Previous / Next Wedding Daze Written by Virginia DeMarce Grantville, August 1634 Velma Hardesty took a good look at herself in the mirror. Jacques-Pierre Dumais came to the trailer and talked to her for an hour or two at least three or four times a week and gave her ideas on which she was to […]

Previous / Next The Summer of Our Discontent Written by Virginia DeMarce Grantville, May 1634 Susan Logsden sat in the front pew of Grantville’s rebuilt Presbyterian church, flanked on one side by Grampa Ben and Grandma Gloria and on the other by her half-sister Pam Hardesty and half-brother Cory Joe Lang. She couldn’t stop the […]

Previous / Next Songs and Ballads Written by Virginia DeMarce Judith Roth claimed no expertise at the piano—only lessons from the seventh through the sixteenth years of her life. She had been profoundly grateful when the last teacher to whom she had been assigned at the Levine School of Music had concurred with her own […]

Previous Turn, Turn, Turn Written by Virginia DeMarce July 1634 Father Nicholas Smithson, S.J., cleared his throat for the third time. Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned back against the wall of St. Mary’s rectory. After a pause, he cleared his throat for the fourth time. With obvious reluctance, Father Athanasius Kircher, S.J., […]

Previous / Next Pilgrimage of Grace Written by Virginia DeMarce “They’re not taking what happened in Suhl last January out on Johnny Lee’s family because they can’t. His dad’s been dead for thirty years. His mother wasn’t from around here to start with and she moved back to Ohio after a while. Mary Fern–that’s his […]

Previous / Next Mail Stop by Virginia DeMarce Home, Sweet HomeFrankfurt am Main, March 1633 Martin Wackernagel drew up his horse, first looking back at the route he had just completed and then forward toward the walls of Frankfurt am Main. Via regia. Die Reichsstraße. There would never be anything to equal the Imperial Road. […]

Previous / Next Prince and Abbot by Virginia DeMarceThis Troublesome MonkFulda, December 1632 “Maybe they should have held the battle of Luetzen last month after all,” Wes Jenkins said. “Just have kept Gustavus Adolphus out of it. Up-time, it seems to have cleared a whole batch of people off the playing board that we could […]

Previous / Next THE WOMAN SHALL NOT WEAR THATVirginia DeMarce Summer, 1634 No. Pastor Ludwig Kastenmayer put it out of his mind. His eyes must have deluded him. The cleaning woman at Countess Katharina the Heroic Lutheran Elementary School, here on the outskirts of Grantville, could not have been wearing . . . that. He put it out […]

Previous / Next Murphy’s Law By Virginia DeMarce Part I: Grand Scam Spring, 1634  “I have to decide within the week,” Leopold Cavriani said. “I have no hesitation, of course, about leaving my daughter Idelette here with the Reverend and Mrs. Wiley. She will learn practical business from Count August von Sommersburg’s factor, the count […]

Previous / Next ‘Til We Meet Again Virginia DeMarce The worst thing about working for Mechanical Support was that the facilities were scattered out all over Grantville, even now, two and a half years after the Ring of Fire. They’d never been able to take the time to centralize them; they didn’t really have any […]