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Cape May

A NOVEL

A beautiful setting and intelligent characters grace this tale that proves it’s never too late to fulfill a longtime dream.

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A New Yorker in her late 50s makes some major changes in her life in this debut novel.

Fifty-nine-year-old Joanna Matthews seems reasonably happy, except for the fact she hates her job as an associate managing editor at a medical education company and is tired of Manhattan. In possession of a small inheritance, she wants to leave the city and fulfill her lifelong dream of running a bed and breakfast. Her husband, freelance accountant Brian, grudgingly agrees to her plan. Months of property visits in New England fail to yield any good prospects, so she decides to direct her search southward. She is captivated by Cape May, New Jersey, even before she visits, and meeting freelance writer Michael, a bona fide aficionado of the town, on the bus ride down turns out to be an unbelievable stroke of luck. He promises to share his extensive knowledge of the seaside resort, and when Brian is delayed in joining her, Joanna accepts Michael’s offer to accompany her on house tours. Not only does Joanna fall in love with a charmingly named bed and breakfast, Tea and Scones, she also finds herself attracted to her helpful tour guide, Michael. Brian shows up moments after Michael and Joanna have shared their first passionate kiss, and her guilt makes her physically ill. Hoping to escape her feelings for Michael by fleeing Cape May, she realizes when she returns to Manhattan how difficult it is to avoid a spouse in a tiny apartment. Joanna nearly allows her self-loathing to destroy three lives before she finally makes a decision about her future. This is women’s fiction that transcends the clichés. Caster, a professional writer, deftly keeps all the characters in the love triangle sympathetic, avoiding the easy solution of creating a villain. Joanna, the least blameless, shows such remorse for the situation she finds herself in that the reader pities her. Caster’s greatest gift lies in the unflinching honesty of her writing—both the characters and the settings. Rather than lauding Manhattan, the author illustrates all the reasons Joanna yearns to leave—the crowds, the tourists, the small apartments. Caster is somewhat less effective in evoking the full charm of Cape May.

A beautiful setting and intelligent characters grace this tale that proves it’s never too late to fulfill a longtime dream.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-9966489-0-5

Page Count: 310

Publisher: TDC Publishing

Review Posted Online: May 24, 2016

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MAGIC HOUR

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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