ARGONAUT BOOKS

"A rhymed story of charming eccentricity, Rhoda Levine's Three Ladies Beside the Sea has a fable-like quality. Three friends - Edith of Ecstasy, Catherine of Compromise and Alice of Hazard - live in harmony, doing their chores, drinking tea and playing chamber music. (Once you've seen Edward Gorey's pictures of their elongated figures and their odd, tower-shaped cottages, it's impossible to imagine them otherwise.) Alice has a disturbing habit of climbing a tree - in all weather! - and gazing intently out at the sky. It's a compulsion, she explains when her friends confront her about it...Ah, ...Read More