At the end of the dock in Menemsha Harbor sits a stately white yacht. At 75 feet, it can’t fit anywhere closer in the harbor. Inside the yacht, a woman often sits cross-legged in a bright sitting room, imagining far-off worlds full of romance and historical intrigue. She’s Kitty Pilgrim, CNN correspondent-turned-novelist, and she’s been hard at work writing her third book, while promoting, by boat, her latest release, The Stolen Chalice.
Many overlook Martha’s Vineyard in the off-season, when beaches no longer accommodate bikinis, business owners stow away their cash registers, and the Flying Horses cease to fly. But Phyllis Meras, author of In Every Season, recently released by Schiffer Publishing, has a great appreciation for this time of relative hibernation, for humans at least. For her, the off-season is when the familiar becomes mysterious, and the unrelenting cadence of nature’s course penetrates the human psyche.
Best-selling author and Chilmark resident Linda Fairstein has said that one of her greatest pleasures is the moment she holds in her hand a copy of her latest book. Fans will feel the same way on July 10 when Dutton publishes Night Watch, the latest of Ms. Fairstein’s engrossing crime fiction novels.
As a little girl, Charlayne Hunter-Gault would sit on her grandmother’s knee while she read the news, picking out the comics, finding one in particular rather enchanting.
“I fell in love with Brenda Starr,” she said. “I thought, here’s the most exciting job for a woman — taking on the world as she reported for the newspaper. It never occurred to me that this was a white woman with red hair and blue eyes.”
Many children are instantly enchanted by the Oak Bluffs institution known as the Flying Horses. But a recently published children’s book, When Horses Fly, gives new meaning to the horses’ flight.
One night as a young girl named Caroline struggles to fall asleep, the Flying Horses carousel appears to her outside her house. Suddenly, one of the painted horses magically flies off the carousel and lets Caroline ride her, giving her a chance to say a final goodbye to her pet horse Nutmeg, who had died months ago.
Visionary academic Dr. Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, needed a visionary architect to design the campus.
