ROWELIT
Literary Fiction
Riley Basile is just hoping to get through another day at high school when weird things start happening. Gaps begin to appear in her memory, and she can’t quite control her behavior. It’s all a precursor to a severe neurological condition none of the doctors she sees can diagnose. Before long she’s losing days and then weeks with only memories of vivid dreams filled with strange recurring characters and fantastic landscapes. Sleeping Ugly is a story about how we, almost impossibly, learn to cope with impossible situations. A tale of witches, demons, bird queens, and fun-loving grizzly bears. In Riley’s world, Wonderland has teeth.
Lacy and Marcus Brathmore are working their way up to a solo mountain trek in the Andes by honing their skills on progressively more difficult and isolated terrain. They step out into the lonely Northern Canadian Rockies hoping to test their resolve against new hazards, only to find a larger and different obstacle than they could have imagined.
It’s New Orleans circa 1900, and Lenore Etive is struggling to make ends meet. She’s been let go by the grandmother of the wealthy children she cared for following the sudden death of their mother. Lenore’s soldier husband is away and has largely stopped sending money home. Her only hope is to approach the grieving husband to ask for help securing work elsewhere, and he’s in no state to help anyone. If some character names and events seem familiar, you might have read about them before in a little novel titled The Awakening.
Raconteur and social fixer Kapp is at it again, chatting everyone up and getting the party started. When he drags a reluctant orthodontist into the mix he’s expecting to see the good doctor loosen up and have a good time, but when that happens things don’t quite go as planned.