookies, and cakes, all homemade. Many parents sent phone cards so soldiers could hear Treasured voices and laughter of those they held dear. Loving husbands and wives had mailed photos galore Of weddings and birthdays and first steps and more. And for each soldier’s boot, like a warm, happy hug, There was art from the children at home sweet and snug. As he finished the job--did I see a twinkle? Was that a small smile or instead just a wrinkle? To the top of his brow he raised up his hand And gave a salute that made me feel grand. I gasped in surprise when, his face all aglow, He gave a huge grin and a big HO! HO! HO! HO! HO! HO! from the barracks and then from the base. HO! HO! HO! as the convoy sped up into space. As the camp radar lost him, I heard this faint call: “HAPPY CHRISTMAS, BRAVE SOLDIERS! MAY PEACE COME TO ALL!

A week ago,” I say, “I liked you so much I would have wanted to try to make this work.” I swallow a jagged, fist-sized lump, but still my voice has to scrape by to get out. “But now I think I might love you too much for that.” I’m surprised to hear myself say it. Not because I was unaware of how I felt—but because I’ve never been the first person to say the L-word. Not even with Jakob. “You don’t have to say anything,” I hurry to add. His jaw flexes against my temple. “Of course I love you, Nora. If I loved you any less, I’d be trying to convince you that you could be happy here. You have no idea how badly I wish I could be enough.

Bunny crawls on hands and feet into the bathroom. Her limbs bend at acute angles as her writhing jaw juts forward […] Bunny crawls closer. Rose can just make out her form in the near-darkness. Bunny’s jaw snaps as if dislocating. Rose’s eyes trace the prominent bumps on Bunny’s back – vertebrae, which look disturbingly close to slicing her anorexic back.

Here's a hint for you. You don't ask someone to marry you and then roar in their face." He glared at Pippa, incredulous. Then, he dropped his jaw and roared again, so loud that the stone walls of the room shook, and Pippa’s entire face felt blasted with the fury of his anger. Somewhere in the background, plates rattled and something fell off the wall. But

You really shouldn’t have come,” Lord Blackthorne said, his hand slipping across my face to cup my jaw, fingers brushing my cheek. I shrieked, shrinking back and kicking at my captor with stocking-covered feet. “Such a pretty child, in such an ugly place. Tell me, do you think your dear husband would mind if I stole a kiss from the bride?” Kicking him in the shin, I spun, making him release me. I climbed off whatever I’d landed on, aiming my palms out and wishing that I could see what the heck was happening. Flames from dozens of candles blinked at me as they lit with the power of my mind. Lord Blackthorne touched my shoulder, his other hand curving around the bodice of my gown, toying with the beading along the neckline.

Some people never get to feel that way, much less find someone else they love…and I did love your dad. I do. But the greatest love I’ve ever known is you.” I reach for her hand, and she doesn’t pull away. “I lost Wyatt once, and I survived. I may lose your dad, and I will survive. But you?” In her face, I see my eyes, Wyatt’s jaw, strength from us both. “I wouldn’t survive losing you.

Red rolls on the sand until her shoulder bumps into mine. She is laughing hysterically, and even though I keep a stoic face, I’m anything but. God, I fucking love this girl. “So…” She nuzzles into the crook of my neck, her arms flung over me. “Are you taking me to that fancy restaurant you booked for us last time we were in Miami?” “Hell no,” I snort. “That was before I realized you’re a McMeal kind of girl. I can treat you to a hot, sexy dinner date at Wendy’s if you’re up for it.” “Make it IHOP and you’re on. They have pancakes and hot chocolate.” “Classy girl. And I bet you’ll still put out afterwards.” “Damn right I will. I’m only using you for your body, Mr. Brennan.” “And for the cash. Don’t forget the cash.” “Nah, I make my own money, thank you very much.” She plants a kiss on my jaw, and I beam like an idiot, because she’s right.

Screeching in frustration, she threw a punch at Tshar Ruan. Her fist struck the swarthy woman in the face before Ruan could react. Her head snapped to the side. Pain burst across Vounée’s knuckles. She gasped like she had just struck stone. Ruan worked her jaw and glared at the girl. “You are making this more difficult.” “Sorry,” Vounée hissed. “No, wait, you’re kidnapping me! I should do this!” She kicked the woman in the shin.

The first time I walked into that library my jaw must have hit the marble floor. I had never seen such a place. So many books. And the smell. I had not realized that books had a smell. I stood with my eyes closed, taking in long, deep breaths. Mr. McDade, my English teacher, read my mind as he watched me that first day. "Smells like learning, doesn't it, Helen?" I smiled and nodded in agreement, sure that I could actually smell the words in the air.

When you next feel the wind brush by, think about where it has come from and where it goes. Some of it has touched the tops of mountains deep within the Sahara. Some carries the fragrant pine scent from the vast Siberian taiga forests. Or perhaps it has come from the yawning jaws of a lion on the African grasslands. Every breeze brings a story of its journey. If you listen hard enough, you can hear its whisper. It is the quiet call to adventure, asking you to step into the wild.

But when she looked at him, all she saw was the Edmund Vincent Carver of the society pages, disdain in his smoke-colored eyes. Just a little pomade, the tilt of his jaw, and he’d be a stranger. If only she’d observed him more closely, she’d have seen it—picking out that Vacheron Constantin watch at twenty paces, knowing about the vacation homes of the upper class, the fucking love of gossip for fuck’s sake. Not to mention the ability to murder people and believe there would be no consequences.

Hamlet’s soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare. Ah, it’s sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house. I haven’t got it in the book—I’ve only got one volume—but I reckon I can piece it out from memory. I’ll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call it back from recollection’s vaults.” So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next he’d let on to drop a tear. It was beautiful to see him. By and by he got it. He told us to give attention. Then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before. This is the speech—I learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king: To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature’s second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. There’s the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The law’s delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i’ the adage, Is sicklied o’er with care, And all the clouds that lowered o’er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery—go! Well,

In a landscape torn with grief, the carcasses of six dragons lay strewn in a ragged row reaching a thousand or more paces across the plain, flesh split apart, broken bones jutting, jaws gaping and eyes brittle-dry. Where their blood had spilled out onto the ground wraiths had gathered like flies to sap and were now ensnared, the ghosts writhing and voicing hollow cries of despair, as the blood darkened, fusing with the lifeless soil; and, when at last the substance grew indurate, hardening into glassy stone, those ghosts were doomed to an eternity trapped within that murky prison.

Man!" he snapped. "A man's cub. Look!" Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk—as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf's cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf's face, and laughed. "Is that a man's cub?" said Mother Wolf. "I have never seen one. Bring it here." A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth an egg without breaking it, and though Father Wolf's jaws closed right on the child's back not a tooth even scratched the skin as he laid it down among the cubs. "How little! How naked,

Happy birthday, darling." She reached into her cloak and pulled out something so surprising Rapunzel's jaw actually dropped. It was a bright red bracelet, one of the most cheerful things she had ever seen. It didn't match any of her clothes or other accessories, and that was wonderful. It looked like fire, and the tongue of a cat in one of her books (or maybe it was a dog), and a really good sunset in autumn; happiness in a color. There was even a cheery, many-rayed sun on the clasp. It was one of Rapunzel's favorite symbols, one she painted again and again everywhere in the tower. In her favorite color, too!

The sorceress walked a short distance away, her rounded hips swaying. She lifted her hands, fingers moving as if plucking invisible strings. Bitter cold flooded out, the sand crackling as if lit by lightning, and the gate that erupted was massive, yawning, towering. Through the billowing icy air flowed out a sweeter, rank smell. The smell of death. A figure stood on the threshold of the gate. Tall, hunched, a withered, lifeless face of greenish grey, yellowed tusks thrusting up from the lower jaw. Pitted eyes regarded them from beneath a tattered woollen cowl. The power cascading from this apparition sent Equity stumbling back. Abyss! A Jaghut, yes, but not just any Jaghut! Calm – can you hear me? Through this howl? Can you hear me? An ally stands before me – an ally of ancient – so ancient – power! This one could have been an Elder God. This one could have been…anything! Gasping, fighting to keep from falling to one knee, from bowing before this terrible creature, Equity forced herself to lift her gaze, to meet the empty hollows of his eyes. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You are Hood.’ The Jaghut stepped forward, the gate swirling closed behind him. Hood paused, regarding each witness in turn, and then walked towards Equity. ‘They made you their king,’ she whispered. ‘They who followed no one chose to follow you. They who refused every war fought your war. And what you did then – what you did—’ As he reached her, his desiccated hands caught her. He lifted her from her feet, and then, mouth stretching, he bit into the side of her face. The tusks drove up beneath her cheek bone, burst the eye on that side. In a welter of blood, he tore away half of her face, and then bit a second time, up under the orbitals, the tusks driving into her brain. Equity hung in his grip, feeling her life drain away. Her head felt strangely unbalanced. She seemed to be weeping from only one eye, and from her throat no words were possible. I once dreamed of peace. As a child, I dreamed of—

I was just settling into the salons of Austenian Bath when Gabriel muttered, "This is strange." I looked up to see him pulling a long blue-gray thread from between the nearly translucent pages. My jaw dropped, and I was kneeling on the chaise in a flash. "Is the binding coming loose? No, don't pull it! I can take it to my book doctor tomorrow night." "Stop hyperventilating, sweetheart. I think it's a bookmark," he said, pulling on the thread until he stretched it to my hand. "Here." I wound the thread around my finger. "What passage was it marking?" He scanned the page and lifted an eye. "It's an Edward and Jane scene. I know how you love those. Edward's saying, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you---especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.'" I was so caught up in watching his lips as they formed the words that I barely noticed the sudden tension on the fiber wound around my finger. I realized now that Gabriel had slipped a ring onto the thread and was sliding it toward me. I watched as the respectable diamond twinkled in the light of the oil lamp. "I'm not Edward, " Gabriel promised. "I'm not afraid the thread will break and leave me bleeding. Our thread's already been tested. And it will hold up. I'm asking you to make the link permanent. Please, marry me.

The great chestnut-wood tables groaned under the weight of platters, trays, plates, dishes and bowls. The whole Feast was here, John saw. Every word in the book, every fruit in the gardens, every green thing that grew, every creature that ran or swim or flew. John felt his demon creep forward as a great wave of flavors and tastes washed through him, those his mother had shown him on the slopes joined with others he had never sensed before. He could smell the rich tang of the meats. His head swirled from the steaming fumes of the wine. His jaw ached from the sweets which rose in heaps on silver platters while honeyed syllabubs shivered in their cups. He felt the pastry crunch, shiny with beaten butter. He heard the sugar-pane crackle. The sweetmeats flooded his senses, banishing his hunger and cold. A great procession of dishes floated up out of the pages, all theirs.

Although Daisy was the mildest-tempered of all the Bowmans, she was by no means a coward. And she would not accept defeat without a fight. “You’re forcing me to take desperate measures,” she said. His reply was very soft. “There’s nothing you can do.” He had left her no choice. Daisy turned the key in the lock and carefully withdrew it. The decisive click was abnormally loud in the silence of the room. Calmly Daisy tugged the top edge of her bodice away from her chest. She held the key above the narrow gap. Matthew’s eyes widened as he understood what she intended. “You wouldn’t.” As he started around the dresser, Daisy dropped the key into her bodice, making certain it slipped beneath her corset. She sucked in her stomach and midriff until she felt the cold metal slide to her navel. “Damn it!” Matthew reached her with startling speed. He reached out to touch her, then jerked his hands back as if he had just encountered open flame. “Take it out,” he commanded, his face dark with outrage. “I can’t.” “I mean it, Daisy!” “It’s fallen too far down. I’ll have to take my dress off.” It was obvious he wanted to kill her. But she could also feel the force of his longing. His lungs were working like bellows, and scorching heat radiated from his body. His whisper contained the ferocity of a roar. “Don’t do this to me.” Daisy waited patiently. The next move was his. He turned his back to her, the seams of his coat straining over bunched muscles. His fists clenched as he struggled to master himself. He took a shuddering breath, and another, and when he spoke his voice sounded thick, as if he had just awakened from a heavy sleep. “Take off your gown.” Trying not to antagonize him any more than was necessary, Daisy replied in an apologetic tone. “I can’t do it by myself. It buttons up the back.” Matthew said something in a muffled voice that sounded very foul. After an eternity of silence he turned to face her. His jaw could have been cast in iron. “I’m not going to fall apart that easily. I can resist you, Daisy. I’ve had years of practice. Turn around.” Daisy obeyed. As she bent her head forward, she could actually feel his gaze travel over the endless row of pearl buttons. “How do you ever get undressed?” he muttered. “I’ve never seen so many blasted buttons on one garment.” “It’s fashionable.” “It’s ridiculous.” “You can send a letter of protest to Godey’s Lady’s Book,” she suggested. Giving a scornful snort, Matthew began on the top button. He tried to unfasten it while avoiding contact with her body. “It helps if you slide your fingers beneath the placket,” Daisy said. “And then you can pop the button through the—” “Quiet,” he snapped. She closed her mouth.

She gives just enough hints about him to make you wonder why he became so villainous. And if he dies, I’ll never learnt the answer.” Oliver eyes her closely. “Perhaps he was born villainous.” “No one is born villainous.” “Oh?” he said with raised eyebrow. “So we’re all born good?” “Neither. We start as animals, with an animal’s needs and desires. It takes parents and teachers and other good examples to show us how to restrain those needs and desires, when necessary, for the greater good. But it’s still our choice whether to heed that education or to do as we please.” “For a woman who loves murder and mayhem, you’re quite the philosopher.” “I like to understand how things work. Why people behave as they do.” He digested that for a moment. “I happen to think that some of us, like Rockton, are born with a wicked bent.” She chose her words carefully. “That certainly provides Rockton with a convenient excuse for his behavior.” His features turned stony. “What do you mean?” “Being moral and disciplined is hard work. Being wicked requires no effort at all-one merely indulges every desire and impulse, no matter how hurtful or immoral. By claiming to be born wicked, Rockton ensures that he doesn’t have to struggle to be god. He can just protest that he can’t help himself.” “Perhaps he can’t,” he clipped out. “Or maybe he’s simply unwilling to fight his impulses. And I want to know the reason for that. That’s why I keep reading Minerva’s books.” Did Oliver actually believe he’d been born irredeemably wicked? How tragic! It lent a hopelessness to his life that helped to explain his mindless pursuit of pleasure. “I can tell you the reason for Rockton’s villainy.” Oliver rose to round the desk. Propping his hip on the edge near her, he reached out to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear. A sweet shudder swept over her. Why must he have this effect on her? It simply wasn’t fair. “Oh?” she managed. “Rockton knows he can’t have everything he wants,” he said hoarsely, his hand drifting to her cheek. “He can’t have the heroine, for example. She would never tolerate his…wicked impulses. Yet he still wants her. And his wanting consumes him.” Her breath lodged in her throat. It had been days since he’d touched her, and she hadn’t forgotten what it was like for one minute. To have him this near, saying such things… She fought for control over her volatile emotions. “His wanting consumes him precisely because he can’t have her. If he thought he could, he wouldn’t want her after all.” “Not true.” His voice deepening, he stroked the line of her jaw with a tenderness that roused an ache in her chest. “Even Rockton recognizes when a woman is unlike any other. Her very goodness in the face of his villainy bewitches him. He thinks if he can just possess that goodness, then the dark cloud lying on his soul will lift, and he’ll have something other than villainy to sustain him.” “Then he’s mistaken.” Her pulse trebled as his finger swept the hollow of her throat. “The only person who can lift the dark cloud on his soul is himself.” He paused in his caress. “So he’s doomed, then?” “No!” Her gaze flew to his. “No one is doomed, and certainly not Rockton. There’s still hope for him. There is always hope.” His eyes burned with a feverish light, and before she could look away, he bent to kiss her. It was soft, tender…delicious. Someone moaned, she wasn’t sure who. All she knew was that his mouth was on hers again, molding it, tasting it, making her hungry in the way that only he seemed able to do. “Maria…” he breathed. Seizing her by the arms, he drew her up into his embrace. “My God, I’ve thought of nothing but you since that day in the carriage.

So much strain and muscular labor involved in absorbing food. I’m exhausted just watching it. But above all there is speech, incessant speaking, where the inflated edges of the tube are stretched and contracted, knotted and unknotted, ripped open or pressed shut, flued and drummed, hammered and gnawed. Licked. That tube has two ends. To the far end goes all ignominy, and to the fore end all the glory, hymns of praise. Her lips were lovely. The swollen ring at one end of the tube, fastened to rings and riggings of muscle. All these sounds. It’s exhausting. I notice the upper jaw doesn’t move at all, only the lower. You see the skull so clearly I wonder people don’t think of death whenever they witness speech, or speak themselves, feeling that hinge flap up and down, and even back and forth a bit—how can it go back and forth? Is the socket that loose, or is it something else, like a leather hinge, like a book binding?

The parasol wasn’t a very good cane. Its tip dug into the hard, grassless earth, and the folded frame creaked as Kestrel limped across the grounds. But it brought her where she needed to go. She found Arin walking through the bare orange grove, horse tack draped over his shoulder. It jangled when he stopped and stared at her. He stood, shoulders stiff. As Kestrel came close she saw that his jaw was clenched, and that there was no trace of what her guards had done to him. No bruises. Nor would there be, not for something that had happened nearly a month ago. “Did I shame you?” Kestrel said. Something strange crossed his face. “Shame me,” Arin repeated. He looked up into the empty branches as if he expected to see fruit there, as if it weren’t almost winter. “The book. The inscription I read. The duel. The way I tricked you. The order I gave to have you imprisoned. Did I shame you?” He crossed his arms over his chest. He shook his head, his gaze never wavering from the trees. “No. The god of debts knows what I owe.” “Then what is it?” Kestrel was trying so hard not to ask about the rumors or the woman in the market that she said something worse. “Why won’t you look at me?” “I shouldn’t even be speaking with you,” he muttered. It dawned on her why it had never made sense that Rax had been the one to release Arin. “My father,” she said. “Arin, you don’t have to worry about him. He’ll be leaving the morning of the Firstwinter ball. The entire regiment has been ordered east to fight the barbarians.” “What?” He glanced at her, eyes sharp. “Things can be as they were.” “I don’t think so.” “But…you are my friend.” His expression changed, though not in a way Kestrel could read. “Just tell me what’s wrong, Arin. Tell me the truth.” When he spoke, his voice was raw. “You own me. How can you believe I’ll tell you the truth? Why would I?” The parasol trembled in Kestrel’s grip. She opened her mouth to speak, yet realized that if she did, she wouldn’t be able to control what she said. “I will tell you something you can trust is true.” Arin’s eyes held hers. “We are not friends.” Kestrel swallowed. “You’re right,” she whispered. “We’re not.

His fingers unhooked from hers, following that same path up her arm, and then back down it again. The feeling was so distracting, so good, so sweet against her clammy skin. She didn't choose a piece from her repertoire; Etta gave herself over to the notes that started streaming through her mind, rising from somewhere deep inside of her. The melody of her heart had no name; it was quick, and light. It rolled with the waves, falling as the breath left his chest, rising as he inhaled. It was the rain sliding down the glass; the fog spreading its fingers over the water. The creaking of a ship's great body. The secrets whispered by the wind, and the unseen life that moved below. It was the flame against the candle. Nicholas's arm was a map of hard muscles and delicate sinews, heartbreakingly perfect. She wondered if he could hear her humming the piece against his skin over the droning roars overhead. Maybe. His free hand skimmed up her skin, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake. With the world blacked out around them, she could catalog all over her senses, capture this moment in the warm darkness forever. He brushed back the loose hair across her forehead, cheek, the corner of her lips, her jaw, and she knew it had to be the same for him, that they'd never been so aware of another person in their entire lives. She released his arm, and he drew it up around her, guiding both of them down so they were on their sides, their heads cushioned by the bag, his jacket drawn over them. Etta understood that here, in the darkness, they'd found a place beyond rules; a place that hung somewhere between the past and the future. This was a single moment of possibility. The clattering of the attack from above faded as he rested his forehead against hers, his thumb lightly stroking a bruise on her cheek. She traced his face - the straight nose, the high, proud cheekbones, the full curve of his lips. His hand caught her there, taking it in his own; he pressed a hard, almost despairing kiss to it. But when she tilted her face up, half - desperate with longing, her blood racing, Nicholas pulled back; and although Etta could feel him beside her, his heart pounding, his ragged breath, it was as if he had disappeared into the thundering dark.

I got you these.” I flipped open the satchel again, offering him the book on gemstones first and Orion’s jaw went slack as he took the book from my hand, turning it over gently like it was the most precious thing in the world. “Oh my stars,” he gasped, grabbing the bag from me and rifling through the books with a youthful smile on his face. I snorted a laugh as Darius gave me a pointed look, realising I’d just lost myself fifty auras, but the look on Orion’s face was definitely worth it. “I’m afraid Highspell had some of your other ones burned,” I said with a frown and I immediately regretted saying that as Orion looked like I’d just told him I’d murdered his puppy. “Burned them?” he rasped and I nodded, offering him an apologetic look as he hugged the bag of books to his chest like he didn’t want them to hear what had happened to their friends. “Sorry, man.” Darius rested a hand to Orion’s shoulder and he growled. “I’ll murder that fake-faced witch,” he snarled, his fangs on show as he held onto his books even tighter and I was pretty sure he was making that promise to them. Dude would definitely kill in revenge for those books.

Well, forgive the fuck out of me for being shocked senseless when I realized he wasn’t dead. Why didn’t you tell me he was the beast, Ryodan? Why did we have to kill him? I know it’s not because he can’t control himself when he’s the beast. He controlled himself last night when he rescued me from the Book. He can change at will, can’t he? What happened in the Silvers? Does the place have some kind of effect on you, make you uncontrollable?” I almost slapped myself in the forehead. Barrons had told me that the reason he tattooed himself with black and red protection runes was because using dark magic called a price due, unless you took measures to protect yourself against the backlash. Did using IYD require the blackest kind of magic to make it work? Would it grant his demand to magically transport him to me no matter where I was but devolve him into the darkest, most savage version of himself as the price? “It was because of how he got there, wasn’t it?” I said. “The spell you two worked sent him to me like was it was supposed to, but the cost was that it turned him into the lowest common denominator of himself. An insane killing machine. Which he figured was all right, because if I was dying, I’d probably need a killing machine around. A champion to show up and decimate all my enemies. That was it, wasn’t it?” Ryodan had gone completely still. Not a muscle twitched. I wasn’t sure he was breathing. “He knew what would happen if I pressed IYD, and he made plans with you to handle it.” That was Barrons, always thinking, always managing risks where I was concerned. “He tattooed me so he would sense his mark on me and not kill me. And you were supposed to track him—that’s why you both wear those cuffs, so you can find each other—and kill him so he’d come back as the man form of himself, and I’d never be any wiser. I’d get rescues and have no clue it was Barrons who’d done it or that he sometimes turns into a beast. But you screwed up. And that’s what he was mad at you about this morning on the phone. It was your failure to kill him that let the cat out of the bag.” A tiny muscle twitched in his jaw. He was pissed. I was definitely right. “He can always circumvent the price of black magic,” I marveled. “When you kill him, he comes back exactly the same as before, doesn’t he? He could tattoo his whole body with protection runes and, when he ran out of skin, kill himself so he could come back with a clean slate, to start all over.” That was why his tattoos weren’t always the same. “Talk about your ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card! And if you hadn’t botched the plan, I would never have known. It’s your fault I know, Ryodan. I think that means it’s not me you should kill, it’s yourself. Oh, gee, wait,” I said sarcastically, “that wouldn’t work, would it?

When the attendant at Britz Rentals of Australia whipped around in our prepaid-in-full honeymoon car, my eyes grew wide and I knew we were in trouble. It was an SUV, yes, and a Toyota Land Cruiser at that--just as Marlboro Man had ordered. It was white and clean and very shiny. And painted in huge bright orange and royal blue lettering across the hood, the roof, all four doors, and the tailgate of the vehicle, were scrawled the enormous words: BRITZ RENTALS OF AUSTRALIA. I could see Marlboro Man’s jaw muscles flex as he beheld his worst nightmare playing out in front of his eyes. He could hardly even bear to gaze upon such an attention-grabbing abomination, let alone conceive of driving it all over an entire continent. Unfortunately, our last-minute attempts to trade to another vehicle proved to be futile; even if Britz hadn’t been completely booked that week, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Every single car in their fleet was smeared with the exact same orange and blue promotional graffiti. Having no other transportational alternative, we set off on our drive, a black cloud of conspicuousness and, in Marlboro Man’s case, dread following us everywhere we went. Being an attention-seeking middle child, I didn’t really mind it much. But for Marlboro Man, this was more than his makeup was programmed to handle. As far as he was concerned, we were the Griswolds, and the Land Cruiser was our Family Truckster. It was a pox on what might have been the perfect honeymoon. Except for my inner ear disturbance. And the vomiting. And the slightly marsupial undertone to the hamburgers.

Chessler squirmed in his chair. “Not entirely. In the unlikely event that the transportation of two billion Christians occurs, it could throw the entire ten kingdoms into chaos.” He lowered his voice. “It could start a world revolution against the one-world government—make the greatest case for Christianity since the resurrection.” Jason stared skeptically at his uncle. “If over a billion people got transported into the ether, with credible witnesses on hand, it would be the biggest news coup in the world.” “Precisely. Then you understand the situation, Jason —which is that we have no option.” He shrugged his shoulders. Jason frowned. “What do you mean, you have ‘no option’?” “We intend to execute a false-flag operation.” Jason’s grin evaporated. This man was serious. “An event that will have all the appearance of a weaponized bioterror attack in North America, China, Russia. A pandemic. “Of course, dear boy, it won’t be real.” Chessler looked disarmingly into Jason’s eyes “But it has to give every appearance of a pandemic: martial law, quarantine centers, mandatory vaccination . . . ” “You’re talking about body bags flown in at night . . . ” Jason’s jaw set. “Making it look like billions of people have died of ebola, smallpox, or whatever.” “Precisely. You always got to the crux of a problem, Jason. Your mother’s acumen. If the Rapture occurs, no one will ever know. VOX will communicate the event to the masses. Exclusive coverage. Media blackout except for VOX networks.” Jason looked into his coffee and stirred it distractedly. “You’re talking about a cover-up of immeasurable proportions.” “Correct again. The Rapture never occurred. Millions of Christians died with the rest of the population—a tragic bioterror event that we, the powers that be, shall blame on China.

Maybe they’d give her everything she wanted. All it would cost was her secrets. Charlie pasted a smile on her face. Glanced at the old “fear less” tattoo looping across the skin of her inner arm. “Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “In that case, I’d like to confess.” “Confess?” Vicereine echoed, puzzled. “Do you remember when Brayan Araya had his secrets written with a laser on grains of rice and kept them in a glass jar under his pillow? I snatched that like I was the tooth fairy. Or remember when Eshe Goodwin got that book with all the detailed illustrations and no one could make head or tail of it? The secrets were written in the artwork, so I cut those pages straight out. I’m not sure she’s opened it up to know they’re missing. I took Owain Cadwallader’s eighteenth-century memoir and discovered a whole pile of notes stitched into the interior binding of another book—I forget the title, but it had these cool metal catches on the side—and took those without letting anyone be the wiser. Oh, and I grabbed Jaden Coffey’s whole collection of seventies shadow magic zines. Want me to go on? I’ve been doing this for years.” She felt giddy, like she was sliding down a hill, no way to stop now. All the exultation of finally admitting to something. “You cut out pages from Eshe’s book?” Vicereine sounded pissed. “I’m a bad person.” Charlie reached into the pocket of her jeans, took something out, and threw it to Malik. Startled, he caught it. When he looked at what was in his hands, his brows drew together. “I also grabbed your wallet when I brushed by you. Sorry.” “You are making some very dangerous enemies,” Vicereine told her. “What’s this all about?” Malik was tight-jawed. “What are you doing?” “Punish me,” Charlie said. “I’m loads worse than Adeline.” “You want it tied to you?” Bellamy asked. The idea of someone inside her head, someone she couldn’t hide her worst thoughts from, someone she loved, made her feel a little queasy. “Yes. Reward or punishment, give him to me. I’ll be the Hierophant.

The door opened. We all froze. “Mom, this isn’t what it looks like.” Mom put her hand on her hip. “It looks like a group of boys wrestling on the floor of your bedroom while you watch. Wearing a towel.” “Okay,” I admitted, “it is what it looks like, but it’s not—” “Sexual?” She raised her eyebrows. “Mom!” Luna stuck her head under Mom’s arm and sucked in a breath. “She’s gone from a love triangle to a kinky sex pentagon.” Blake lifted his head. “Vote for Team Blake!” Mom rolled her eyes. “Boys, vacate. Now. Aurora get dressed. And everybody head downstairs. Breakfast is on. I made quiche. There’s plenty for all.” “First edible breakfast in weeks,” Luna said. Blake smacked his lips. “Yum!” Mom checked behind the door. “Ayden’s not here, is he?” I shook my head. “Then there’s no lust factor. Although, your father may not be as easy going as I am. So, gentlemen, get out.”  As she left, Mom dragged Luna away with her. Blake shook off the other boys and stood. “That’s offensive. I’m a very lustful guy.” “And a big blabbermouth.” Logan whacked the back of Blake’s head. “But remember you can’t tell—” “Ayden!” Blake shouted. “Right,” Tristan said, “or —” “No, it’s…” Wide-eyed, Blake jerked his chin toward my door. Our heads swiveled. Ayden filled the doorway, leaning against the frame, arms folded. “What can’t you tell me?” He arched one eyebrow awaiting a reply. The silence seemed ready to explode. Ayden zeroed in on Blake. “Come on, Weak Link, give it up.” Blake blurted out, “Jayden was in the shower with Aurora!”  I choked. “What!” “You idiot!” Logan thumped Blake repeatedly. “Technically, that’s true.” Jayden said. “But only once.” Ayden’s arms dropped. Along with his jaw. Tristan jumped up and shoved Jayden’s shoulder. “Shut up!” I tugged the towel tighter. “Ayden, that didn’t happen. Exactly. Guys, he already knows the Divinicus thing.” “Oh, good.” Blake was relieved. “Secrets? Not my thing.” “No kidding,” I said. “You told Blake before me?” Ayden said. “Unbelievable.” Blake raised his brows. “What’s that supposed to mean?" I held up my hand. “I didn’t tell anyone.” “Oh, my God! Why are you in a towel?” A & E Kirk (2014-05-26). Drop Dead Demons: The Divinicus Nex Chronicles: Book 2 (Divinicus Nex Chronicles series) (pp. 466-467). A&E Kirk. Kindle Edition.

What a joy this book is! I love recipe books, but it’s short-lived; I enjoy the pictures for several minutes, read a few pages, and then my eyes glaze over. They are basically books to be used in the kitchen for one recipe at a time. This book, however, is in a different class altogether and designed to be read in its entirety. It’s in its own sui generis category; it has recipes at the end of most of the twenty-one chapters, but it’s a book to be read from cover to cover, yet it could easily be read chapter by chapter, in any order, as they are all self-contained. Every bite-sized chapter is a flowing narrative from a well-stocked brain encompassing Balinese culture, geography and history, while not losing its main focus: food. As you would expect from a scholar with a PhD in history from Columbia University, the subject matter has been meticulously researched, not from books and articles and other people’s work, but from actually being on the ground and in the markets and in the kitchens of Balinese families, where the Balinese themselves learn their culinary skills, hands on, passed down orally, manually and practically from generation to generation. Vivienne Kruger has lived in Bali long enough to get it right. That’s no mean feat, as the subject has not been fully studied before. Yes, there are so-called Balinese recipe books, most, if I’m not mistaken, written by foreigners, and heavily adapted. The dishes have not, until now, been systematically placed in their proper cultural context, which is extremely important for the Balinese, nor has there been any examination of the numerous varieties of each type of recipe, nor have they been given their true Balinese names. This groundbreaking book is a pleasure to read, not just for its fascinating content, which I learnt a lot from, but for the exuberance, enthusiasm and originality of the language. There’s not a dull sentence in the book. You just can’t wait to read the next phrase. There are eye-opening and jaw-dropping passages for the general reader as Kruger describes delicacies from the village of Tengkudak in Tabanan district — grasshoppers, dragonflies, eels and live baby bees — and explains how they are caught and cooked. She does not shy away from controversial subjects, such as eating dog and turtle. Parts of it are not for the faint-hearted, but other parts make you want to go out and join the participants, such as the Nusa Lembongan fishermen, who sail their outriggers at 5.30 a.m. The author quotes Miguel Covarrubias, the great Mexican observer of the 1930s, who wrote “The Island of Bali.” It has inspired all writers since, including myself and my co-author, Ni Wayan Murni, in our book “Secrets of Bali, Fresh Light on the Morning of the World.” There is, however, no bibliography, which I found strange at first. I can only imagine it’s a reflection of how original the subject matter is; there simply are no other sources. Throughout the book Kruger mentions Balinese and Indonesian words and sometimes discusses their derivations. It’s a Herculean task. I was intrigued to read that “satay” comes from the Tamil word for flesh ( sathai ) and that South Indians brought satay to Southeast Asia before Indonesia developed its own tradition. The book is full of interesting tidbits like this. The book contains 47 recipes in all, 11 of which came from Murni’s own restaurant, Murni’s Warung, in Ubud. Mr Dolphin of Warung Dolphin in Lovina also contributed a number of recipes. Kruger adds an introduction to each recipe, with a detailed and usually very personal commentary. I think my favorite, though, is from a village priest (pemangku), I Made Arnila of the Ganesha (Siwa) Temple in Lovina. water. I am sure most will enjoy this book enormously; I certainly did.” Review published in The Jakarta Globe, April 17, 2014. Jonathan Copeland is an author and photographer based in Bali. thejakartaglobe/features/spiritual-journey-culinary-world-bali