The Mother of Emeralds

United States: HardPress Publishing, 2013. Trade paperback, Fine,. United States: HardPress Publishing:, 2013. Trade paperback, Fine, 192 pp.<br/> An "as new" copy. "Never was there so deformed a town. Its name need not be set down here; no one who has been there will fail to identify it. Father O'Dwyer called it 'Tumbledown Towers'; than which it would be difficult to provide a better name. Far and wide the piace is renowned for its brine baths; and to the copious excavations of salt made in connection therewith is due its present distorted appearance. The main street, and indeed most of the other streets, seem fixed as by enchantment in a series of undulations. Houses perch on hillock, or sink in hollow; now leaning cheek by jowl, now shunning one another. Obtusely they withdraw from the pavement, or acutely overhang it, avoiding with astounding unanimity all approach to the vertical. Scarce a window or a door will close as it was originally designed, and the roofs point skywards at every conceivable angle. Even the tower of the parish church lurches forward in drunken fashion, incongruous, bordering well-nigh on the disreputable. The whole place has the appearance of having suffered from a seismic seizure of undoubted severity."