here's the cover of my new novel, LITTLE NIGHT. it came out june 5 2012. here's a link. isn't the cover lovely and mysterious? it's an image of poets walk, in new york's central park. i'll be posting more about the novel soon... [edited june 5, 2012]
Little Night is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and IndieBound
We had a small hill in our back yard, and I learned how to ski on wooden skis with my initials burned at the tips. My father had a workshop in the basement, and for a while he seemed to burn my initials on everything. The working class version of a monogram.
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it is possible,
i mean definite,
that there is nothing
better for the heart
than a beach walk.
en cuerpo y alma...
An excerpt from The Silver Boat is now available here >
Hope you'll click here to order —Luanne
From the beloved New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice comes The Silver Boat, a heartwarming yet heart-wrenching portrait of three far-flung sisters who come home to Martha’s Vineyard one last time to say goodbye to the family beach house. Memories of their grandmother, mother, and their Irish father, who sailed away the year Dar, the oldest, turned twelve, rise up and expose the fine cracks in their family myth—especially when a cache of old letters reveals enough truth to send them back to their ancestral homeland.
Read MoreI love winter. It’s partly the drawing in, staying warm, keeping together with family and friends. But just as much, it’s bundling up, walking in the snow, feeling icy weather, watching changes in nature. Leaves are down; more light and sky are visible through the branches. On clear nights, the stars seem to catch on the boughs, swinging so close to earth you feel you can almost touch them.
There’s nothing better than the winter beach. Storms push the tides higher, and equally tug them out so far the tidal flats seem to go on forever. Rolling waves, high wind blowing foam of the white crests, while rafts of water birds—buffleheads, surf scoters, brants, red-breasted mergansers among other winter residents—take shelter in coves.
Two years ago I experienced the Winter of Magical Birding. A nature photographer friend and I saw everything. One brilliant freezing day we went down to Barneget Light. We stood on the long stone jetty observing Harlequin Ducks, their brilliant masks and notable white dots visible as they fed in the seaweed just below our feet on the jetty’s leeward side.
Another excursion into the Catskills brought sightings of fifty, a hundred, White-winged Crossbills and Red Crossbills. It was an irruption year, and the small passerines had flown down from the boreal forest in search of a fine cone crop. The day was cold and snowing, and we were surrounded by forest. The crossbills thronged in a stand of blue spruce, attacking the cones, and I’ll never forget the bright sight and the sounds of seeds being cracked, their hulls clicking as they fell to the ice-encrusted snow.
The third and greatest sighting occurred on Jones Beach, where a young male Snowy Owl had decided to spend a few days. We arrived just past dawn, watched the rising sun’s light turn the owl’s white feathers golden. More than any other bird I love the exquisite and mystical Snowy Owl.
Snowies live on the tundra, and when lemmings, their preferred food, are scarce, they fly south and search out flatlands that remind them of home. Beaches are perfect, and they have the requisite food source: mice and voles.
That day my feet and hands froze, but it was worth it. I walked down the beach, watched the waves crash, saw a surfcaster catch a late-in-the-year Striped Bass, watched seagulls breaking quahog shells and eat the clams inside, and saw an enormous flock of Snowy Plovers fly in from the east. Even better, I spent long hours with the Snowy Owl.
Late afternoon when the sun went down, the light glowed rose pink, illuminating the owl’s feathers. He stared straight at us, all the hunger and mystery in his yellow eyes, and suddenly took flight. Wide wings spread, he flapped once, and went into a silent glide over the thicket of dried beach grass. Darkness came fast, and he was lost to view.
That might be my favorite metaphor for winter. The nights are long, and it might seem light will never return. The dark brings contemplation, inspiration, a feeling of things vast and unknowable. But I’m filled with anticipation, the way I felt as a child with a glittery Advent calendar and a fresh window to open every day, a new candle to light each week, knowing Christmas would come.
Winter lasts long, but it’s beautiful, and then there is spring.
Passion and friendship get equal billing in Secrets of Paris, an entertaining love story, shaded with dark undertones, from the author of Crazy in Love. Lydie McBride, a photographer's stylist, and her architect husband Michael move to Paris while Michael, on a cultural exchange program, redesigns a room in the Louvre.
Read MoreThanksgiving week, and What Matters Most is out in trade paperback. I love the cover; it reminds me of Ireland and makes me wish I were walking on the Cliffs of Moher.
The novel picks up where Sandcastles lets off. It's a story about two people who've loved each other forever but live their lives apart. Writing the novel, I tried to capture that feeling of complete longing for something you can never have yet, at the same time, carry in your heart at all times.
I find it moving that the novel is coming out in time for Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays. "What Matters Most" is a title, but also an all-year-round question.
My family, friends, cats, nature, writing, and readers matter most to me. What matters most to you?
—Luanne
Read MoreIn bestselling author Luanne Rice’s unforgettable novel Sandcastles, the lives of one broken-hearted woman and her family are changed forever when one of her daughters brings back the man who left so many years ago to the family he’s always loved. Painter Honor Sullivan has made a life for herself and her three daughters–Regis, Agnes, and Cecilia–at Star of the Sea Academy on the magical Connecticut shore. Here she teaches art at the convent school’s beautiful seaside campus, over which Honor’s sister-in-law, mother superior Bernadette Ignatius, keeps a benevolent and watchful eye. No one could have foreseen the day rebellious Regis would come home with the stunning news that she was getting married. Nor could anyone have guessed how that sudden announcement would soon change all their lives forever.
Read More[A short story, exclusive to this website. Illustration by Amelia Onorato.] The Selkie and the Man
By Luanne Rice
I knew right from the beginning that I would kill for him. A life for a life; the one he had saved was mine. Gray-green waves curling into themselves, wind blowing the tops off, trails of dirty foam across the sea. He saw me struggling, perhaps even heard the crunch of my bones. I know he saw the blood.
Read MoreI’m writing this in a beach house with doors open to the sea, listening to the waves and feeling the salt air. A pod of pilot whales swam by a little while ago; I watched their glossy black backs lift just before then sounded, and felt strong love for them and all creatures in our beautiful oceans
Read MoreA legendary island steeped in the mystery and wisdom of centuries… A runaway heiress learning to trust life, and love…
A mother and daughter, separated for years, searching for a way to face the future together… Luanne tells a powerful story of love, family, and friendship through the lives of two women who reunite at a place where dreams begin.
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