Novel & Cerita Best Books By Maeve Binchy

The stench of sickness clinging to everything. Two cells. Two prisoners. The healer lay curled on her cot, her breathing ragged, skin pale as paper. The sickness had eaten at her fast. Stress, age… or something worse. In the next cell, Maeve sat against the wall, knees to her chest. When my boots echoed closer, she lifted her head. Gray eyes. Steady. Watching me like a wolf would watch a trap. “Come to gloat?” she asked. Her voice was flat, but her chin lifted like she was daring me.

Maeve raised her leg, breaking Jane’s chest and ribs with her feet. Everyone could hear a loud crunch as Jane breathed her last. Maeve looked around, and she was the only person on the field. She blinked out the tears. She has never killed so many people at once, but she doesn’t regret it. They looked down at her; they thought she wouldn’t be able to fight because her parents are dead, so that makes her weak, but that is in fact her strength.

The title, engraved in handwritten letters like an intimate confession, was simple and revolutionary: “To Live.” Maeve held the copy between her hands, seated at the signing table in the bookstore she had chosen with deliberate care. Not the largest, not the most famous, but the one where, at seventeen, she had bought her first poetry book on a rainy afternoon, escaping home to avoid her mother’s acidic comments about her school essay. There was something circular about that choice — the girl who had sought refuge in other people’s words was now offering her own as shelter.