All I wanted to do was drink some serious coffee and occupy a Barcalounger as I spent a couple hours reading Cart Snappers, Lilian Flambo's latest romance novel about a hapless grocery store clerk and her illicit affair with the produce man. Every bit of me ached with cold as I'd just spent the last couple hours driving from Howdy to Little Rock through freezing rain and sleet in a 1956 Ford Fairlane with a limping crippled heater. And it wasn't just the temperature. The windshield wipers on the car scraaaaambleeeeched at increasingly high decibels each time they swooped across the glass, soudnig every bit like a mutant buzzard on a rampage, and the flapping piece of worn-off rubber looked like the bird's broken wing. The steel arm of the blade gouged a big arc where the bare metal blade swept across the already pocked windshield. ... read more

c