Martin's Must-Reads

“In a blinding flash, a frightening memory materialized in Gessner’s consciousness. She now realized where her physical body was lying at this very instant…and, even more terrifying, what was being done to her. She was on her back, tightly strapped into a machine she herself had created. A monster stood over her."

“It’s…nice.” Max didn’t sound like he meant it. He hadn’t picked Vista View—that would be Alice again. We were standing a few feet from the entrance, watching a fake waterfall trickle over fake river rock, trying to work up the resolve to go inside. Upstairs, movers were arranging what remained of my furniture without me, but I couldn’t seem to get past the forecourt.”

“This book was born on a cold, drizzly, late spring day when I clambered over the split-rail cedar fence that surrounds my pasture and made my way through wet woods to the modest frame house where Joe Rantz lay dying….”

“Upstairs, Lisavet,” he said, reaching into his coat for the pocket watch. The old familiar brass was slick in his palm. His fingers fumbled over the crown until it clicked into place, and he flungopen the door. What had once been their cozy, two-room apartment was instead a silent cavern of shadows. “I want you to wait in there. Stay right there by this door.”

“Right about Fence Five, I started to think, the movies lied to me. Roxie had her head up in front of me, so high I was almost looking between the black tips crowning her chocolate-brown ears. They perfectly framed the jump we were approaching. A jump I had thought would be easy—just a little row of barrels!—but my headstrong mare clearly disagreed.”

“On the left, right, and rear walls were portraits, ninety-two of them in total, done in pencil on white paper and in black frames of three sizes. All had obviously been done by the same artist. And, as if to reflect the customers in the shop at that moment, the collection included a full range of humanity—age, race, and expression. Portraits and portraits and more portraits.”

“They show you how to make bombs on the internet. If you know where to look. What to buy, where to buy it from. How to fit the whole thing together. There are even videos…They don’t really tell you about the risks. But the risks stand to reason. Be careful with explosives, that doesn’t need to be spelled out to anyone surely?”

“And whose nitwit idea was this?’ Betty Hardacre snapped, her orthopedic shoes sinking into sand. Betty was the chair of the Episcopal Church Women. She prided herself on upholding the parish’s long-standing traditions. Pastor Miranda McCurdy looked up from the grill where she tended to the sizzling barbecue. As the first woman to lead St. Gabriel-by-the-Sea in 180 years, she was used to resistance.”

“The story begins around the year 2500 B.C.E. Seth trudged across the Great Plain, carrying on his back a wickerwork basket containing flints to be traded. He was with his father and two older brothers. He hated all three of them.”

“Dear Dr. Sharon, The self-portrait you requested is attached. I make my living drawing marble installations to scale. I’m a draftsman who also provides designs for customers. Forgive the lack of nuance in the sketch, but it is a truthful rendering of how I see myself."

“Father Kavanagh. Pen in hand and his notebook open before him, he was ready to do what he did every November: Get started on his Christmas list. By seven thirty a.m., he had prayed with his wife, checked his sugar, had his shot, and polished off his stone-ground oatmeal with raw honey and multigrain toast. This upbeat start on the morning had made him overconfident - his pen was poised but nothing was happening. The grand expectation of churning through the list was morphing into a muse.”

“The sun is leaving for the day, and I probably should too. I shouldn’t be here at all. This has to stop, everyone says so. It’s not healthy, Cady. It’s not right. Not normal, not legal.”

“New Orleans - 1866. I had few pleasures to call my own. There was the peace found in the attic where I was made to board, the transporting comfort of the books in Mrs. Harper’s library, the deliciousness of the sweet bread I purchased with my allowance from the bakery down the road each Sunday of rest. But all of it paled in comparison to the joy brought upon me by Oliver, the terrier I considered my own.”

“Thursday, December 27th, eleven p.m. Kuldesh Sharma hopes he’s in the right place. He parks up at the end of the dirt track, hemmed in on all sides by trees, ghoulish in the darkness. He had finally made up his mind at about four this afternoon, sitting in the back room of his shop. The box was sitting on the table in front of him. He made two phone calls, and now here he is."

On a recent trip, I listened to the audiobook of Chris Bohjalian’s civil war novel The Jackal’s Mistress. Based on a real-life story, it presents an interesting dilemma... How much would you risk to help a wounded enemy?

“Sybil is a mother and grandmother, divorced, retired from a distinguished career in law, these things are all there around her. On Monday around ten or half past Sybil Van Antwerp sits down at her desk again. It is the correspondence that is her manner of living.”

“On February 19, 1963, a troublesome, imperfect, controversial woman named Betty Friedan published a troublesome, imperfect, controversial book titled “The Feminine Mystique.” The book didn’t solve the problem. But it did put a name to it, shining a light that helped women who felt isolated and powerless find one another, and their voices.”

“A sleek black motorcar was edging its way through the crowds of passengers going toward the boat. It stopped when it was still a good ten yards away from her, and a woman got out at the passenger side with a canvas bag in her hand and a bundle in a blanket in the crook of her other arm. She was not young, sixty if she was a day.”

“Bethany Waites understands there is no going back now. Time to be brave, and to see how this all plays out. She weighs the bullet in her hand. Life is about understanding opportunities. Understanding how rarely they come along, and then rising to meet them when they do."

“A human life improved by a dog isn’t just a theoretical concept. It’s a real life event that happens a million times a day, all over the world.”

“There’s an old saying about stories, and how there are always three versions of them: yours, mine and the truth. The guy who first said it worked in the film business, but it holds true for journalism too. We’re not really supposed to take sides. We’re supposed to deal in facts: Facts add up to truth.”

“Volterra. The ninth of April, 1478. They put her little brother in a cage. Her brother, who wasn’t so little anymore, but because Ravenna Maffei was older, she would always think of him that way."

“His name was David Winkler and he was fifty-nine years old. This would be his first trip home in twenty-five years - if home was what he could still call it."