Why am I passionate about this?
I'm the product of a man who married more times than I like to admit to strangers and even family. We moved all the time. Those two elements in my life led me to run out the door immediately upon release from sorting my belongings from their thoroughly packed boxes. I made friends at once with everyone I came across. Who knew how long we’d live there? Over the years, I acquired deep friendships from around the U.S. and often daydreamed of them all being in the same place at once and loving the solidarity. It never happened, but it's a theme that runs through me. It’s what I like to write about.
L.'s book list on creating a sense of family with strangers
Why did L. love this book?
I laughed when I wasn’t crying.
Maxwell is sort of a disaster magnet. Where she goes, disaster soon follows, and she always gets burned. Except when she doesn’t. She arrives at St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research at the end of the proverbial rope of life choices.
One could claim she has entered a sanatorium for the incurably mad, but she feels at home, and they do seem to be accomplishing something of value. At least they value it, and Maxwell becomes one of them.
It is one thing to be broken by family, and another to be put back together by strangers who become family.
I love this book of quasi-redemption and thorough zany adventure for the betterment of those who will never know. It's best they don’t.
6 authors picked Just One Damned Thing After Another as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Time Travel meets History in this explosive bestselling adventure series.
`So tell me, Dr Maxwell, if the whole of History lay before you ... where would you go? What would you like to witness?'
When Madeleine Maxwell is recruited by the St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, she discovers the historians there don't just study the past - they revisit it.
But one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And she soon discovers it's not just History she's fighting...
Follow the tea-soaked disaster magnets of St Mary's as they rattle around History. Because wherever the…