(Ben Sargent)

To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section. Find Observer political reporting here.

The post Loon Star State: Among the Tragically Missing… appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By WAFAA SHURAFA, SAMY MAGDY and TIA GOLDENBERG, Associated Press

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since May while trying to get food in the Gaza Strip, mostly in the vicinity of aid sites run by an Israeli-backed American contractor, the United Nations human rights office said Tuesday. Israeli strikes killed 25 people across Gaza, according to local health officials.

Desperation is mounting in the territory of more than 2 million, which experts say is at risk of famine because of Israel’s blockade and ongoing 21-month offensive. A breakdown of law and order has led to widespread looting and contributed to chaos and violence around aid deliveries.

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Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, said Tuesday that 101 people, including 80 children, have died in recent days from starvation. It did not provide precise diagnoses, but people in hunger crises often die from a combination of malnutrition, illness and deprivation.

Israel eased a 2 1/2 month blockade in May, allowing a trickle of aid in through the longstanding U.N.-run system and the newly created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, an American contractor. Aid groups say it’s not nearly enough.

Israel accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid — without providing evidence of widespread diversion — and blames U.N. agencies for failing to deliver food it has allowed in.

In a statement, GHF rejected what it said were “false and exaggerated statistics” from the U.N., saying the deadliest incidents have been linked to U.N. aid convoys.

‘I do it for my children’

Dozens of Palestinians lined up on Tuesday outside a charity kitchen in Gaza City, hoping for a bowl of watery tomato soup. The lucky ones had some chunks of eggplant floating in theirs. As supplies ran out, people holding pots pushed and shoved to get to the front.

Nadia Mdoukh, a pregnant woman who was displaced from her home and lives in a tent with her husband and three children, said she worries about being shoved or trampled, and about heat stroke as daytime temperatures hover above 90 degrees Farhenheit (32 C).

“I do it for my children. This is famine — there is no bread or flour,” she said. “We take this soup, and it does not come with rice or anything.”

The U.N. World Food Program says Gaza’s hunger crisis has reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation.” Ross Smith, the agency’s director for emergencies, told reporters Monday that nearly 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and a third of Gaza’s population is not eating for multiple days in a row.

Over 1,000 killed seeking food

Of the 1,054 people killed while trying to get food since late May, 766 were killed while heading to sites run by the Israeli- and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to the U.N. human rights office. The others were killed when gunfire erupted around U.N. convoys or aid sites.

Thameen al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the U.N. rights office, says its figures come from “multiple reliable sources on the ground,” including medics, humanitarian and human rights organizations. He said the numbers were still being verified according to the office’s strict methodology.

Palestinian witnesses and health officials say Israeli forces regularly fire toward crowds of thousands of people heading to the GHF sites. The military says it has only fired warning shots, and GHF says its armed contractors have only fired into the air on a few occasions to try to prevent stampedes.

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed from an Israeli army bombardment of Gaza, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

The U.N. has refused to work with the GHF, saying its model violates humanitarian principles and puts lives at risk.

A joint statement from 28 Western-aligned countries on Monday condemned the “the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”

“The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,” read the statement, which was signed by the United Kingdom, France and other countries friendly to Israel. “The Israeli government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable.”

Israel and the United States rejected the statement, blaming Hamas for prolonging the war by not accepting Israeli terms for a ceasefire and the release of hostages abducted in the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack that triggered the fighting.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in return for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal. Israel says it will keep fighting until Hamas has been defeated or disarmed.

Strikes on tents sheltering displaced people

Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people across Gaza on Tuesday, according to local health officials, as Israel pushed on with a new incursion in the central city of Deir al-Balah, an area that had largely been spared heavy fighting.

A Palestinian man carries the body of a child killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

One strike hit tents sheltering displaced people in the built-up seaside Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, killing at least 12 people, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the casualties. The Israeli military said it was not aware of such a strike by its forces.

The dead included three women and three children, Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmiya, director of the hospital told The Associated Press. Thirty-eight other Palestinians were wounded, he said.

The strike tore apart tents and left some of the dead lying on the ground, according to footage shared by the Health Ministry’s ambulance and emergency service.

An overnight strike that hit crowds of Palestinians waiting for aid trucks in Gaza City killed eight, hospitals said. At least 118 were wounded, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on that strike. Israel blames the deaths of Palestinian civilians on Hamas because they operate in densely populated areas.

Israel renewed its offensive in March with a surprise bombardment after ending an earlier ceasefire. Talks on another truce have dragged on for weeks despite pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump.

‘Time to end this nonsense’

Hamas abducted 251 people in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack that triggered the war and killed around 1,200 people. Fewer than half of the 50 hostages still in Gaza are believed to be alive.

More than 59,000 Palestinians have been killed during the war, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Its count does not distinguish between militants and civilians, but the ministry says more than half of the dead are women and children. The U.N. and other international organizations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties.

In Jerusalem, top church leaders called on the international community to help bring an end to the war after making a rare visit to Gaza last week.

Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, left, and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III greet each other before attending a press conference following their visit to the Gaza Strip, in Jerusalem, Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Their visit came after Gaza’s only Catholic church was struck by an Israeli shell in an attack that killed three people and wounded 10, including a priest who had developed a close friendship with the late Pope Francis. The strike drew condemnation from Pope Leo XIV and Trump, and prompted statements of regret from Israel, which said it was an accident.

“It is time to end this nonsense, end the war,” Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa told reporters.

Pizzaballa and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III said they witnessed a Gaza that was “almost totally destroyed.” They said they saw older people, women and boys “totally starved and hungry” and called for urgent humanitarian aid.

“Every hour without food, water, medicine, and shelter causes deep harm,” Pizzaballa said. “It is morally unacceptable and unjustifiable.”

Magdy reported from Cairo and Goldenberg from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.

Kauai is the smallest, northernmost and geologically oldest of the Hawaiian islands and boasts one of the most stunning island settings in the world.  Just 552 square miles in size, the Garden Island’s landscape gets lush and wild on the remote North Shore, only about an hour’s drive (30 miles) from the airport in Lihue.

Here you’ll find the beautiful crescent-shaped Hanalei Bay ringed by the famously rugged cliffs of the Napali coast, plus an unspoiled, beach-lined coastline that bursts with wild Pacific beauty. Sun, rainclouds, wind and ocean waves caress the bay and vibrant sunrises and sunsets paint an atmospheric canvas of pure tropical beauty — often one of the prettiest sights in the Hawaiian Islands.

An outrigger canoe crosses Hanalei Bay at sunset. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

A drive to Kauai’s North Shore is half the fun: Starting from Lihue’s low-key, small scale airport, you quickly exit town and head north through several colorful coastal towns of Kapa’a, Wailua, Kilauea, and the funky, Old Hawaii surf town of Hanalei. For beach and hiking provisions, be sure to stop at the Princeville Center, where a Foodland market carries everything you need for day trips (check out the fresh ahi poke bowls, banana and mango macadamia nut bread, guava juice sodas, and purple bread rolls made from taro root) and don’t miss Lappert’s Hawaiian ice cream shop and its enticing tropical flavored treats (love the Lava Tube sundae.)

Tunnels Beach on Kauai is known for its sparking, clear water. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

Just north of the upscale Princeville resort community, the landscape becomes extraordinarily lush, with graceful waterfalls cascading down steep green mountains, and small rivers and streams flowing steadily to the sea though steep narrow ravines creasing the slopes of Mount Waialeale, one of the rainiest spots on Earth. At the Hanalei Valley Lookout, the gateway to the far north shore, you enjoy a panorama of the Hanalei River Valley and Kauai’s famed taro fields, laid out in a dreamlike patchwork quilt of green.

An overlook on Kauai’s North Shore offers views of taro fields and distant mountains. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

After crossing the historic Hanalei Bridge — the first of seven, one-lane bridges on the journey to the far North Shore — a two-lane highway meanders for the next several miles to the quaint town of Hanalei, where you explore this old-school Hawaiian village and take in its hip surf vibe and eclectic mix of structures like the Old Hanalei Schoolhouse and Ching Young Village — a set of historic buildings now home to shops and restaurants.

The AMA ramen restaurant offers great mountain views from its patio. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

The town’s picturesque Wai’oli Hui’ia church is set beneath a backdrop of soaring, waterfall-laced mountains. Enjoy lunch at eateries such as local favorite Tropical Taco, or the Hanalei Poke food truck. Other excellent eating options in town include AMA ramen restaurant (great mountain views from the restaurant patio), the riverside Hanalei Dolphin and colorful Tahiti Nui, which was featured in a scene from the 2011 film “The Descendants” in which George Clooney’s character meets with his cousin, played by Beau Bridges. (This family-run restaurant also has a very fun, small-scale luau on Wednesday evenings.)

Tahiti Nui, a colorful local spot that was featured in the film “The Descendants,” offers a small-scale luau on Wednesday evenings. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

Cool off with a mango-passion fruit shave ice at JoJo’s before heading a few blocks to Pine Trees beach and Black Pot beach near the iconic Hanalei pier to sunbathe, beachcomb, or body board and surf in the gentle bay waves. Other must-see shops in Hanalei include Havaiki Oceanic and Tribal Art, Yellowfish Trading Company for new and vintage Hawaiiana and Hanalei Strings music shop for handcrafted ukuleles.

A couple takes in a dazzling sunset from Black Pot Beach on the North Shore of Kauai. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

Continuing north, the coastal road narrows even more and a series of one-lane bridges force you to slow down and absorb the stunning scenery of this wave-swept shore. The views are magical: rugged emerald mountains adorned with waterfalls, and aquamarine seas framed by white sand beaches. Just a few miles before the end of the road and the start of the famously scenic and almost inaccessible Napali coast, you reach the tranquil community of Ha’ena and , where you can take a shuttle (reservations required) to visit Haena State Park’s wet and dry caves; Tunnels and Ke’e beaches for great snorkeling; and the Lumahuli Garden & Preserve, which teems with native species in an otherworldly landscape.

Where to stay

A beachgoer reclines on Puu Poa Beach at 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay resort. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

Hanalei’s Bay most luxurious lodging option is 1 Hanalei Bay, the posh new eco-friendly wellness resort in the resort community of Princeville. Draped on the cliffs overlooking serene Hanalei Bay, the resort reopened on February 2023 after a $300 million dollar re-imagination and features 252 nature-inspired rooms, including 51 suites, seven food and beverage venues, 18,000 square foot wellness center, 7,900 square foot fitness facility, three pools, an artist studio, children’s activity center, rooftop organic garden with native canoe crops and dedicated apiaries.

A visitor takes in Hanalei Bay from Puu Poa Beach at 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

Guests have on-site access to services such as IV therapies, medical aesthetics, body analysis, metabolic testing and VO2 testing and analysis  with tailored treatments aimed to stimulate cellular health, regeneration, and a transformative health reset. The resort also offers custom itineraries designed around wellness goals incorporating sustainable nutrition, fitness training, Kauai plant-based and touchless technology therapies, and functional medicine. Details: www.1hotels.com/hanalei-bay

Hanalei Colony Beach Resort is a quiet, secluded resort about 4 miles north of Hanalei that offers guests complimentary shuttles to nearby attractions. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

For a smaller scale, “unplugged” hideaway escape on Kauai’s North Shore, check out the secluded Hanalei Colony Resort, set on a quiet, sandy shoreline a few miles north of Hanalei town. In addition to kitchen-equipped suites, a spa and a pool, the resort offers guests complimentary shuttles to the pristine and scenic Tunnels beach (great for snorkeling) and adjoining Haena State Park, as well as Hanalei and Princeville. Details: www.hcr.com

Beachgoers take in a rainbow at Hanalei Colony Resort beach. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

Adventures on Kauai’s North Shore

Kauai is a nirvana for adventure and active travelers. From hiking the lush, jungly Napali coast, kayaking the Wailua River on the east shore’s “Coconut Coast,” to beach and canyon hikes on the south and west shores, there’s an abundance of adventures to seek out.

Hiking

A hiker enjoys the views along the Kalalau Trail on Kauai. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

The North Shore is no exception and features the world-famous Kalalau Trail leading to Hanakapiai beach and waterfall (4 miles and 8 miles roundtrip, respectively), and eventually to the remote Kalalau Valley, a 22-mile roundtrip overnight backpacking experience (State park permits are required for backpackers.)

The Kalalau trail offers exhilarating views of the Napali Coast. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

With awe-inspiring views of towering cliffs, lush valleys, waterfalls, and sea caves, the Kalalau Trail is considered one of the most scenic, if challenging, hikes in all the islands (advance hiking reservations required up to 30 days in advance for non-Hawaii residents.) Whether hikers do the full hike or just a portion, the trail is a highlight of any visit to Kauai.

Backpackers hike through jungle terrain on the Kalalau trail. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

The short first leg of the route is a somewhat rigorous but unforgettable hiking adventure that captures the essence of the North Shore. You start near Ke’e beach and ascend a the rocky and somewhat steep cliffside trail across lava rocks and across streams to Hanakapiai Beach, where you can picnic under shady pandanus trees or on the small, rocky strand. Don’t attempt to swim here as the ocean currents are extremely dangerous and there have been many drownings. General info: www.kalalautrail.com. Shuttle info: www.gohaena.com.

Hanakapiai Beach is accessible via a 4-mile hike along the Kalalau trail. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

Kayaking

Kayakers are launched from Hideaways Beach in Princeville, Kauai. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

Take a relaxing kayak tour of the Hanalei river and bay to scenic Hideaways Beach with Kayak Kauai. Details: www.kayakkauai.com

Surfing

Kauai visitors get a surf lesson at Hanalei Bay. (Photo by Ben Davidson)

Learn to surf with the experts at Hanalei-based Hawaiian Surfing Adventures. Details: www.hawaiiansurfingadventures.com

Nature walk

Explore the hillside trails of the Limahuli Garden & Preserve, one of three National Tropical Botanical Gardens on Kauai and a preserve for many native plant species, some only found on Kauai’s North Shore. Details: www.ntbg.org/gardens/limahuli

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Karen Powell, whose previous novel is “The River Within,” is the author most recently of “Fifteen Wild Decembers.”

Q. Please tell readers about your novel, “Fifteen Wild Decembers.”

Like many readers, I first discovered Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” as a teenager. I was mesmerized by the wild moorland landscape she described and the equally wild characters that inhabited it.

When I finished reading, I turned to the introduction and was surprised to learn that the author of this passionate, violent novel had led a seemingly uneventful life. The daughter of an Anglican clergyman, Emily lived almost all of her life in Haworth, a remote village in the southern Pennines, hundreds of miles from literary London. She had no friends outside the family and was deeply reserved, silent to the point of rudeness when forced into company. Emily never married and there is no evidence of any romantic connections before her death at the tragically young age of 30.

I was intrigued right away by the disconnect. I wondered how someone of Emily’s background could write a novel which scandalized Victorian readers – a contemporaneous reviewer suggested the author should have committed suicide rather than continue! – and still has the power to shock to this day.

I started writing in my early thirties, around the same time that I moved to Yorkshire. Now within driving distance of Haworth, I was able to explore the wild landscape that Emily had described for myself. And, of course, to visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which was once home to family. The museum is so wonderfully curated that you almost expect to find Emily and her sisters working on their novels at the original dining table, in a room which overlooks the graveyard and the church where their father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, preached.

I began to understand that Emily’s life here was far more tumultuous than I’d first thought. She and her sisters lived under the constant threat of both penury and homelessness – when their elderly, half-blind father died the parsonage would revert to the church governors, while their attempts to earn a living through teaching or governess work had ended miserably. Added to this, their brother Branwell, the only son and once the great hope of the family, had become addicted to both alcohol and laudanum after a disastrous love affair with a married woman. Visitors to the parsonage are often struck by how tiny it is. There would have been nowhere to hide from Branwell’s despair and the ensuing chaos of addiction. Emily’s home in Haworth was hardly an idyllic writing retreat and yet…

I don’t recall the precise moment I decided I must write her story, but the idea must have lurked somewhere in my teenage brain and then started to evolve during those visits to Haworth.

Q. The Brontës grew up in Yorkshire and you live in North Yorkshire. Was knowing the landscape of the area essential to understanding the family?

It would be a tall order to write about Emily Brontë without having some familiarity with the moorland that surrounds her home in Haworth. Emily was so viscerally attached to this landscape that she suffered breakdowns almost every time she was forced to leave.

After Emily’s death, Charlotte wrote: “My sister loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best loved was—liberty. Liberty was the breath of Emily’s nostrils; without it, she perished.”

In order to imagine my way into Emily’s mind, it was essential to walk in her footsteps, to learn this landscape – so different to the softer, more ordered countryside of the south-east of England where I grew up – for myself. I’ve spent many hours now on the moorland that rears up directly behind Emily’s parsonage home. It’s a very particular terrain: peaty, boggy, windswept, with a bleak beauty of its own: “No life higher than the grasstops, or the hearts of sheep,” as Sylvia Plath once described it. Aside from the reservoirs down in the valley, and the signposts in both English and Japanese to Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse and the alleged inspiration for Wuthering Heights, little can have changed since Emily walked here.

Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?

I listened to Taylor Swift almost exclusively while editing “Fifteen Wild Decembers,” to the extent that major scenes in the book are now inextricably linked in my mind with certain songs, with entire albums.

I could write about this at great length if anyone was ever interested, have a habit of telling people even if they aren’t. And don’t get me started on The Eras Tour.

Q. You’re writing historical fiction, not history. Can you talk about the difference?

You won’t find me deep in the archives trying to unearth new primary sources. To my mind, that’s a job best left to the historians. As a novelist, my work is to absorb and assess the information available – in the case of a family as famous as the Brontës, a great deal of research has already been carried out by people with far more expertise than me – and then to let my imagination work its way into any intriguing gaps in the narrative.

For example, in the prologue of “Fifteen Wild Decembers,” we meet 24-year-old Emily on a boat to Brussels. This trip was instigated by Charlotte, ostensibly so that the two sisters could improve their teaching qualifications at a Belgian school. Charlotte’s fictionalized account of Brussels in her novel “Villette” and her extant letters give us a good idea of what this adventure meant to her. As far as I’m aware though, there is no record of Emily’s state of mind on that boat trip. Given that she loathed to be away from her Yorkshire home, and was possibly already suspicious of Charlotte’s motivations, I hazarded a guess that her mood was less than sunny.

Similarly, we know exactly what the young Charlotte Brontë thought about Cowan Bridge School for Daughters of the Clergy because she reproduced it to devastating effect in “Jane Eyre,” and spoke bitterly about it for the rest of her life, but there is scant record of Emily’s presence at the school, let alone her feelings. Blanks in the historical record such as these are irresistible to a novelist!

Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?

In my early teens, my mother bought me a copy of “The Greengage Summer” by Rumer Godden. I lost it somewhere along the way, but made sure to buy another copy for my own daughter and now always recommend it to other readers.

It’s the story of 13-year-old Cecil who travels with her widowed mother and family to Hotel Les Oeillets, an idyllic yet faded hotel in the Champagne region of France. Her mother has taken her children there to show them the World War I battlefields, in the hope of curing them of selfishness, but when she falls ill they are thrust into the care of Eliot, a charming Englishman, and the confusing, contradictory, adult world of Les Oeillets.

The book was published in 1958 but stands the test of time. To my mind, it’s the perfect coming of age novel, gorgeously written and capturing perfectly that strange, disorienting experience of being on the brink of adulthood.

Q. What are you reading now?

I find fiction too distracting when I’m deep in edits, so I’m reading a history of Elizabethan England for a possible future project. I’m also still thinking about Graham Watson’s seminal biography “The Invention of Charlotte Brontë,” due to be published in the US this August.

Earlier in the year, I loved “Glorious Exploits” by Ferdia Lennon, a hugely entertaining story of a group of Athenian prisoners in Ancient Sicily who might just save themselves by agreeing to perform a Euripides’ play. And I’ve recently finished RAW CONTENT by Naomi Booth, a beautifully nuanced novel about a young woman overwhelmed by the responsibility of keeping her newborn daughter safe. An added bonus is that the novel is set in York where I live!

Q. How do you decide what to read next?

Social media, press reviews, book bloggers, whatever grabs my eye in the book shop. Recommendations from writing friends are really important too, especially since they’re likely to get their hands of proofs. I find the writing community incredibly generous and supportive, particularly of those who are just starting out and might need a boost from more established authors. I can still remember getting a direct message and an endorsement from Elizabeth McNeal (“The Doll Factory,” Circus of Wonders,” “The Burial Plot”) after she’d finished my previous novel “The River Within.” It meant everything.

Q. Do you have a favorite character or quote from a book?

Nostalgia comes into play here, so when it comes to choosing a favourite character I veer naturally towards the books I loved as a child or came to in my early teenager years. There might be a bit of a scrap involving Elizabeth Bennet, Nancy Blackett (“Swallows and Amazons”) and Laura Ingalls Wilder (I know, not a character as such) but Anne Shirley would probably win the day.

My novel-in-progress is inspired by a quotation, the first line of Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”:

‘In the middle of the journey of our life I came upon myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.’

Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?

Not so much my reading life, but a tiny yet fearsome English teacher planted the idea in my mind that I could write.

She won’t remember me. I was a bright but unenthusiastic teenager, with no interest in making anyone’s teaching day more enjoyable. I imagined myself to be coolly cynical, too worldly for the classroom. Almost certainly I came across as a massive misery guts. And though I was considered good at English – I read extensively and therefore had a vocabulary and reasonable grasp of grammar – I didn’t much like writing stories. That meant coming up with a plot, which is something I struggle with to this day.

When instructed to write a story about first love, I chose to ignore the hopeless creatures who’d shambled in and out of my teenage world and wrote about Greece instead, a landscape and culture that have enthralled me ever since I first visited at the age of 13.

This plotless ‘story’ was returned to my desk with just one word: ‘beautiful.’ We never spoke of it again and I remained as charmless and unteachable as ever. The idea that I could write something beautiful and worthy of praise must have lodged though, and my love of the Mediterranean landscape remains to this day. My novel-in-progress is set at a beach resort between Naples and Rome.

Q. What do you find the most appealing in a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?

I’ll happily whizz through any number of books which are plot-driven as long as the rest of the writing isn’t embarrassing. I don’t have a great capacity for retention though, so it takes emotional resonance and a facility for language to engage my mind after I’ve turned the last page.

Q. Do you have a favorite bookstore or bookstore experience?

Independent bookshops are a gift to authors. Should any of your readers ever find their way to my part of England, I can recommend The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, Criminally Good Books in York, and Collected Books in Durham which I discovered via my American writing pal, Patricia Grace King. And if you’re ever lucky enough to go to Haworth, don’t miss the trove of Brontë-related literature, including “Fifteen Wild Decembers,” in the Brontë Parsonage Museum gift shop.

While we’re in Brontë territory, I urge you to walk down the vertiginously steep Main Street – perhaps making a detour to the Old Post Office restaurant which still retains the original counter from where the Brontë sisters posted out their manuscripts – until you find your way to a small but very special bookshop.

Wave of Nostalgia started out as a vintage clothing store but branched out into books during lockdown. These days Diane Park and her team do an incredible job of hand selling books and promoting authors through an extensive events programme. My first-ever “Fifteen Wild Decembers” event was held here and I was lucky enough to return recently for a Brontë themed event in the magical setting of St Michael and All Angels church, where the Reverend Patrick Brontë preached and where all of the family with the exception of Anne, are now buried.

I’m so grateful to Diane and to all the other independent booksellers for consistently supporting my work.

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