The Lost Girls of Rome by Donato Carrisi

This novel is set in Rome and translated by Howard Curtis. Sandra Vega, a forensic photographer with the Roman police department, receives news that her journalist husband has died accidentally but there is something about the circumstances surrounding his death that does not ring true to her. She decides to delve deeper in order to solve what she believes to be his murder and her investigation takes her down a very dark path. She learns about the penitenzieri, a group of priest-profilers which has historically compiled archives of the most heinous sins, particularly in the late Middle Ages (1410–1503). The story takes labyrinthine turns and has many subplots including an ongoing missing persons investigation. Sandra crosses paths with a mysterious duo, Clemente and Marcus, who are also involved in the case of the girl who has disappeared. Their incredible skill at uncovering clues makes us wonder who they are. It’s a complex plot with many characters and I found it necessary to reread various sections in order to follow the storyline but it was worth hanging in. There is apparently a sequel featuring the same characters, titled The Hunter of the Dark, that I would be interested in reading. 

Dear Monica Lewinsky

Penguin Random House audio from DEAR MONICA LEWINSKY by Julia Langbein, read by Alex Sarrigeorgiou. A wise, funny, and wildly original examination of female desire and the price women pay for giving in to their appetites.

Shelley Winters - A Poem by Tim Dlugos

Shelley Winters

Shelley Winters you’re such a pig I love you

Not “even though” you’re ugly and never shut up

      and dress like the wife of a cabbie who won

      the Lottery, but because of it!

I think you’re a miserable actress, and didn’t

      even care when you drowned in The Poseidon

      Adventure, it was a terrible movie and you

      were just wretched all the way through.

I agree with Neal Freeman that, objectively, you

      are ALWAYS unsatisfactory

And incredibly tacky: I know someone who

      saw you stinking drunk and stumbling down a

      corridor in the Traymore, now you always

      remind me of Atlantic City, and that’s dreary.

Every time you’re on Dick Cavett I get embarrassed

      for him just watching you talk.

You never answer the questions. You never remotely

      answer the questions.

Shelley, sometimes I don’t think I can take it you

      depress me so, but you fascinate the hell out of

      me just the same

And I say with a sigh, “It’s okay, it’s just the

      way Shelley is.”

I’m so young, you’re so dumb, it never could work

      still I watch you every chance I get and love

      you, you’re such a mess

—Tim Dlugos

More: Literary Hub

What is the Best Literary Film Adaptation of the Last 50 Years?

Literary Hub  has compiled a list of 64 of their favourite adaptations from the last 50 years divided into 4 genres (Comedy, Drama, Action/Thriller and SFF/Horror). Voting is now open for Best Contemporary Literary Film Adaptations Bracket. I was surprised to find that I had seen almost every movie in this round and read most of the books.

One Train May Hide Another

One Train May Hide Another

Kenneth Koch

1925 –2002

(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)

In a poem, one line may hide another line,

As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.

That is, if you are waiting to cross

The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at

Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read

Wait until you have read the next line—

Then it is safe to go on reading.

In a family one sister may conceal another,

So, when you are courting, it’s best to have them all in view

Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.

One father or one brother may hide the man,

If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.

So always standing in front of something the other

As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.

One wish may hide another. And one person’s reputation may hide

The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another

On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you’re not necessarily safe;

One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia

Antica one tomb

May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,

One small complaint may hide a great one.

One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another,

One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath

may hide another bath

As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.

One idea may hide another: Life is simple

Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein

One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory

One invention may hide another invention,

One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.

One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting

By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,

These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin

May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician

Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but

One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.

A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides

Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in

A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag

Bigger than her mother’s bag and successfully hides it.

In offering to pick up the daughter’s bag one finds oneself confronted by

the mother’s

And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker

May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee

Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love

or the same love

As when “I love you” suddenly rings false and one discovers

The better love lingering behind, as when “I’m full of doubts”

Hides “I’m certain about something and it is that”

And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the

Garden of Eden

Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.

Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.

When you come to something, stop to let it pass

So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,

Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory

Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,

The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading 

A Sentimental Journey look around

When you have finished, forTristram Shandy, to see

If it is standing there, it should be, stronger

And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore

May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk

May hide another, as when you’re asleep there, and

One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs

Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the

foot of a tree

With one and when you get up to leave there is another

Whom you’d have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,

One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man

May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.

You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It 

can be important

To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

From One Train, published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Copyright © 1994 by Kenneth Koch. 

(Academy of American Poets)

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World TRAILER

If poetry had a pop icon, Mary Oliver would be it.  Featuring poems read by Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Buscemi, Stephen Colbert, Lucy Dacus, Jesse Welles, and Oprah Winfrey.

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.

By Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Do not care if  you just arrive in your skeleton.

Would love to take a walk with you. Miss you.

Would love to make you shrimp saganaki.

Like you used to make me when you were alive.

Love to feed you. Sit over steaming

bowls of pilaf. Little roasted tomatoes

covered in pepper and nutmeg. Miss you.

Would love to walk to the post office with you.

Bring the ghost dog. We’ll walk past the waterfall

and you can tell me about the after.

Wish you. Wish you would come back for a while.

Don’t even need to bring your skin sack. I’ll know

you. I know you will know me even though. I’m

bigger now. Grayer. I’ll show you my garden.

I’d like to hop in the leaf pile you raked but if you

want to jump in? I’ll rake it for you. Miss you

standing looking out at the river with your rake

in your hand. Miss you in your puffy blue jacket.

They’re hip now. I can bring you a new one

if you’ll only come by. Know I told you

it was okay to go. Know I told you

it was okay to leave me. Why’d you believe me?

You always believed me. Wish you would

come back so we could talk about truth.

Miss you. Wish you would walk through my

door. Stare out from the mirror. Come through

the pipes.

MARY-BETH

An excerpt from the novel Whidbey by T Kira Madden

HERE WAS RELIEF, to Mary-Beth, in planning her only child’s funeral. She felt guilty for the feeling. To plan a funeral meant to admit defeat, Calvin’s defeat and hers too, both of them squashed out at last not only by Tommy but the girls, and the Pigs, and Ronald Lee Book, Unofficial Mayoral Douchebag of Miami, and the teachers and parole officers and correctional officers and social workers and Your Honors, and the system of selective lifeboats (MONEY! It’s always the money!), and the cuntish polo-shirted neighbors who’d kicked Calvin like a Hacky Sack from place to place, who’d painted LUCIFER/AURORA on Mary-Beth’s Burbank Blue door, and Syl’s I told you sos, and Cal’s episode of Cops, and the snitch therapists, the whole world it felt like most usually, and of course, Mary-Beth would not leave out the person who’d run over her son.

Five times, forward and back.

The steps of planning a funeral transformed the taut pain of her chest into something coherent, productive. She remembered Calvin telling her the universe was always expanding, like a strip of dulled elastic, a rubber band at the bottom of her junk drawer. One day, without warning—Calvin had said—it would all snap. That’s how this death pain felt, a rubber band stretched beneath the bones of Mary-Beth’s feet, then secured at the top of her skull where headaches came on. She was an overblown balloon animal, skin thinning, and though her whole life had been spent waiting, she knew now, without Calvin, that annihilating snap might arrive sooner. There was some relief there, too.

Detective Carmen Durham hadn’t called Mary-Beth since she identified the body one week ago. Nobody had called her. There was no police unit left in the town nearest Gateway, the station boarded up for years (only Luckens selling bootleg T-Mobiles outside the station’s old door), so they were outsourcing the investigation to other units now. That’s what Syl said.

Ordering the finger foods, choosing a picture of Calvin for the program, selecting a nice and respectable place for a funeral—these tasks felt easier. Soothing, almost. These tasks were, simply, something Mary-Beth could do. For days Syl brought her the options—Deerfield or Palmetto or Broward, Pastor James or Pastor Finley, how many speeches, what songs—and Mary-Beth would close her eyes and picture it before offering an answer.

Syl had moved into Mary-Beth’s bedroom, Mary-Beth in the living room. This was on Mary-Beth’s insistence. She was more comfortable on her couch, ashtray one reach down, whorls of the TV glow reflecting in her special glass, upside-down little people in there, lulling her to sleep.

In the week since her arrival, Syl had begun to stink up the house, and Mary-Beth told her so. It always smelled like something now, someone else—those Indian meals from the fancy row of the Publix freezer, cloudberry angel wing perfume, lemon bug repellent, the LA Looks hair gel that farted out the bottle and into Syl’s palms. That, and all of Syl’s shoes and clothes smelled like horse shit, no matter how often Syl said that shit was just grass and grain, molasses concentrated, it was still shit. Mary-Beth hated living in grief with those smells.

Syl always hiked the AC way down on account of her hot flashes, which slicked the tile too cold. Mary-Beth had to wear her North Pole elf clothes around the house, those green and red stripes, bundled. When Syl needed formal paperwork signed, Mary-Beth would take the whole operation out the sliding glass doors to the back lawn, remove a few layers of clothing, then scribble her name a million times on the dimpled glass table. She sucked her orange baby food pouches—her toothaches worsening by the day. She wiped Misty ashes from the pages, leaving gray smears and tiny burns on words she could read but not understand. What casket? What wood? What money? The papers crinkle-shrunk in the humid air. July wrapped her body and squeezed. 

Mary-Beth’s yard dipped down to the communal lake. Encircling it: identical condos like a roll of Smarties, and a few gators spread out on the shoreline sunbathing at all hours, iridescent in stillness, even at night. The Lakeness Monster she used to call each gator when Calvin was little. Back then they’d lived in Dade County on a different canal, but still—those goddamn gators. She dreamed constantly of Calvin’s legs and little feet dangling from the open jaw, then disappearing under a body of black water. Never get too close to sitting water, she’d said to Cal. Never make eye contact. And if the monster comes at you, throw your arms up, make yourself big, and run a zigzag fast as you can.

The zigzag thing. Thinking of it now, she wasn’t sure where she’d heard it, if it were ever even true.

More: Guernica

Jack Kerouac’s Posthumous Sales

 

On March 12, 2026, which would have been Jack Kerouac’s 104th birthday, the On the Road scroll sold at auction at Christie’s in New York for a whopping $12,135,000.

Read more: Jack Kerouac’s Record-Breaking Manuscripts 

The Town Where The Last Picture Show Was Filmed Absolutely Hated It

Larry McMurtry’s 1966 coming-of-age novel The Last Picture Show was adapted into a film with a screenplay written by McMurtry and director Peter Bogdanovich. The book was filmed in Archer City, Texas, McMurtry’s hometown. The residents took issue with the way the town was represented in the film.

Like many artists with uneven careers, Peter Bogdanovich learned to keep his distance from reviews, especially bad reviews. “My analogy is, if somebody’s shooting at you, you don’t really want to raise your head to see what kind of gun they’re using,” he explained. But Picture Show was always an exception, and he could quote from the reviews, accurately, fifty years later. It’s possible that the movie received better notices than any American film between Gone with the Wind and The Godfather. As Pauline Kael observed in The New Yorker, “Bogdanovich has made a film for everybody—not just the Airport audience but the youth audience and the educated older audience, too.”

The review Peter would take with him to his grave appeared in Newsweek: “The Last Picture Show is a masterpiece. It is not merely the best American movie of a rather dreary year; it is the most impressive work by a young American director since Citizen Kane.”

To be compared to his idol, his mentor, his friend, in whose own movie Peter was at the moment playing a role, with the character based on Peter himself—a career, a life, doesn’t get any better than this. In February 1972, the movie opened in the big Texas cities as well as Wichita Falls. The battle lines were quickly drawn. “It doesn’t matter to me what people in Archer City think about it,” Larry said, speaking of the town where the movie was shot. He added that he didn’t have many fans there. Gene Bynum, minister of the First Baptist Church in Archer City, told a reporter he had not seen the movie and did not plan to, “but several people have told me about the lewdness, nude scenes and that it is filled from one end to the other with curse words.”

John R. Adams was probably the most upset about the movie. He was the principal of the high school, and he felt properly hoodwinked when the movie appeared with a coarser script than the one Peter had used to gain admittance to the classrooms. “The producers of the film told everybody in town The Last Picture Show was going to be a family movie about small town life,” Adams fumed. “They said they would not be filming the dirty parts of the book, that the picture’s worst possible rating would be GP,” which basically meant suitable for everyone except little kids. In fact, for a while it was supposed to get an X rating, which would have severely limited its commercial viability. The tentative decision was appealed, and the movie got an R instead.

Read More: Literary Hub