Non-Stop Reads: 08/09/13

Friday, August 9, 2013

The Forth Conspiracy by THOMAS THORPE

The Forth Conspiracy by THOMAS THORPE

A thin red trail flowed over ivory-colored marble.

It curled left and crossed a second tiny stream before pausing to expand at a seam between tiles. The fluid resumed its course until a new stream snaked to join the current, sprouting from the pool of blood three feet away.

William watched the pattern evolve with morbid fascination.

The house was unusually quiet. He stood still; head cocked, listening, no sounds of servants moving or clatter of pans from the kitchen. He glanced at the pendulum clock in the hall. Ten to six.

He crouched by the body sprawled beneath the upstairs balcony.

The back of John Forthwait’s head was an ugly mass of brown twists and maroon paste. His face lay turned toward the half-parted doorway, staring with a lifeless eye and open mouth. A crumpled nightshirt draped onto the stained floor, which transformed the white cloth to a shade of burgundy.

Shuffling sounds filtered in from outside. William straightened, hearing his brother-in-law climb the front steps. The door swung open with a blast of morning light. Charles’ quiet conversation with Emily and Elizabeth abruptly ended.

“My God, it’s Forthwait!”

Charles twisted to shield the women’s wide-eyed glimpses. He looked back quizzically over his shoulder.

William glanced once more at the corpse, and shook his head with sudden impatience at his timid relation. “Don’t bother about that, help me roll his body over.”

They lifted the sagging flesh. Splotched fabric fell away revealing an ugly gash at the victim’s midsection.

Elizabeth darted upstairs.

Emily stood behind the men, rubbing her pale arms in an effort to stop trembling. “How could this happen? We were outside for less than an hour.”

She looked up to see her two sisters start down the curved stairway. Elizabeth clutched her sibling tightly, forcing the cringing girl to take each step toward the tragedy below. When they reached the landing, eighteen-year-old Victoria stopped to behold her boyfriend’s rumpled mass. Color drained from her face with eyes looking as lifeless as those of dead man. Abruptly, she fainted.

Charles lunged to keep her sagging head from hitting the floor. He carried her limp torso into the adjoining room and settled it onto a chesterfield. Relieved of his burden, he headed to the servant’s quarters, shouting names to arouse the household.

Cold nausea gripped William. He shot a worried glance at Elizabeth. Neither his years at Oxford nor a sizeable fortune would do them much good in the face of a murder investigation. They had enough to worry about without this unthinkable crime at his brother-in-law’s estate.

He took his wife’s arm and looked up at the balcony above. “The wound suggests he was stabbed, and pushed over the upstairs railing,”

Elizabeth put a hand to her mouth. “No! Who would do such a thing?”

“It’s these damn Forth’s. They won’t let up until they have everything we own. Now, somehow, one of us has killed their relation. They’ll come after us for this.”

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Genre – Historical / Mystery / Thriller

Rating – PG

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The Practical Guide to Happiness by Margaret Curley Sanborn

Can You Learn to be Happy, with Who You Are, Where You Are and What You Have, Now?

If you are willing, YOU CAN, regardless of the cards you have been dealt.

The “pursuit of happiness” is a human right so basic that it’s named in the US Constitution. Unfortunately for most, it is little more than a pursuit, as happiness is elusive to many. The Practical Guide to Happiness: If you don’t like how you’re feeling, Think Again delineates, in a concrete way, the direct link between perception, thinking and feeling.

By using highly relatable stories, readers of the book are able to form a concrete link between abstract ideas regarding how they perceive and think, and how they feel. Realistic characters deal with real-life circumstances to demonstrate how the same situation and events, perceived and thought about differently, can yield different levels of happiness.

The Practical Guide to Happiness educates the reader on the number one challenge to their happiness, the human ego. The reader learns about the power of the human ego to provide a continuous negative diatribe that makes constantly holding positive beliefs about the future, in the face of the challenges of ordinary life, almost impossible. It explains how the ego will impede and thwart most people who chart a course to manifest the type of results that experts, in leading positive thinking books, cite. It then teaches the reader how to curb the ego, and to Think Again.

By using the Think Again strategies, the user learns to create happiness now, regardless of less than ideal life circumstances.

The first half of the book contains engaging stories that directly address the greatest illusions to American happiness, including: personal weight, beauty, wealth, relationships, work, retirement, and child-bearing.

Through these realistic stories, the reader is shown how even small shifts in perception and thinking create happiness and/or misery for the stories’ characters. The stories do not all have a happy ending as shifts in perception may impact the ultimate outcome, but the point of the book is to show the reader that lasting happiness is not tied to people, events or circumstances.

After drawing the reader through interesting examples of how perception and thinking create feelings, the book shifts to a practical guide the reader can use to identify, analyze and change their own negative thinking. The second half of this book is a detailed guide for changing perception and thinking to increase happiness. This section includes 8 practical actions the reader can take every day to curb their negative thinking, as well as the 6 steps required to Think Again (or change their mind).

Unlike many good books on this subject, The Practical Guide to Happiness does not have a religious bent. Although it acknowledges spirituality and God, it expressly gives readers the ability to proceed from their own beliefs, including atheism.

This book is exclusively focused on empowering the reader to become happier today, regardless of their current life challenges.

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Genre – Self Help

Rating – G

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Website http://www.ifuthink.com

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Sex and Death in the American Novel by Sarah Martinez

My apartment was near the Arboretum in Seattle, hidden back from the road beneath a canopy of dark green trees. When I got home, I slept for the rest of the day. A week with my brother had been draining. When I woke the next morning, I sat in my study staring at my laptop, flipping through my books, unable to call forth the buzz that usually came from three separate ideas fighting it out while I slept. This focus I normally had in abundance early in the morning. The books reminded me of how Tristan helped me move into my apartment downtown after Dad died two years ago. When I set up my office, he said there was too much light, but I loved it. I had a bedroom with tall windows down one wall, a study that was smaller but just as bright. There was a large living room with a kitchen bar attached. We arranged my bookcases both in the living room and study, going over all the books we had in common. He fingered the shiny, new, unread books he sent me after he got into this big literary phase.

“Jesus, this is some collection,” he said as he unpacked the boxes of erotic novels.

“Those are for the study,” I said, and he obediently dragged the boxes in there. When I followed him he said, “Don't you have a bunch of dishes to put away? I can handle this.”

I was suspicious, he seemed to want to be alone with my books, many of which he joked about destroying. “What are you up to? If you do anything to my erotic space operas…”

“Relax Max.” He used a term our father used to use on us both as children. It made me smile. “I can alphabetize quicker than you. And don't worry, I will put your Marquis with the S&M, the dick burners with the dick burners and so on.”

Skeptical, but unwilling to turn down his offer to help on what was in fact a large job, I moved toward the kitchen. After a few moments I heard the comforting and familiar knocking of the books against the wood of the bookcase. He was in there most of the afternoon, long after I moved on from the kitchen to my bedroom. I was just finishing up putting away towels and sundries in the bathroom when he finally announced he was done. I inspected his work while he sat in my swivel chair, checking out the contents of my drawers.

“You did a great job,” I told him. “Everything appears to be in the right place.” I fingered the shelf above my head where my father's books stood like a stand-in for his wrinkled disapproval.

He held up Chronicle, a short story I'd written that was more about family life than sex.

“This isn't bad, Slug,” he said, holding one page up. “I can feel the hatred coming off the page.”

“Yeah, so far the only non-romance stuff I write about is about Dad. There is still a dick in it though.”

He nodded and pushed his lips together, but didn't say anything.

“It's like I don't have enough middle fingers you know?”