Anna Marie Laforest

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About Anna Marie Laforest
The only thing Anna Marie loves more than reading and writing is listening to opera singers (and eating chocolate, of course). Her essays, poems, stories, and theater reviews have been published in literary journals from Austin, Texas to D.C. to Portland Oregon and Melbourne, Australia. https://annamarielaforest.wixsite.com/stories
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Titles By Anna Marie Laforest
Mystery at Oboe Lake
Mar 14, 2022
$8.99
Joyce has inherited a lake house in Ohio from her uncle, but when she arrives she finds summer music students living there, and a glowering older woman ensconced in her uncle’s quarters ready to contest his will. Also at the lake is timpanist (and recent lover) Jay, who has invited her to come to his performances at the Blossom Festival, but who seems to have a beautiful (and beautifully mean) soprano attached to his elbow.
As questions about the will become more severe, and someone from the house is found dead in the reeds by the lake, Joyce feels increasingly doubtful and even threatened over accepting the property. Jay’s friend Lewis, the dapper and scholastic music-loving priest, arrives in time to soothe some nerves and complicate others.
It’s a good thing that Joyce’s friend, the intrepid and shapeshifting Jon di Vine comes along to sort the mysteries for Joyce and the police, and of course, as he loves spectacle, he arranges a trap for the killer during a public rehearsal of Carmina Burana. Never a dull moment when these friends get together. Their lively comradery and regard for each other, begun in the novel Double Takes, grows exponentially in Mystery at Oboe Lake.
As questions about the will become more severe, and someone from the house is found dead in the reeds by the lake, Joyce feels increasingly doubtful and even threatened over accepting the property. Jay’s friend Lewis, the dapper and scholastic music-loving priest, arrives in time to soothe some nerves and complicate others.
It’s a good thing that Joyce’s friend, the intrepid and shapeshifting Jon di Vine comes along to sort the mysteries for Joyce and the police, and of course, as he loves spectacle, he arranges a trap for the killer during a public rehearsal of Carmina Burana. Never a dull moment when these friends get together. Their lively comradery and regard for each other, begun in the novel Double Takes, grows exponentially in Mystery at Oboe Lake.
Other Formats:
Paperback
Stabat Mater and other Poems
Aug 27, 2016
$8.99
Lyrical and narrative poetry from 1996 to 2016, this collection is beautiful and lively, and includes the modern epic poem "Stabat Mater" based on the interior odyssey of a child and the loss of her mother from polio.
Other Formats:
Paperback
Double Takes
Jul 23, 2016
$8.99
DOUBLE TAKES by Anna Marie Laforest is a literary mystery novel. A musician, a massage therapist, a psychic, and a priest find love and friendship (and themselves) in a double-death that unravels their lives and weaves them back together again.
Joyce picks up on secrets from suspects’ muscle structure and their conversations ‘on the table.’ But she has a habit of falling in love with the wrong, and sometimes dangerous, man. Her long-time friend Jon, a professional astrologer and budding psychic detective, brings Gemini-like clues to the case as characters and conflicts become twinned.
Meanwhile, journal entries of a would-be writer start to pre-figure the life of her fiancé, Jay, who becomes convinced she has faked her own death. And the demise of a dauntless and indebted actor has everyone at Joyce’s theatre turned upside down.
Joyce picks up on secrets from suspects’ muscle structure and their conversations ‘on the table.’ But she has a habit of falling in love with the wrong, and sometimes dangerous, man. Her long-time friend Jon, a professional astrologer and budding psychic detective, brings Gemini-like clues to the case as characters and conflicts become twinned.
Meanwhile, journal entries of a would-be writer start to pre-figure the life of her fiancé, Jay, who becomes convinced she has faked her own death. And the demise of a dauntless and indebted actor has everyone at Joyce’s theatre turned upside down.
Other Formats:
Paperback
Little Comedies about Death
Jun 21, 2016
$8.99
16 characters find their afterlives more intricately entwined with their personalities than they had imagined. Humorous, lyrical, and based on contemporary and metaphysical theories, these stories bring the foibles of human nature into the realm of the “Just Ending.”
A paleontologist’s wife, who is a closet collector herself, discovers that “you have to take it with you” in the afterlife. An armchair traveler melts through a wormhole in a church in Italy. A handful of people incarnate over and over, taking turns as lover, deceiver, warrior, friend. A timid woman’s soul adds another version of herself each time she is frightened, and they nearly collide. A stonecutter is fought over by Saturn and Jupiter, then released. A master chocolatier dies in a seeming earthquake and walks through the rubble only to find the river Lethe. And ten more.
A paleontologist’s wife, who is a closet collector herself, discovers that “you have to take it with you” in the afterlife. An armchair traveler melts through a wormhole in a church in Italy. A handful of people incarnate over and over, taking turns as lover, deceiver, warrior, friend. A timid woman’s soul adds another version of herself each time she is frightened, and they nearly collide. A stonecutter is fought over by Saturn and Jupiter, then released. A master chocolatier dies in a seeming earthquake and walks through the rubble only to find the river Lethe. And ten more.
Other Formats:
Paperback
Goddess Stories: Volume 1
Jun 7, 2016
$4.11
Mythology meets magical realism in these fresh stories of goddesses discovering their sacred callings. Persephone dons a black leather jacket over her flowery dress and sets out to find what is “real.” Inuit Sedna’s fingers turn into fishes and seals when her father chops at her knuckles in fear. Glispa leaves her Navaho grandmothers in order to take a shamanic journey. Aztec Xochiquetzal, queen of the flowers, reappears as our Lady of Guadalupe. The Egyptian goddess Nut who holds up the sky is befriended by scarabs who alter the course of the Nile. Iris has a crush on Morpheus, lazy god of dreams, but comes to her senses and moves to the American Southwest. A young girl is taught by animals to carry fire in skulls, discovers her parentage, and becomes the Baba-Yaga. Pele learns to control her fiery temper (and the volcano), but not before losing the love of her life. And five more stories.
Other Formats:
Paperback
$8.99
BREATH BY BREATH by Anna Marie Laforest is a daughter’s memoir of care-giving to a mother with deep limb and respiratory paralysis, from 1954 to 1967 in Detroit.
At the age of four, she walks through a hospital basement of rubber pipes, duct tape, and oil to take the service elevator up to the polio floor, and later must battle strange housekeepers, inept nurses, breathing machines and suction apparatus. She helps her mother “draw on” her lipstick in preparation for visits from a dwindling number of friends, including a “brainwashed” priest.
In a contrast of beauty and frustrations, the girl dreams under the pear tree in her grandmother’s garden, tears at her clothes and bites washcloths, but also bites backyard tomatoes, tasting the metallic ring of city earth. She makes up fairy stories for her little sister and finds a landing place for her imagination in the white lace and silver paten liturgy of the church. It is a childhood of deciding what is of value in a world where one’s mother would die any day. It is a fearful and tangible dance with death.
At the age of four, she walks through a hospital basement of rubber pipes, duct tape, and oil to take the service elevator up to the polio floor, and later must battle strange housekeepers, inept nurses, breathing machines and suction apparatus. She helps her mother “draw on” her lipstick in preparation for visits from a dwindling number of friends, including a “brainwashed” priest.
In a contrast of beauty and frustrations, the girl dreams under the pear tree in her grandmother’s garden, tears at her clothes and bites washcloths, but also bites backyard tomatoes, tasting the metallic ring of city earth. She makes up fairy stories for her little sister and finds a landing place for her imagination in the white lace and silver paten liturgy of the church. It is a childhood of deciding what is of value in a world where one’s mother would die any day. It is a fearful and tangible dance with death.
Other Formats:
Paperback