Caprice DeLuca leads a busy life. She’s a home stager, although she does do some decorating jobs too. She rescues animals and finds homes for them, and she acts as matchmaker on occasion. Her family is close, some say too close, but it’s what she’s used to and loves.
The holiday spirit is alive and well at Clovis’s Woods Elementary School, which has been sponsoring a Giving Tree charity drive every December for over a decade. Woods parent Heather Devany gave Kings River Life the scoop on what the program is all about, and the Giving Tree’s impact on Woods Elementary and its surrounding community.
I’m one of those people who always has her Christmas shopping done in September, who has half the gifts wrapped and handed out by Thanksgiving, who has the house completely decorated by the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and who is staying up late by this time every year baking, washing dishes, baking more, and washing more dishes. And making lists. Lots of lists.
My university has a ten day to two week holiday between Christmas and New Year’s which gives us all a chance to unwind from the previous semester and ‘gird up our loins’ for the next. Although it is lovely to have time to relax, I find that I get a bit restless and anxious between the two holidays to get back to tasks I know are piling up—not to mention all the emails—and to hear about how we all spent the holidays. Everyone has at least one lurid anecdote to delight us all.
Shadowed Souls in an anthology with a bit of a different twist--the "heroes" in the stories are not your typical heroes and nothing is as simple as black and white.
The list of writers in this anthology is a fantasy lovers delight! Two of them are some of my favorite writers--Jim Butcher and Kat Richardson. I have also discovered some writers I had never tried before and now can't wait to check out what else they have written.
“What if…?” is an intriguing question posed by authors of historical fiction, and more than just “changing names to protect the innocent” or avoiding libel claims, it is a way of enhancing true events and real people by providing realistic and plausible connections, interactions…love affairs? Henry VIII’s court, the Black Ladies’ Priory, Thomas Giffard, and Isabella Launder are real, but in the Roses in the Tempest the author envelopes a fictional story around them to bring to us a wonderful tale of Tudor England. “But, in the end, it is only a pleasing story.”
The new kid in town, the only Jewish girl in my class, and as far as I could tell, the only shape-shifter—high school was hell. On top of that, my parents seemed to be the only Democrats in the county. President Eisenhower was considered a shoo-in for re-election. Even though I begged them not to, my parents stuck a Stevenson bumper sticker on the car. I got to say, “I told you so,” when they got five parking tickets on Main Street within a month. But it didn’t give me much satisfaction.
To properly introduce our Mr. Darcy, we must steal a quote from Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice, “My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” Just like Mr. Darcy’s literary counterpart, everyone at the Valley Animal Center fell in love with him, and you will too!
Christmastime is here. A time for shared tales of hope and joy, such as the story of Buddy, the Christmas Husky. On a snowy Christmas Day in 2011, a sick, freezing cold, and starving dog found himself wandering the streets of an Arkansas town and right into traffic. His magnificent breed of Siberian Husky was barely detectable.
Uncommon Grounds coffee shop owner Maggy Thorsen thought that she was being responsible by reporting to the authorities the nearly fifty-thousand dollars in cash hidden in a trunk left for her by her late brother. It was why she was meeting with financial planner Lynne Swope, sister of the town librarian and a new resident of Brookhills, Wisconsin. The news that Lynne’s husband has just joined Maggy’s ex-husband’s dental practice is a complication, but not a conflict of interest.
