A few months ago, I was on vacation in Portland, Maine, and decided to visit Henry Wadsworth-Longfellow’s childhood home where he lived until he was 14 years old. Built in 1785 by the poet’s grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, it is a neoclassical-style building and the oldest standing structure on the Portland peninsula. Anne Longfellow Pierce, the poet’s younger sister lived in the house until her death in 1901, and left it…
Tag: death
Guest Post
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The City of the Dead
The following is a guest post by Louis Alan Swartz, author of Constructed of Magic. If you would like to write a guest post on my blog, please send me an e-mail at contact@cecilesune.com When I was 20 years old, I decided that I had to go see the world. I went on a trip that lasted 10 months to Europe, the Mideast and Africa. This is a story from those…
Ellen Hopkins
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Love Lies Beneath by Ellen Hopkins
Tara lives in San Francisco and is a wealthy 40-year-old confident woman who has been married 3 times but has never been in love. While on vacation in Tahoe with her sister, Melody, she has a skiing accident and ends up in the hospital where she meets handsome Dr. Cavin Lattimore. They start going out, and everything seems to be going great until Tara meets Cavin’s son, Eli. The father-son relationship…
Helen Fielding
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Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones is back and single again! Her husband, Mark Darcy, passed away 5 years earlier, and she is raising their two children alone in London. As a single mom, Bridget has to deal with vomit, head lice, and other kid-related catastrophes, as well as with new technologies such as texting, Twitter and online dating. Life is hard, but she keeps “buggering on”. When she meets a hot younger man, she…
Guest Post
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From Venetian canals to Arizona desert, locales play critical role in mysteries
The following is a guest post by Mark Bacon, author of Death in Nostalgia City. If you would like to write a guest post on my blog, please send me an e-mail at contact@cecilesune.com. Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple belongs in an English drawing room in St. Mary Mead or perhaps somewhere in Cornwall. Author Raymond Chandler often stuck Philip Marlow in some dark alley in LA. Robert B. Parker’s Spenser inhabited…
Kate Mayfield
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The Undertaker’s Daughter by Kate Mayfield
The Undertaker’s Daughter is the true story of Kate Mayfield’s unusual childhood. The first 13 years of her life, she lived in a funeral home in a small town in the South of Kentucky. Frank, her father, was an undertaker, and death was a big part of their lives. When a body was brought to the funeral home, the kids were not supposed to make any noise, so there was no…
Charlie Lovett
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First Impressions by Charlie Lovett
It is not always true that a subtitle aptly sums up what a book is about. However, it certainly is the case here: “A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen”. Sophie Collingwood has just graduated from Oxford when she meets Eric Hall, an intriguing young American teacher who, like her, loves classic literature, especially Jane Austen. Unfortunately, the young man soon leaves for Paris to continue his…
Tennessee Williams
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Did you know that Tennessee Williams was hypochondriac?
He was obsessed with sickness and death, and constantly worried he was going insane. This was the result of being traumatized by his sister’s lobotomy after her mental breakdown. She was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. Tennessee Williams also suffered from depression and bouts of anxiety his whole life, and became dependent on drugs and alcohol. He died in 1983 at the age of 71 as he chocked on the plastic cap of…
Ashley Mackler-Paternostro
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The Milestone Tapes by Ashley Mackler-Paternostro
Jenna Chamberland has breast cancer, and she is dying. She is trying to make the most of her time left with her husband, Gabe, and their 6-year-old daughter, Mia. She also decides to reach out to her estranged sister, Sophia, before it’s too late. In order to be part of her daughter’s life, Jenna records 10 tapes about the future big events in her girl’s existence. And while she talks about…
John Green
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The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Fault in Our Stars is the story of Hazel Grace Lancaster, an empathetic 16-year-old girl with thyroid cancer. She has been battling the illness since the age of 12, and a new drug seems to have stopped the cancer’s progress. She needs to be hooked to an oxygen tank though to help her breathe, and she totes the device wherever she goes. However, illness has isolated her, and she spends…