At the lighthouse there is always talk of ghosts. The ten-year-old girl who climbed in bed with Sandy and Bruce a few years ago because she was afraid, the women Susan heard talking in the kitchen at 4 am but found no one there and none of us had been up, the man dressed in an authentic keeper’s uniform seen descending the tower’s spiral staircase during a storm. And of course there are the black and white figures in photographs all over the house at Big Sable Point -- images of sailors, keepers, children, wives -- “ghosts” that floated to my mind from their frames on the walls and stayed with me as I poured myself coffee, swept the stairs, looked into the wind down the long beach, talked to strangers in the gift shop.

If you're in the D.C. area, come on out to Clydes in Georgetown between 4:30 and 6:30 p.m. to get one of the first copies of HOPE IN A JAR, hot off the presses and signed to you!

How To Avoid Work--and other all too possible pursuits
(by Elaine Fox)

I’m excited! I have a novella coming out at the end of the month, in the collection titled FOUR DUKES AND A DEVIL, that was actually a complete joy to write! I got to use some of my favorite elements: a dog, of course. A ghost! And I set it in one of my favorite seaside towns in Cape Cod.

I was thrilled to participate in this anthology because not only does the reader get three fabulous historical romances – with three hunky Regency dukes – but also one truly scary paranormal devil, and my contemporary romantic tale, boasting a dog named Duke!

My story, “THE DUKE WHO CAME TO DINNER,” practically wrote itself, rolling off my fingertips and onto the screen with an effortlessness that amazed me. This is not always the case. Actually,

Summer. For me, the word conjures thoughts of tomatoes, warm off the vine; sprinklers, humming on neighboring lawns, smelling like wet pennies and earth; fireflies glowing in the trees at night; and reading.

Mostly reading.