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Hi, my name is Grace Louise Davis and most people tell their story of how they survived cancer but mine is more intense than you think. It was hard on me and my family. Each corner you turned was a mystery that the doctors had to solve.

"The objective of this study was to compile an inventory of seismically-induced landslides and lateral spreading along portions of Crowley's Ridge and evaluate complex lateral spreads and coherent translational block slides not previously identified in the western New Madrid Seismic Zone."--Introduction, p. 5.

I never knew Budapest before 1989. I got to know it after that great year zero in time to catch a glimpse of the old days. Two towns united-Buda to the west and Pest to the east with the River Danube flowing through the centre. I lived right here on Franz Liszt Square one winter, the winter I met Sonia, Valentin, Ana, Vladimir, Lajos and-I shivered -Kati. Ibolya had funding for research and lectures at the Liszt Academy and me and Dany came too but it was Sonia we were following. We were quite a gang.The centre of the city had a small international crowd-it still does-and I became a part of it. Elizabeth Town, or district VII as it is also known, had become a desert then, its Jewish population long disappeared or fled, its buildings abandoned, except for a few people here and there, like Lajos and his violin workshop, The Little Pipe bistro where Vladimir played piano, and the Kádár, the old Jewish restaurant where you can hear violin playing as you walk past but The Artists' Club here on Franz Liszt Square was my favourite. When we visited the first time, we were the only diners. I remembered the song they played there that winter. I was familiar with the tune, very familiar, but it was sung in Hungarian, Those Were The Days. I started humming the melody to myself as I sipped my coffee and looked across the rooftops of downtown. The sun was out and I could see the Danube glisten in the distance, the Buda hills beyond. Budapest was a diamond in the rough. It took effort, or an accident, to find her and when you found her, she was yours and you were hers forever. She was the heart of Europe but the thing about a heart is a heart can be broken. And the thing about diamonds? Diamonds are forever. I drifted back to the events nearly twenty years ago. I would never have predicted any of it.

THE BUDAPEST TRILOGY IS THE FULL SERIES OF THE BUDAPEST LAURA MCLOVE STORIES Laura McLove-lover of music and dance alike-pursues love and intrigue through a range of heists and mysteries, some undiscovered since the fall of the communist regime. 1 The Budapest Artists' Club A Hungarian dance house is the focus of a historic musical instrument heist involving a gang of musicians. 2 Hollywood Balaton-To Catch A Thief on the Hungarian Riviera A beautiful house on Lake Balaton is the location of this missing manuscript story. 3 The Sound of Music Code A famous painting is stolen from the Hungarian National Gallery on the night of lockdown.

When my parents each died in 1998, I realized that I had become the family patriarch. Beginning about 2000, I began an exploration of the Doyle family genealogy and did so in fits-and-starts for 15-20 years. My goal had always been fairly limited. I wanted to trace my family lines to their European origins. During the 2020-2022 China-virus lock-down, I made serious progress in filling out those family trees. But as they fleshed-out, they appeared to me so impersonal. I wondered, is there a story and if so, could I tell it? Then I came across a large manila envelope filled with loose pictures of Doyle ancestors that had been saved and passed-on by my father's sister, my Aunt Marie. I recognized a new challenge. I began organizing the pictures chronologically in an album. But I soon realized that there were many missing family members and for some of the pictures, I knew a name but nothing about the person. I came to understand that there was a lot I did not know about my family history. The final and perhaps most critical impetus for this book were the gaps and holes in what I had come to understand about my father and mother and the two grandmothers that I had known. I knew my Grandma Doyle, my father's mother. I was 12 when she died. I knew my Grandma Mackie, my mother's mother. She had lived with us 3-4 months each year for over 15 years. I was 21 when she died. Over the years, I had had numerous opportunities to talk with both grandmothers. From the stories they told and from what Mom and Dad had shared, I thought I knew quite a bit. In reality, I knew very little of substance. I wanted to make sure my children could not say that about me and I wanted the family trees to come alive.

One of the scariest and most gripping novels of all time is brought vividly to life in this graphic novel retelling created by renowned comic and graphic novel artist, Anthony Williams. It makes a great gift for comic or graphic-novel enthusiasts and provides an appealing introduction to the world of literature for reluctant readers.