There are eyes looking at you out of those pictures. The smiling perfect family in the unwrapped photo frame, the cheerful child beaming at her math homework on the math book, the laughing women running through a field of sunlight on that brochure you picked up. There are creatures that slide their souls into perfect images and live in a flattened world. They watch us, their perfect teeth gleaming in perfect smiles, their perfect eyes following our movements. And they lure us

If you asked me on the spur of the moment what my favorite Peretti books were, I probably wouldn’t rate The Visitation in the top three, but considering how often I have read it, maybe I should. Besides being a masterfully told story, the truth in this book brings me back to it again and again even when I technically prefer the more “fantasy” plotlines of his Present Darkness series And the difference is that the truth in this book hits hard for me. It always has, because I

Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion are regular additions to my reading diet, but there are a couple Jane Austen books that I read as a teenager, decided I didn’t like, and never went back. After recently discovering that I actually really like Northanger Abbey, I decided to give Mansfield Park a second try. I started out enjoying it. Fanny Price is taken in by her aunt’s family, the Bartons. Her family is still living but the Bartons are attempting to relieve the poverty of

The smell of tar was thick in the night air and the white floodlight cut harsh wedges of darkness on everything; the machines, the people, the curbs. Dave Porterfield sighed, planted his shovel on the ground and tried to wipe the sweat off his face with a hand that was already grimy. He looked at the half a mile of wrecked asphalt, ripped up benches, and crumbled masonry in front of them. He had a kind face, a lump of a nose and eyes that usually looked on the world with mild

My mother never turned the mattresses. That could have been just an odd housekeeping peccadillo if she weren’t the sole proprietor of a bed and breakfast. When I was thirteen, a guest mentioned it on the way out, “Hey, you could let your mother know those mattresses could stand to be turned or replaced or something. That thing had a ditch so deep I might as well have been sleeping in a coffin!” He laughed loudly and shut the door behind him, but his death-related simile made

I can’t stand morality tales. Even Little Women, which was written specifically pushing back against the worst tropes of children’s fiction in its time, feels insipid and lecturing (forgive me, women everywhere!). And especially now as a parent myself, I find Marmie’s perfect parenting infuriating. How come all her little life-lessons and heart to heart talks resonate with her children, instead of getting a blink and a, “Okay, but can I have a snack now?” …But I digress.

Joy was used to having nightmares about her old bedroom; the blood on the floor, the window shattered, the wall buckling in. But for the first time in three months, she had a dream of a bedroom instead of a nightmare—of her bedroom, though she had never seen it before. She woke. Reality snapped back onto her like claws sinking into her chest. Her skin ached with the cold; the grimy quilt she clutched around her was doing little to stop the tremor in her limbs. A cold light

I own a large purse. The point of having a large purse is that I can comfortably fit at least three average sized novels in it and still have room for keys, chapstick, and a wallet. When I am carrying around one of these novels I can fit one of them in my purse. Just one. And if you happen to only be able to get your hands on the Large Print version…you’d better start pumping iron. There are eight of these, written under J.K Rowling's pseudonym, and I’ve found them fascinatin