Honor Valentine's Day With Romantic Mysteries

Happy Valentine's Day reading! First, a bit of personal background: My husband and I went on our first date 42 years ago on Valentine's Day. It was a disappointing event, to be honest, but there was enough spark to encourage another outing, and the rest is history. It seems appropriate to celebrate the romantic holiday with some romantic-mystery/mystery-romance genre mating. Maybe start by revisiting the popular "gothics" of my teen reading years: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart, Dragonwyck by Anya Seton and Wings of the Falcon by Barbara Michaels. For more modern fare, try You Belong to Me by Karen Rose, in which a sexy widower cop and a troubled medical examiner find love while investigating a serial killer, or Heartbreaker by Julia Garwood as against-the-odds romance blossoms amid another serial murder case. Or, embrace Stephanie Plum, the protagonist of Janet Evanovich's popular series, for her debut with One for the Money, in which Stephanie takes a job hunting bail jumpers for a quick buck and is soon on the trail of a hot ex-beau with a price on his head while getting training from the studly "Ranger." All of these are sturdy romantic mystery entries, but, if you're looking for more literary prose, read the Booker Prize-winning best-seller Possession by A.S. Byatt. Described as a "novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story," the tale is built around a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets through their letters, journals, and poems, and tracking the dead poets' movements from London to Yorkshire, with seances and fairy lore along the way. For additional romantic mystery options: http://bestmysterybooks.com/best-romantic-mystery-books.html

Enduring Appeal of the Pilgrimage Experience

I just returned from India, and part of the trip included visits to beautiful South Indian Hindu temples, which were very crowded because we unknowingly arrived during the local pilgrimage season. Groups of men lined every dusty road, rested in fields, dodged through city traffic and eventually jammed the temple grounds with devotion. They were dressed simply and minimally, carried little and lived austerely, and traveled in clusters by friendship, family, community or chance-met camaraderie. They had left their homes and embarked on foot to seek epiphany, transformation, redemption or perhaps just an adventurous escape from the daily grind. Religious pilgrimage is as common in modern India as it was in Medieval Europe, when it inspired Geoffrey Chaucer's classic The Canterbury Tales. But you don't have to go back in time or to exotic lands for a pilgrimage experience. If you think of a "pilgrimage" as a journey of personal or spiritual significance, you can become a pilgrim right now in America. For example, the popular Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed describes a kind of pilgrimage. In the wake of her mother’s death and a failed marriage, a damaged young woman decides to hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone and without training, and ultimately heals herself. Or consider The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce: A sad, dull Englishman receives a letter from an old female friend who is dying in a hospice 627 miles away and impulsively starts walking to see her. On his transformational journey, he realizes wonders he has missed, rediscovers his need for his wife, and finds he is stronger than he realized. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, author Annie Dillard describes a metaphysical journey through a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, exploring nature and its seasons near her home while recording both her scientific observations and her thoughts on solitude, nature and religious faith. The international award-winning novelist Paulo Coelho has written lyrically about pilgrimage, too. He is best known for The Alchemist--about an Andalusian shepherd boy whose dream of treasure sends him on a quest to the Egyptian desert--but before he wrote that fictional tale, Coelho penned The Pilgrimage about his own spiritual quest along the famed pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago, still the most popular long-distance trail in Europe. Inspired to follow in his footsteps? Check out the many recent pilgrim accounts or guides: https://www.amazon.com/Pilgrimage-Road-Santiago-Complete-Cultural/dp/0312254164