Martin's Must-Reads

May 27, 2019. West Tisbury. “Is this the home of Tony Horwitz?” Yes “Who am I speaking to?” This is his wife. That is exact. The rest is a blur.

“Carla. My mother left when I was five years old. I have a photo of the two of us, standing in our yard."

1944 - “Somewhere in the forest, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Second by second, the escape team shifted glances at one another to get a pulse on what others were thinking. Just then, a lone British fighter was spotted in the sky, and the guards ordered their prisoners off the road so they could not be seen from the air. It was exactly the distraction they had been waiting for. Eyes locked, and their leader yelled, ‘Go!'”

“The right book in the right hands of the right person at exactly the right moment can change their life forever. At least, that’s what Alfie has always believed."

“You were right, Zoe. The killer has done this before. He’s done the same thing three times in the past couple of weeks.” Zoe was still lost. It didn’t entirely surprise her that this could be the work of a serial, although there hadn’t been any other crimes like this reported locally. But how could the Feds have linked it to other killings so quickly?"

“Old guy,” my husband said in a low voice, his lips touching my ear. Near the exit sign.” “Stop it.” That joke itself was old as rocks. Jonathan raised his eyebrows. “I’m serious. He kept looking at you in the ticket line. Then he followed us through Medieval Art, and now he’s just standing there. Do you see him? He looks at you whenever you’re not looking.”

“As I was writing this book, a curious fact caught my eye. It was regarding a law passed in 1928 that made it legal to sterilize any person in Mississippi deemed an imbecile. The all-male board that decided who qualified for sterilization included in their criteria not only those who were deemed insane, idiots, imbeciles, or epileptics, but also the disabled, alcoholics, prostitutes, and sexually promiscuous women.”

“The morning had been a long one. Liam and his father out since dawn. A north-westerly breeze has been at them for hours, scrupulous in its self-appointed work of lifting the caps from their heads, in hurling a scree of water over them."

“Beckitt’s emergency began on a calm spring morning: an expansive chill in the air; the sun soaring over rangy, adolescent clouds; miles of rolling green mowed into submission, flanked by grand columns of oak and maple, through which the wind shivered, And a symphony of cell phones throbbing in sudden unison. Terror and confusion jolting through town like an electrical impulse.”

“I’ve spent plenty of time with Jorge. I probably understand his predicament better than the people whose job it is to handle him. Jorge and I are both inmates at an insane asylum that passes itself off as a day program for autistic young adults. We have been in and out of each other’s lives since special ed preschool. We graduated from different schools - well, I graduated. He got a certificate of completion.”

“To Emmett, all the houses in this part of the country looked like they’d been dropped from the sky. The Watson house just looked like it’d had a rougher landing. The roof line sagged on either side of the chimney and the window frames were slanted just enough that half the windows wouldn’t quite open and the other half wouldn’t quite shut. In another moment, they’d be able to see how the paint had been shaken right off the clapboard.”

“I have one of the weirder jobs. I’m the recipient of a fellowship from the Lockwood Library, you know, the museum on Fifth Avenue.”

“In my long life - and it’s been far longer than anyone knows - I have leapt off a mountain in Spain, dived into a pool of sharks in Australia, stood in front of an oncoming train in China, even taken a bullet during a Mexican bank robbery.”

“Chapter 1. 'What’s two plus two?' Something about the question irritates me. I’m tired. I drift back to sleep. A few minutes pass, then I hear it again. ‘What’s two plus two?’ The soft, feminine voice lacks emotion and the pronunciation is identical to the previous time she said it. It’s a computer. A computer is hassling me. I’m even more irritated now.”

“Cal Jenkins was born in the spring of 1920 with one leg shorter than the other. Just two inches shorter, but that was enough to make plenty of things difficult. Balancing on a bicycle took twice as long for him to learn as it did for other kids. Track and field was out of the question. So was walking without a pronounced limp.”

“Although this book is a work of fiction, the quotes that appear in front of the chapters are all real and verifiable. Many of the cited journals and articles were kept in the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, which existed as a distinguished part of the university from 1930 until 1965. Inside the laboratory, researchers conducted tests designed to measure the psychic abilities of college students and other volunteers.”

“I still dream of birds. I watch them circle, dive into rough waves, and fly up to the sun. I call to them but hear no answer. Alone, I stand on a stone island. I watch for ships and see three coming. Tall ships close enough to hail. I load my musket and shoot into the air. When I shoot into the air, ten thousand birds rise screaming. Their wings beat against the wind. All the sailors hear and see, but their commander orders them to sail on.”

“It’s interesting to note that there are two groups of people who are rarely, if ever, suspected of murder. These groups are elderly women and little girls. On the whole, when it comes to murder, the stats very much favor the men. The odd woman is thrown into the mix every now and again, but she’s inevitably perimenopausal (and having been through the change myself, certainly understand why). But an elderly woman or little girl committing murder? It’s one in a million. I’ve always liked to think I was special.”

“The Malicarn. The sixteenth winter in the reign of Queen Hannah. At night the master would invite the journeymen and apprentices to supper with his family, and that is where Buck first heard real tales of the old wars. How there used to be hundreds of wizards, how the old king Prion, himself once just a lowly sheepherder, became the one to unite them against the Dark Mages, how the many men of the Malicarn were called to fight.”

“When they built the retirement property on Maui then, and he told her abruptly and without warning that he wanted to sell their other houses, the prospect frightened her."