There are one million new books published each year. With so many books and so little time, where do you begin to find your next must-read? There’s the New York Times Bestseller list, the Goodreads app, the Cape Library’s Staff picks shelf and now Martin’s Must-Reads.Every Wednesday at 7:42 a.m. and 5:18 p.m., and Sunday at 8:18 a.m., Betty Martin recommends a must read based on her own personal biases for historical fiction, quirky characters and overall well-turned phrases. Her list includes…
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“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…
“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…
“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…
“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…
“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…
“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…
