There's a market for mysteries for adults. That feeling of opening a book and delving inside and not coming out until you've closed the book.

...which fairy-tale princess ever chose her maid over her prince?

She's one of the few people able to look beyond the lines on my face to see the twenty-year-old who lives inside.

The happiest folk are those that are busy, for their minds are starved of time to seek out woe.

But everyone's an expert with the virtue of hindsight . . . .

But history is a faithless teller whose cruel recourse to hindsight makes fools of its actors.

A twinge at the edge of her lips and she continued, the soft, slow lilt of recitation: "Ancient walls that sing the distant hours.