New on Beyond the Labyrinth (podcast)!
Episode Six: A Push of the Pendulum ~ Listen
In Episode Six, we beagle about Alfred’s new novella, A Push of the Pendulum. The novella opens as its reluctant hero, Julian Drake, is dislocated – emotionally, because his parents are divorcing and selling his childhood home, but also physically, as they have enrolled him in boarding school – St. Eligius Episcopal School, to be precise. The novella traces Julian’s process as he adjusts to boarding school, learns to use an enchanted clock, saves the school from the evil intentions of trustee Stryker, and, yes, finds place and home in his universe.
Chapters Ten and Eleven–the thrilling conclusion–of A Push of the Pendulum.
Read the concluding chapters and see how it all comes together. A PDF version is now available, as well as an updated map.
Read more about A Push of the Pendulum
Read Chapter Ten
A Bookful Bequest by Hannah Grachien, No. 7
Years of Grace, by Margaret A. Barnes
Why did I read this book? Why did it win a Pulitzer Prize? It seems to me I have just read 563 pages about another group of rather well-off people, but this time just to discover that life “is what it is,” as people so annoyingly, and frequently, pronounce. …
Keeping it all the Year – Midwinter
In their midwinter meditations, Hannah and Alfred feel the spirit resonate “in the bleak midwinter”!
We … can relish the cold and the dark, the symbols of … our own selfishness, our own small-mindedness …. We can … close the door to that which is greater than we are. Once that door closes, the candles go out, the fire is gone, the light of Christmas is extinguished. … Yet will we try to find and reveal light, even during the longest days of the year?
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach! “ – Scrooge, in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol