title: Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice
author:  A.S. Byatt 
description: A.S. Byatt's stories simmer with a sensuality and passion that, like topiary trees in a formal garden, are pruned and trained into cultivated shapes while retaining the wild scent of the orchard. In "Crocodile Tears" a woman walks away from a personal tragedy, deserting those she loves to try to reconcile herself to a death for which she feels horribly responsible. Thrown together in Nmes with another exiled mourner, a Norwegian full of northern folktales, she ricochets between a numbed calm and a reckless urge for self-destruction. Together they begin to assemble some kind of personal solace out of fragments of European history, fiction, and myth, and so come to terms with their guilt. "A Lamia in the Cevennes" is also set in France, where another isolated English exile struggles for self-knowledge amid the shards of history and folktale. "Cold" is itself a kind of latter-day fairy story of ice princesses and sighing suitors. These are stories steeped in light and color, full of glowing landscapes and sensuous delights. Their intricately woven skeins of literary allusion and keenly observed locations bewitch the reader. Yet the figures in Byatt's landscapes seem powerless to derive pleasure or solace from their surroundings, picking their lonely way through the brilliance, carrying with them burdens of painful memories they cannot shake off. <I>--Lisa Jardine, Amazon.co.uk</I>
zlib_text: ELEMENTAL’S CHRISTMAS BLAST
  Elemental’s MC (Book 12)
   
  Copyright © 2020 Alexi Ferreira
  All rights reserved.
  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any
  means, including photocopying, recording, or by other electronic or mechanical methods, without the
  prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in used critical
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  requests, write to the author, mentioning in the subject line:
  “Reproduction Request” at the address below:
  alexiferreira.writer@gmail.com
  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, any
  event, occurrence, or incident is purely coincidental. The characters and storylines are created and
  thought up from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
  Alexi Ferreira Website
    
    
     
     
     
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
   
  Elemental’s Christmas 