Doug Brown’s stories are weird. He sees the world through some sort of custom microscope that reveals the weirdness of normal people and situations, and conveys that revelation in bracing, inventive language. This is his first collection; I can’t wait for his second.
—Jane Greer, author, Love like a Conflagration
and The World as We Know It Is Falling Away
Samuel Hazo is a legend in the world of poetry, and now he brings us a novel put together with a poet’s care, each sentence honed and crafted until the craft is completely invisible.
I Want It to Happen is a romance—but much more than just a romance. The plot is simple. When Halleluiah Quinn met Tonio Vargas, they knew this was forever. But when her doctor gives her a fifty-fifty chance of survival, Halleluiah has to learn just how much forever she can pack into right now. Two completely different styles of narration weave the tale and introduce us to characters who seem to live right in front of us.
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A ruthless criminal who will stop at nothing to squash the evidence against him. A beautiful woman with a mysterious secret. A doomed express train. A murdered man in a sleeping compartment. An amateur detective up on all the latest inductive methods. And a hero who looks for all the world like a murderer.
You can rely on these ingredients to produce first-rate entertainment, and you can rely on Mary Roberts Rinehart, the queen of American mystery writers, to make the best use of her ingredients.
Young gentleman, have you found a perfectly innocent young lady who seems like your ideal choice for a wife? Let Mrs. Haywood show you what really goes on in the little vixen’s head.
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“This is a true Story, of a Man Gallant enough to merit your Protection; and, had he always been so Fortunate, he had not made so Inglorious an end: The Royal Slave I had the Honour to know in my Travels to the other World; and though I had none above me in that Country, yet I wanted power to preserve this Great Man. If there be any thing that seems Romantick, I beseech your Lordship to consider, these Countries do, in all things, so far differ from ours, that they produce unconceivable Wonders; at least, they appear so to us, because New and Strange. What I have mention’d I have taken care shou’d be Truth, let the Critical Reader judge as he pleases. ’Twill be no Commendation to the Book, to assure your Lordship I writ it in a few Hours, though it may serve to Excuse some of its Faults of Connexion; for I never rested my Pen a Moment for Thought.”
—From the Epistle Dedicatory
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