Ordinary lives are full of highs and lows, tears and laughter. How each of us survives those peaks and valleys is what makes our life unique and extraordinary. This journey down the path of an ordinary life, with all its twists and turns and ups and downs, transformed a shy, insecure girl into a strong and capable woman who has weathered the highs in her life with joy and celebration and the lows with the determination to walk through the storm into the sunshine beyond.
A lonely widow is romanced by a “brilliantly portrayed” pathological killer in this novel by the National Book Award–winning author of them (The New York Times). Dorothea Deverell is a New England art historian working for a Boston museum, resigned to entering middle age alone—until she’s swept off her feet by the flattery of a charming younger man who calls her his soul mate. Colin Asch is swept away too. He admires Dorothea’s gentle nature, innate goodness, decency, and acceptance of others without judgment. She’s nothing at all like the people Colin has met before—and murdered. A self-appointed “Angel of Death,” Colin is determined to keep Dorothea happy—by eliminating anyone who gets in the way of his plan. They’ll be clever kills, untraceable and fast as a knife-slash to the throat. Each one will bring him closer to the woman he loves. And by the time Dorothea discovers what horrors passion has wrought, she’ll be in so deep, so dark, that giving in might be her only chance of survival. This novel, called “a hair-raiser” by Elmore Leonard, comes from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of We Were the Mulvaneys, a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and recipient of the O. Henry Award, the National Book Award, and the Bram Stoker Award. In Soul/Mate, “it is clear from the start that we are in Joyce Carol Oates territory, for the book is stamped with her hallmarks—her complex, detailed prose; her fascination with violence; her obsessive concern with rendering not so much action as the way action haunts the hidden consciousness of her characters” (The New York Times).
The saga of Jake Goodson continues in Volume Two of the trilogy, A Jeweler’s Eye View: The Crucible. The spellbinding sequel to Volume One begins with Jake Goodson continuing in his battle to rescue his children from the clutches of the cult known as the Ekkklesia of Yahoeh. When the Aryan sect has its very existence threatened through legal action taken by Emma’s fiancé, Sam Bailey, the megalomaniacal leader, Daniel Hightower, known to his followers as Kerux Invictus, reacts with unforeseen ferocity. The mesmerizing control he exercises over his followers even leads them into committing murder for their leader. Hightower’s psychopathic obsession with protecting his flock from “demonic attacks from the outside” drives him to outmaneuver Jake and Sam with a martial mastery and Machiavellian cunning that is devastating to both Jake and Sam, leaving their world turned upside down. The ferocity of the attacks from the fascist church reawakens something in Sam that he thought he had left behind in Europe at the end of the Second World War. He shares his own wartime experiences with Jake, beginning in Northern Italy in 1944 all the way through to his arrival at Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany at the end of the war. The saga continues, drawing the reader into the deeper implications of war and peace, and love and hate.
Strewn underneath the photos are eight pieces of torn crumpled paper of a light green color with black marker scribbles in a clear zip bag. "This is really weird", Suray says to herself. She needs to piece up the papers together in order to read the torn scribbles. Those crumpled pieces need to be unraveled and smoothed out by one. The patching up of the pieces is time consuming. She has to get up to her room to find cellophane tape. Eventually the patched up pieces bear these wordings: Meet me near the bridge. If we were really destined to meet. I'll be by the river. Well, well, well....what is that supposed to mean? It feels frustratingly crappy. Where on earth could the bridge be? On top of all that, there are so many rivers in the world. Who wrote this in the first place? It didn't seem like a recognizable handwriting to Suray. Why did the mysterious writer tear the paper into pieces yet keep it in a trunk like a cherished possession. Everything just doesn't make sense. The writer tore the paper to some pieces as if to diminish a secret yet decide not to eliminate it? To whom actually the message on the torn paper is intended? If the writer is her father, it is too late to pursue any possible meet up because he's dead. Perished in the fire by the river of Siam was as told by his uncle Razief, who happens to be her father's twin brother. In silence, she couldn't help feeling and thinking that there is a tiny weeny ounce of possibility that her father is somehow still roaming the Earth.
