title: Death with Interruptions
author:  Jose Saramago 
description: Starred Review. Saramago's philosophical page-turner hinges on death taking a holiday. And, Saramago being Saramago, he turns what could be the stuff of late-night stoner debate into a lucid, playful and politically edgy novel of ideas. For reasons initially unclear, people stop dying in an unnamed country on New Year's Day. Shortly after death begins her break (death is a woman here), there's a catastrophic collapse in the funeral industry; disruption in hospitals of the usual rotational process of patients coming in, getting better or dying; and general havoc. There's much debate and discussion on the link between death, resurrection and the church, and while the clandestine traffic of the terminally ill into bordering countries leads to government collusion with the criminal self-styled maphia, death falls in love with a terminally ill cellist. Saramago adds two satisfying cliffhangershow far can he go with the concept, and will death succumb to human love? The package is profound, resonant andbonusentertaining. <i>(Oct.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  ## Time Was
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Nora Roberts
  
  
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  ### Chapter 1
  
  
  
  
  
  He was going down. The instrument panel was a maze of wildly flashing numbers
  and lights, and the cockpit was spinning like a merry-go-round gone mad: He
  didn't need the scream of warning bells to tell him he was in trouble. He
  didn't need the insistent red blip on his computer screen to tell him the
  trouble was big. He'd known that the moment he'd seen the void.
  
  
  
  
  
  Swearing, clamping down on his panic, he struggled with the controls, using
  one hand to shove the lever forward for full power. The vehicle bucked and
  shuddered, fighting the gravitational pull. The G's hit him like a wall. All
  around him metal screamed against metal.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Hold together, baby," he managed to say as his lips stretched back over his
  teeth. The floor near his feet ripped open in a jagged line three inches long.
  "Hold together, you son of a—"
  
  
  
  
  
  He jammed hard due east, swearing again when it see