Julie Berry

When immortals Ares and Aphrodite are caught in a World War II-era tryst by the latter's jealous husband, she defends her actions by imparting the tale of four young humans who became connected during World War I.

In mid-thirteenth century Provence, Dolssa de Stigata is a fervently religious girl who feels the call to preach, condemned by the Inquisition as an unnatural woman, and hunted by the Dominican Friar Lucien who fears a resurgence of the Albigensian heresy; Botille is a matchmaker trying to protect her sisters from being branded as gypsies or witches--but when she finds the hunted Dolssa dying on a hillside, she feels compelled to protect her, a decision...

Maeve Merritt, chafing against the rigid rules of her London boarding school, finds her life transformed by the genie she happens upon--and by those who want to steal him.

Orphaned at age five, Lucinda, now fifteen, stands with courage against the man who took everything from her, aided by a thief, a clever goat, and a mysterious woman called the Witch of Amaranth, while the prince she knew as a child prepares to marry, unaware that he, too, is in danger.

Reading Julie Berry's poetry means entering a new poetic space, crossing thresholds of pain and delight at once raw and refined. "like marie d'oignies who buried bloody/ mouthfuls of herself/ in the garden/ i need my poems to be like this," Berry writes in "Touching Ground." "Like this" is finely-turned and constantly surprising, haunting as plainsong, throaty as the blues. Her images are so completely unexpected and yet so thoroughly right that you...

A mother talks to her baby, recounting the Christmas story, and linking it to the love and hope she feels for her own child.

Describe how it feels to be happy and what can cause it.