Page 199
“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe can be found in many published editions, but can also be read online at Project Guttenberg. “True!” is the first line of “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Nicole’s dissertation on Twentieth Century American Poets included the work of Adrienne Rich, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath.
Page 200
“A place is not really a place without a bookstore” is a variation on a line from Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. It is spoken here by Nicole and later, by Lambiase.
Page 201
“A priceless Stradivarius doesn’t vanish…” The book that is being discussed in the Chief’s Choice Book Club is my invention. However, An Equal Music by Vikram Seth is about a violinist and one of my favorite novels. It would not be an appropriate selection for Chief’s Choice.
Page 203
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Page 205
The books that Ismay teaches:
Every Year
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Some Years
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Page 206
“My favorite kind of character is a woman in a faraway place…” Several readers have written to ask for examples of the books Ismay reads for pleasure: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple, Out of Africa by Isak Dinisen, Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, Le Divorce by Diane Johnson to name a few.