BOOKLOVES

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 […]

The night after Thanksgiving, Elena Hood takes the turkey carcass out of the refrigerator and carves what is left of it onto three plates, with a block of frozen peas melting in its own synthetic butter. The meat is dry. She knows it is dry, and the knowledge feels to her like a moral failure. […]