BOOKLOVES

A casserole hits the kitchen floor. Bazil Coutts has come in quietly, the way he always used to, and put his arms around his wife at the sink, and the dish is in pieces before either of them can speak. Geraldine looks at him, steps over the mess and climbs the stairs without a sound, […]

The killing frost has finally arrived in Tinker’s Cove, blackening the last chrysanthemums, and Lucy Stone takes her ageing black Lab out on the old logging road to enjoy it. At Blueberry Pond, newly sealed with smooth ice, she pauses to practise the mindfulness her yoga-teacher friend keeps recommending. When she opens her eyes there […]

Darkly funny and quietly brutal stories about the lives people build around the past The title of M.C. Schmidt’s short story collection, Tell Me Something Before I Show You, is taken from a conversation between thirteen-year-olds: a bargain. A secret for a secret. It’s an apt title for a book about the ambiguity of memory—the […]

The night before Mrs. Scarlatti is brought home from hospital, Ezra Tull takes a sledgehammer to her restaurant. He knocks through the wall between the kitchen and the dining room, and strips out the dark formal trimmings. He has something new in mind: a place where diners can watch the cooking, where the menu is […]

When the clock strikes nine on the night before the holiday, the eldest daughter tucks the little ones under extra quilts, kisses each of them the way her mother would, and climbs into her own bed without minding the small drifts of snow sifting onto her coverlet through the roof shingles. The old mastiff lies […]