A small fable of love and sacrifice and what comes after.

Onceuponatime the Daughter of Rumplestiltskin was born (mind the capitalization, because that’s the only way to refer to her--the only real identifier, though it’s not a name, more an epithet. Pardon its usage, can’t be helped).

"How's a woman supposed to prove her husband's a murderer, dammit?"

On the eve of a planned voyage to Brittany, Marjorie Jameson starts her day with no problems more pressing than forcing a boatyard to do an emergency repair to the family yacht. A chance encounter at the Cowes hi-speed ferry terminal begins to unravel a web of conspiracy and murder, with her charming, untrustworthy husband Julian right at the centre and Marjorie as the next intended victim.

But no-one's going to trust the word of an aging housewife whose complaints of abuse the police have previously dismissed as delusions.

She had studied the Legend of John more than any other. Now one of the protagonists of that story is standing in front of her in the flesh.

A comic strip adventure, 26 years on.

The Spanish Armada is about to descend upon England, and her greatest hope is a captainless dragon hatchling.

It's her life story, and she has some issues with it.

The sensible Flora Pilkington is delighted to be asked to accompany her cousin Emily, a wealthy heiress, on a sojourn to Bath – even if seventeen-year-old Emily is something of a ninny-hammer. However, when the dashing but mysterious Lord Wolfe rescues Emily from Terrible Peril, causing her to fall quite in love with him, Flora becomes deeply suspicious. Just who is this Lord Wolfe? Why does he persist in winking at Flora in such a deeply uncouth manner? Why does he refuse to attend all evening engagements? And what is the insufferable man's dark, awful secret? (For she is quite convinced that he has one.) Flora determines to find out, whatever the danger to her reputation . . .

In which Sam learns to take his dad's advice, the accounting equation is abused, and "zapped" is a technical term. Supernaturally speaking.

It's amazing how the world rarely gets less complicated.

Ella and Ruth were sitting in the rocking chairs on the porch when the boys showed up for the first time. Angeline was sitting on the top step of the porch, sunning her calves, but that was Angeline for you, she always had to make a point of how she was younger and more limber, and even pretended that her hair was really still black, as if anyone would believe that. Ella's hair was a shade of orange never encountered in nature, no pretense there, and Ruth, always the rebel, was growing hers out and had a sort of two-tone effect going, two inches of steel gray around her head and then a fluffy brown halo.

He’s had it. Fucking fudgepackers walking in like they own the place. Baby-faced kid with a smile around his beer and fingers in a fresh stack of cash. Chester’s sick of these twinks. The way they roll into town, always rubbing up on one another, in each other’s space. Shoulder thumps and the ”accidental” ways their hips bump.

She sings, "Here come I, the death watch beetle. Chewing away at the great cathedral."

He whips around and his funny-looking coat billows open, its perfect pleats separating like one of those Oriental paper fans her mother fancies so much.

There's a sweat slick on his skin, pink-gold and glistening. Mama Elize clicks her tongue disapprovingly at him.

"Let an old lady look! Such a pretty boy. These fields of mine have been dry for nearly thirty years but jus' looking at you brings the rai