Martin's Must-Reads

“Although this book is a work of fiction, the quotes that appear in front of the chapters are all real and verifiable. Many of the cited journals and articles were kept in the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, which existed as a distinguished part of the university from 1930 until 1965. Inside the laboratory, researchers conducted tests designed to measure the psychic abilities of college students a...

“I still dream of birds. I watch them circle, dive into rough waves, and fly up to the sun. I call to them but hear no answer. Alone, I stand on a stone island. I watch for ships and see three coming. Tall ships close enough to hail. I load my musket and shoot into the air. When I shoot into the air, ten thousand birds rise screaming. Their wings beat against the wind. All the sailors hear and see...

“It’s interesting to note that there are two groups of people who are rarely, if ever, suspected of murder. These groups are elderly women and little girls. On the whole, when it comes to murder, the stats very much favor the men. The odd woman is thrown into the mix every now and again, but she’s inevitably perimenopausal (and having been through the change myself, certainly understand why). But...

“The Malicarn. The sixteenth winter in the reign of Queen Hannah. At night the master would invite the journeymen and apprentices to supper with his family, and that is where Buck first heard real tales of the old wars. How there used to be hundreds of wizards, how the old king Prion, himself once just a lowly sheepherder, became the one to unite them against the Dark Mages, how the many men of th...

“When they built the retirement property on Maui then, and he told her abruptly and without warning that he wanted to sell their other houses, the prospect frightened her."

“Alfred, the youngest, blond, stubborn, and adventurous. Inez, the middle child, blue-eyed, a dreamer who heard music in the woods no one else could, and who could replay it by memory on her violin. And Marguerite, the eldest who even before she’d mastered her alphabet, invented feral dances and rambling plays, persuading her siblings to perform alongside her for their parents and the nanny and fo...

“Stephen Rensselaer was named after the famous and sometimes infamous Hudson Valley Stephen Van Rensselaers of earlier times. But years before Annapolis, and perhaps why he chose the Naval Academy, he came to associate his first name with that of Stephen Decatur, the youngest captain in the Navy’s history and the hero of the Barbary Wars, whose life was heroic but whose death was not. Neither the...

“Alice. July 5, 1976. The first time Alice saw them, they were walking side by side on the narrow gravel road that led into the RV park and campground. A boy and girl, moving together in a slow, slouching way with his arm around her shoulders, and her hand tucked into the back pocket of his bell-bottoms. His army-style backpack looked heavy, the seams stretching, a rolled-up orange sleeping bag ti...

“In a blinding flash, a frightening memory materialized in Gessner’s consciousness. She now realized where her physical body was lying at this very instant…and, even more terrifying, what was being done to her. She was on her back, tightly strapped into a machine she herself had created. A monster stood over her."

“It’s…nice.” Max didn’t sound like he meant it. He hadn’t picked Vista View—that would be Alice again. We were standing a few feet from the entrance, watching a fake waterfall trickle over fake river rock, trying to work up the resolve to go inside. Upstairs, movers were arranging what remained of my furniture without me, but I couldn’t seem to get past the forecourt.”

“This book was born on a cold, drizzly, late spring day when I clambered over the split-rail cedar fence that surrounds my pasture and made my way through wet woods to the modest frame house where Joe Rantz lay dying….”

“Upstairs, Lisavet,” he said, reaching into his coat for the pocket watch. The old familiar brass was slick in his palm. His fingers fumbled over the crown until it clicked into place, and he flungopen the door. What had once been their cozy, two-room apartment was instead a silent cavern of shadows. “I want you to wait in there. Stay right there by this door.”

“Right about Fence Five, I started to think, the movies lied to me. Roxie had her head up in front of me, so high I was almost looking between the black tips crowning her chocolate-brown ears. They perfectly framed the jump we were approaching. A jump I had thought would be easy—just a little row of barrels!—but my headstrong mare clearly disagreed.”

“On the left, right, and rear walls were portraits, ninety-two of them in total, done in pencil on white paper and in black frames of three sizes. All had obviously been done by the same artist. And, as if to reflect the customers in the shop at that moment, the collection included a full range of humanity—age, race, and expression. Portraits and portraits and more portraits.”

“They show you how to make bombs on the internet. If you know where to look. What to buy, where to buy it from. How to fit the whole thing together. There are even videos…They don’t really tell you about the risks. But the risks stand to reason. Be careful with explosives, that doesn’t need to be spelled out to anyone surely?”

“And whose nitwit idea was this?’ Betty Hardacre snapped, her orthopedic shoes sinking into sand. Betty was the chair of the Episcopal Church Women. She prided herself on upholding the parish’s long-standing traditions. Pastor Miranda McCurdy looked up from the grill where she tended to the sizzling barbecue. As the first woman to lead St. Gabriel-by-the-Sea in 180 years, she was used to resistanc...

“The story begins around the year 2500 B.C.E. Seth trudged across the Great Plain, carrying on his back a wickerwork basket containing flints to be traded. He was with his father and two older brothers. He hated all three of them.”

“Dear Dr. Sharon, The self-portrait you requested is attached. I make my living drawing marble installations to scale. I’m a draftsman who also provides designs for customers. Forgive the lack of nuance in the sketch, but it is a truthful rendering of how I see myself."

“Father Kavanagh. Pen in hand and his notebook open before him, he was ready to do what he did every November: Get started on his Christmas list. By seven thirty a.m., he had prayed with his wife, checked his sugar, had his shot, and polished off his stone-ground oatmeal with raw honey and multigrain toast. This upbeat start on the morning had made him overconfident - his pen was poised but nothing...

“The sun is leaving for the day, and I probably should too. I shouldn’t be here at all. This has to stop, everyone says so. It’s not healthy, Cady. It’s not right. Not normal, not legal.”