Poet Journalist Novelist
Books by Laura Harrison McBride
"It must be nice to have no mentality at all..." according to a lament in this little book that traverses the breadth of human experience post-Brexit and during Trump, while the world, regardless of your position on the medians of human life, goes thump in the night and thuds like another painful brick on your toe in the morning. And yet, there is hope. Even post-contagion. "Give me a smart nurse over Big Pharma any day."
Taking a look back at the recent 'plague years' and before and after, this small tome reveals what went on during that horrible time, personally and to the society in which we live.
Doom and gloom?
No, but the poet leads a path through what's gone on to a hopeful future, up to and including a vignette or two of people 'caught in the act' of being fully human.
Green. Fun-loving; Turbulent past. Edge of Europe. Homeland of millions of American families. Irish Whiskey. Irish Coffee. Irish Wolfhounds. Good Irish craic (which means fun in case you were getting upset.) The author spent 15 years back and forth from the US to Ireland, and later moved next door, to the UK, meaning MANY trips. Who better to explain the ineffable Irish?
Known in England as Tom Tit Tot, the tale originated in central Europe in the 16th century, and was known as Rumpelstiltskin. It was attributed to French poet Rabelais and German scholar Fischart. Whether you know him as a goblin, a dwarf, a ghost, or a cripple, Rumpelstiltskin is derived from the early modern German game called 'Rumpele stilt oder der Poppart.'
The first non-politically correct mystery, filled with humour, ridiculous antics, a couple of bodies, and a lovably nerdy detective who was once a driving instructor, yoga teacher and professor of some subject or other at a Jesus-freak university. Not to die for; to LAUGH for.
Shelf Barker, not the world's greatest detective...just the world's detective who gets himself into the greatest number of unusual spots...with hilarious results.Needless to say, Halloween is a special time of year for Shelf and is wife and his ex-wife and his two loyal pets. Also needless to say, Shelf finds himself in a predicament very close to the witching hour, a predicament including a Jack-O'-Lantern that contains a deadly surprise, and a pack of disembodied souls that won't leave HIS house until he grants THEIR wishes.Odd? Topsy-turvy?
Poor Shelf! He had just finished up his Halloween adventure inNew York. The ghosts who had dragged him across the Atlantic tosolve that mystery from colonial times seemed to be after him again.His new task? To keep the famous New York City Ballet's productionof The Nutcracker from becoming the graveyard of alot more than this season's new ballet shoes, and last New Years'shattered resolutions.
In the 1970s, long before YouTube and when TV recording was in its infancy, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Santa Claus dropped his pants on his way from the sleigh to Macy's front door to kick off the Christmas season. But at least Santa didn't drop dead. Shelf Barker, the world's most unlikely British P.I., is called in by his wife's cousin, a mob boss in Brooklyn, NY, to find out who killed the Carroll Gardens Community Center's Santa Claus.