Florey, it has nothing to do with stylish or directness. As Puffy said, it's often not easy to convey in the title what a post is about. More than that, as others said, the posts very often wander from the original content intended, and we like it like that. Well, I think most of us do. There is a nice freedom here to let our minds wander where they will and express what any thread brings up even if not 'on topic'. It's really the heart of this place to me. These days there really aren't all that many posts to keep up with that I feel I miss many... eventually. If you find this hard to follow, just be glad you weren't here a decade ago when we were really prolific. Smiles. On the other hand, it's too bad you weren't. Relax, enjoy, read and post as you will.

This is a true story from an old Yankee magazine that has always haunted me. Although there is no violence in this story, it involves a lost child, so don't read it if that is disturbing to you. Even now, four years later, Ron and Jill Newton will sometimes let their minds drift back and silently relive that Labor Day weekend, hour by hour, trying to snatch it all back and hold it still at 10:00 A.M. Sunday, August 31,1975. It had been a grand weekend, camping with their children, Kimberly, age six, and Kurt, age four, and three other families from their home in Manchester, Maine. Natanis Point Campground was small and remote, its fifty-eight sites cut from a paper-company forest 1,300 feet above sea level in Chain of Ponds, a wilderness township six miles below the Canadian border at Coburn Gore. Campers fished from two ponds that were deep and cold. When a fisherman landed a salmon from the small wooden bridge below the thread of beach, he would yelp with pleasure and a crowd would gather. Mountains loomed over the ponds, and when at night a loon wailed and the forest pressed close on all sides, you knew you were away. That Friday the Newtons arrived first. It was their first trip with the recently acquired secondhand tent trailer, what Jill called "our luxury." They gathered wood along an abandoned logging road nearly a mile from their campsite. "It isn't camping without a bonfire," Kurt said happily. On Saturday their friends arrived, and Kimberly raced her bicycle through mud puddles while Kurt furiously pedaled his big-wheel tricycle after her, trying to keep up. It was the end of a summer, and there were huge meals and laughter and quiet, chilly nights by a roaring fire. To Jill Newton things felt "just right," which was not unusual. "We'd been married eight years," she would say later, "and everything just seemed to work right. We got along so well. We had saved for four years to buy a house, and when we were ready, there was our house across the street from the elementary school. From before we were married we always said we'd have two children and no more. We had a girl and then by a stroke of luck we had a boy, just what we wanted. It became a sort of joke between Ron and me. We'd say, 'How did we get so lucky? " Sunday broke with a heavy mist over the ponds. Ron took the bite off the morning, using the last of the wood to light a fire. Kurt slept until nine, fighting off a cold; when he awoke he shivered. "I'm so glad Daddy built a bonfire," he said. Ron dressed Kurt for the damp, chilly morning: red jersey, navy blue sweatshirt, speckled red and black corduroys. Kurt tugged on dark brown shoes over mismatched white socks and topped off his outfit with a favorite navy blue jacket decorated with baseball emblems. Jill called Kurt "a head-turner," a striking child with an impish sweet face, bright blue eyes, and platinum blond hair. "The loveliest, sweetest towhead kid you ever saw," said a neighbor....

Pat, did you notice anything odd or odd-of-whack about your Kindle Edition of The Case of Jennie Brice? My friend first read it on her Kindle and was quite disgruntled with me for recommending it, saying that the mystery was never solved and it didn't make any sense! I was mystified because I didn't remember any such thing. I then read it on Project Gutenberg and right at the end there seemed to be some pages that had been omitted, leaving everything confusing and seemingly abruptly tied up. I dug out my old paperback copy and verified that someone had done a poor job of transferring the printed book to computer and both Project Gutenberg and the Kindle Edition had picked up the BAD JOB! I hope it was eventually corrected, because it's a shame enough to turn a reader off with a false impression of a very good book and author. I loved Norah Lofts as well. The ones I remember best, though, seem to have been just straight historical novels, not much mystery or suspense; e.g., Jassy, The Lute Player, and others. Carolyn, I know what you mean about P. Whitney and Victoria Holt getting formulaic. I eventually gave up on them, too; but in their early days, they were something! I especially liked Whitney's The Trembling Hills (the one set in San Francisco) and Window on the Square. I read Helen MacInnes and there was another similar female writer of thrillers...can't think of her name or the titles of any of her books. Did you like M. M. Kaye's Death in (insert exotic locale) books? Yep, they were enough to make me want to see Zanzibar and the Andaman Islands, giving me a real travel bug. When my niece was about fifteen, I turned her onto Mary Stewart by giving her The Moon-Spinners, Wildfire at Midnight, and The Ivy Tree. She thought the vociferous debates her mother, grandmother, other aunt and I had were 'better than a tennis match'. (It's an old family tradition to team up and argue about books; I listened in the same way to my female relatives when I was my niece's age.) My niece thought we were hyping Mary Stewart when we said that the new arrival of a Stewart book was enough to nearly cause a riot with readers wanting to grab immediately the one or two copies the library got. A reader was given a week to read it and there was no renewal (until the excitement faded about six months later), and the list of next-in-line readers would run for several pages. It was tantalizing and frustrating that SOME readers couldn't read faster. The only similar experience my niece had was with the Harry Potter books. Btw, my niece liked the Stewart books except for, she says, their blandness! Uh-oh, I feel a gothic suspense/romance mood coming on. My niece also asked me one time: "Why is it called Gothic romance when there's hardly any romance in it?"

Kath, I wasn't familiar with Mackellar's poem, thanks for posting it. UK book titles are the same as the Australian ones. Downunder is still a a recognised term for Australia here though I don't suppose they call England 'Upover' anymore than they used to refer to us as home. BTW I felt that Downunder was rather thin on substance. I don't think BB had spent long enough there. I never realised that A Town Like Alice had an American title. I remember when I first heard the book mentioned, as a child, it sounded 'unusual' but can't see why US readers seem not to be expected (by editors/movie folk) to be capable of dealing with the occasional oddity. Whatever the title I think it is still a cracking read. On the Beach is another one with a most unusual 'plot' that works surprisingly well . . . for a story dealing with nuclear fall-out. re Fuller's book. I think the title is Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight which has been well-recommended over here. I haven't read it but usually the expression 'going to the dogs' or if you are from London 'going down the dogs' means spending the evening at the local 'dog track' ie greyhound racing. I think the book is set in Rhodesia and I have no idea if there were any 'dog tracks' or if white people would have been seen there. 'Going to the Dogs' also means a deterioration in ones circumstances/business/way of life. Mary does any of the above appear in the book?