The go-to fashion advice manual, listing all the sorts of outrageously minimalist clothes worn to Academy Award presentations or by high-profile fashionistas and definitely unsuitable to wear for a job interview or on public transport.  

Remember me to Harold Square

When a young reporter visits the north of England on a sabbatical trek, he accidentally runs into a silent old craftsman who sells beautiful wooden planes. After buying one of the models, the young man reflexively attempts to find out the backstory of the craftsman; what he finds is the story of a loving romance that all started at an accidental meeting at Harold Square. Filled to the brim with joy, the old fellow lives his life creating little trinkets of beauty, inside each of which are captured the story of Harold Square.

Ivanhoe

@silverlily I know it! I know it!

Posted by: @lamp-lighter

@silverlily I know it! I know it!

So do I, meaning Mountains of Spices by Hannah Hurnard. I haven't read it yet, but I am planning to do so after an upcoming re-reading of Hind's Feet... !

(Back to Ivanhoe... )

The life story of a simple Russian peasant who is so devoted to tending his vegetable garden that he becomes known to all as Ivan of the Hoe, and eventually just Ivanhoe for short. 

Wuthering Heights 

An Australian family try to live for a year in the bleak and windy township of Haworth in Yorkshire, not far from the much written about moors of Wuthering Heights. 

The Silk Roads

An egotistical king demands that every road he travels on must be covered with fine silk.

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance

New Jersey, petite, and sharp featured ballet teacher, Vera Strong is determined to live up to her name. To this end, she forms a plan to create the best ballet school of all by teaching students a condensed, highly coordinated dance (ConCorDance). But in the attempt to prove herself strong, she becomes overbearing, missing the meaning all together, and alienating the best talent in the state.

The Wind in The Willows

A young couple buy an old house in the countryside, The Willows, and spend months dealing with the cold air from gaps and leaks which let the cold wind into the rooms.

The White Mountains 

Brilliant young Jim Malcom, crippled by a boating accident longs, to play with the other children; instead, he is stuck to his books. One winter, he finds enjoyment in observing the icicles on the window, creating, due to the eaves, the shape of mountains. His investigation leads to his writing a paper on the theories of linear regression. When a visitor accidentally comes across the brilliant theories, it seems like Malcom may be called down to England to meet the well-known Isaac Newton. Is it possible he has discovered something which will answer Newton's greatest conundrum?

(disclaimer: this is kind of a ridiculous story, but in the character of this game, I think it works 😉)

Twice Freed

An overview of the history of world slavery from Biblical times to the present, written by a distinguished history professor, whose ancestors came from the cultural background of their people having been enslaved on two occasions by at least two very different dominating empires, but due to time & resilience they were subsequently freed. 

He went with Marco Polo

The life story of Trim, the highly intelligent and faithful black and white cat who went with Marco Polo on his journey to the East. (Being an accomplished time traveller, Trim more famously joined Matthew Flinders on his voyage to Australia a few centuries later.)

The Pilgrim's Progress

The stories of a group of people on an April cruise to attend the Centenary of Anzac Day at Gallipoli, in now Türkiye who also went to many other places on the Turkish coast & Greek islands, including visits to some of the 7 cities of Revelation, and St John of Patmos' original church in what used to be Ephesus, as they relate what they learned from their experiences.

The Three Musketeers

A trio of friends launch a new perfume featuring Musk at a local market, and it is very successful.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

The tenant of Wildfell Hall's eviction from what remained a church-owned property, & which was once the Manse for the Minister, was due to damage caused by frequent rioting outside its doors, led by politically intimidating protesters. The tenant who had been using the property for his busy local electoral office was actually the Prime Minister, and when neither church services could be held in the next-door church, not even funerals, the church then decided that even the Prime Minister needed to find a better place to work from. 

Climb a lonely hill

It was all a big mistake. Charlie Wilms hadn't even wanted to go to America, and when he gets stuck there during WW2, without any way to get back home, it seems certain more than just ill luck was keeping him away. Finally, after the war, returning to Cambridge, he finds everything changed. How he wishes he could have been there to weather the war with his country, but instead he feels himself almost outcast, looked upon certainly as a coward. Returning at last to the last place he met with Miss Burnett, he sits upon the hill garden to reflect; wondering if it is possible to get everything back. Hark, who is that who climbs the hill? Can it be? Turned grey by war, but alive and real? He cannot yet see; but he can hope.

The Last of the Mohicans

A shoemaker emigrates to America and finds it possible to combine European techniques with the traditional methods of the Mohican people. He names his shop to show this combination!

  The Case For Faith