Paris Beckons: A Short Story Collection

My mother was not privy to flights of fancy. She was practical, down to earth, and no-nonsense. She was ordinary but beautiful, elegant but unhappy, resilient but opinionated, hurt, forceful, and had a fury that scared me. Her rage, coupled with my father's, would make me cringe. I was not allowed to cry.

Now, fifty years later, I ease my hands over her last letters to me, the four-cent stamps, her unique handwriting, a life then full of secrets from her children. Not much news there, except for one thing. She wrote:

"Your father is going to Paris by himself for a few weeks to be alone." He had told me the same thing. But that had not really been the case. He had gone there to meet his lover, an event that would change our lives forever.

Now that he was gone, I wanted to go to that same place and feel the ground that he had walked on to find answers to the questions that had haunted me all my life. These short stories reflect that journey.

"Evocative and personal, heart-wrenching and illuminating, Susanna Solomon's Paris Beckons showcases 34 stories revealing what lies beneath our deepest fears and memories. Poignant and for those with pasts that refuse to remain buried."

-Cara Black, author of the award-winning Aimée LeDuc Mystery Series

"Often heart-rending, sometimes surreal, but always intriguing, Solomon's Paris Beckons transports the reader to amazing places in and around Paris and in and around the human heart."

-JT Morrow, artist, author

"Susanna Solomon's fantastical musings reveal a clandestine Paris of temptation, imagination, and unease-ghostly "Shakespeare & Company," time-bending "The Clock," Twilight-Zone-esque "The Teddy Bear," and Oscar-Wilde-reminiscent "Hello, Human." Other tales derail the mind's comfort zones-risky soul-searching in "Among My Own Kind," braving Parisian streets as a first-time motorcyclist in "Julia," and communing with a Musée D'Orsay sculpture that thinks outside the box in "The Dancer." Deft, whimsical, with the hovering shadow of a domineering father, these stories rank among Solomon's best.

-J. Macon King, Mill Valley Literary Review, author of Circus of the Sun and Drinking with a Dead Cat.