Something About April 11, 1954

Celebrating something dull.

Anthony Monday Available as E-books

Open Road Media will publish the three remaining books in the Anthony Monday series as e-books on May 16. The Dark Secret of Weatherend (1984), The Lamp from the Warlock’s Tomb (1988), and The Manion in the Mist (1992) join The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn (1978), published initially as an e-book back in 2014.

Something About Egbert Ludovicus Viele

Grave accent.

Something About the Curse of the Obelisk

On pins.

Something About Weather Observers

Beacon of the wise?

Something More About Hailes Abbey

Bloody good times.

Something About Lord Love a Duck!

Egg on your face?

Something About Yon Yonson

What song through yonder window breaks?

Something About Sonorous Busses

Hush that fuss.

Something About Borkman

Someone rotten in the state Minnesota.

Something About Some Sphinxes

Riddle ye this.

Something About #JohnBellairsMonth

...which should always be 31 days....

Something About Winona Post Road

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road may get you there.

Something About Hey, Ho, the Wind and the Rain

Weathering heights of prices.

Spooky Stories Haunt the Shelves of Winona Public Library

Ben McLeod wrote to us last decade to tell how Bellairsia finally helped him connect the dots between Hoosac and Winona:

I cannot describe to you the frisson of reading a book about a mysterious library and a treasure hidden within while sitting in the very library being described. As I read more of the Anthony Monday books certain particulars made it very, very clear that Hoosac was in fact Winona. When I tried to point out to parents and librarians that these books were about our town, I was met with disinterested disbelief. Adults simply assumed that I was projecting myself onto the characters of the books.

McLeod discovered through the site that Bellairs had taught at the now-defunct College of Saint Teresa in the early 1960s, prompting him to finally find his white whale.  Or his Winterborn.  Or Weatherend.  Whatever.   Now he's back (McLeod, that is), this time with an article in the Winona Post just in time for Halloween that further explains the connection and celebrates the four-book Anthony Monday series:

Who's Who: Duke of Cornwall

In his know-it-all fashion, Emerson Eells explains to Anthony that the Blood of Hailes was a relic given to the Hailes Abbey by this person in the year 1270 [The Dark Secret of Weatherend; 177].

Where's There: Hailes Abbey

Emerson Eells reads in J.K. Borkman's private papers that Borkman purchased the Blood of Hailes from a crooked antique dealer near the ruins of this abbey [The Dark Secret of Weatherend; 177-8].

Women in Bellairs' Fiction

What's Kate reading? Bellairs, again, as this prolific reader and blogger (who has reviewed more than a few Bellairs titles) has a new commentary on the female characters in John’s novels.

Goreyana: Weatherend & Spell

Notes from Goreyana about The Dark Secret of Weatherend and The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull:

Creepy Carvings in Wood

Something...rather someone...jogged my memory this week of raising the dead (don't ask), which in turn led to John Dee, which brought to mind that eerie engraving of him and the spectral woman in white in the English Churchyard. Chances are you may have seen the picture.  John Bellairs apparently did and described the engraving in a book read by Lewis Barnavelt [The House with a Clock in its Walls, 67-8].