Owl Song
Owl Song, a spirited and often humorous fairy tale adventure, is the story of Sophia - a reluctant and insomnolent princess who finds courage and love in the midst of an astonishing journey.
Sophia can’t sleep. To make matters worse, she feels suffocated by her life at the palace. She isn’t interested in practicing her signature, and finds saying things like “of course,” and “marvelous,” and “would you care for a candied peach,” irritating. She tires of proving her expertise in the management and manipulation of servants, only to be assaulted at the end of the day by some potential suitor, who may (frighteningly!) turn out to be the boy she’ll eventually marry.
Instead, Sophia has a habit of pawing around in the dirt, staying awake until all hours of the night, and sneaking out into the nearby woods. And when her mother, Queen Nora, decides she is insane and has her temporarily locked away in her bedroom chambers, Sophia vows never to speak again - until she is visited at her window by a gigantic owl, with whom she forms an intense and immediate friendship, and who takes her away from the palace each evening on its back.
After a terrifying altercation and a shocking discovery, Sophia hatches a secret plot that might possibly end her days of freedom forever. Disguised as a knight, she journeys into the unknown regions of the forest with her friend Peter, the kitchen hand. She is lured by the Ferocities of the River Mosaic, sails to a hidden mountain in a boat navigated by a few unlikely sailors, and is overtaken by the pink mist of the desert. She finally meets The One Who Knows, who gives her a powerful gift from the Gangu tree to help her true love find his way back home.
When Sophia comes face to face with her most frightening nemesis, she is forced to find the strength and courage she never knew existed within her, and ultimately recognizes her failings exist only in her unwillingness to trust – and to let go of everything she thought she knew.
Shaking Bridestone
Shaking Bridestone is the story of one woman's search to find meaning in a life that has become progressively meaningless. In the midst of grieving the death of her husband, Charlie manages to retain her sense of humor and dignity as she moves forward in an attempt to start over.
Charlotte Singer Brown, or Charlie, as everyone calls her, is having a Midlife Crisis. All caps. And no amount of analyzing it, placating it, or running around the garden with a martini and and a hoe will fix her increasing malaise. Her life in Bridestone, Massachusetts has become staid and ordinary, and she dreams of moving to Scotland with her youngest daughter, Finn, in the hopes of finding what it is that haunts, yet continually evades her.
After putting her large Victorian home on the market she receives an offer from the quirky MacIntosh family, who come up with the unconventional idea of living with her in her nearly vacant house while paying her rent until she is in a position to move. Charlie reluctantly agrees and the relationships that evolve force Charlie into an eventual catharsis, taking her to places in her past - from the island of Martha's Vineyard where she grew up, to her husband's unsuccessful fight with colon cancer, to when her family was young and her daughters were children, to her strained relationship with her mother - and it is there in the glimpses of the past that Charlie searches for the answers of present day.
With the help of a few extraordinary people, Charlie eventually comes to terms with her life in the unlikeliest of circumstances, and realizes that she won't find an honest happiness except within the small moments of life when she pays attention to them, ultimately managing to forgive her past, and herself.