Fiction
The Blue Umbrella
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The life of ten-year-old Zac Sparks changes overnight when his mother is killed by lightning and he’s sent to live with two cruel old Aunties. The one bright spot is Zac’s friendship with a mysterious storekeeper, Sky Porter, who always carries a blue umbrella. One day Sky takes his young friend up to the store’s supposedly haunted second story to reveal the umbrella’s amazing secret…
Explore with Zac the mysteries of Porter’s General Store in the little town of Five Corners. Meet characters such as Pethybridge, Chesterton Cholmondeley, Esmeralda Henbother, and O––all as fascinating as their names. And come up Wind Mountain with Zac as he confronts the Aunties’ terrifying father, Dada.
A superbly written children’s fantasy novel with deep spiritual resonance, The Blue Umbrella sits well on the shelf beside The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, or even Harry Potter. Yet just as those classics stand out for being utterly original, so this book will cause readers to say, “I’ve never read anything quite like this before.” Nominated for a Christie Award.
“As a novelist, Mason has it all: vivid and convincing characterization; engaging dialogue; absorbing and unpredictable plotting with an underpinning of serious concerns; humour which entertains without distracting one from the narrative; and above all, a fine writing style…. It’s no exaggeration, in my view, to call this book a classic for fantasy lovers of all ages.” -David F. Dawes
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The Violet Flash
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There’s a rip in the blue umbrella, and time—and Chelsea—are slipping through!
One moment she was there, the next moment she was not, and Ches Cholmondeley was watching when it happened. And he learns of other mysterious goings-on: For three days in a row the world’s atomic clocks have lost a second, resulting in bizarre accidents ranging from dropped casseroles to plane crashes. Are these events related? What’s a brother to do?
Figure out a way to get his sister back, of course. In search of answers, Ches befriends the local clockmaker, Myron Stinchcombe, who knows a lot about time, and seeks out Sky Porter, who knows a lot about, well, everything.
But time is running out! And Ches is torn, knowing that the very deed that can save the world might also keep his sister from ever returning to it.
Sequel to The Blue Umbrella.
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Spoiler Alert! (for those who have not read The Blue Umbrella)
“Reading this magical work makes me wish for my own blue umbrella, makes me hope that this series will join others in the minds of readers who loved Madeleine L’Engle’s sci-fi writings. As L’Engle herself insisted, this kind of fiction is not just for children. It’s for people. People like you!” -Luci Shaw, author of Breath for the Bones and The Angles of Light.
“I fell head-over-heels in love with The Blue Umbrella. And this time around is no different…. Readers once again take a journey that will have their hearts beating, their tears at the ready, and their brains working overtime as they find themselves immersed in the most beautiful, fantastical book they’ve read in a very long time!” -Amy Lignor of Once Upon a Romance
The Furniture of Heaven
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“Hear that thunder, Simon? That means they’re moving furniture upstairs.”
The storyteller beckons us to journey with him through space and time into the lives of a cabinetmaker, a princess, a dragon-slayer, a scarecrow. You’ll meet Jacob the chipmunk who drives Noah crazy on the ark, little Jessica who knows a talking tree, and Herbert George, a crazy time-machine inventor who careens from century to century.
As you dip into these twenty-two fascinating stories in The Furniture of Heaven you’ll discover not only wonderful characters and images, but why this book was originally entitled Cruci-Fictions. For all these parables are formed around one great Story.
“These are stories with mythic qualities, the kind that you almost feel you know as they are being told. They have the inevitability of true parables, filled with those lessons which we always need to relearn. Terrific stuff! Mike Mason is an enchanter.” – Harold Fickett
In 1992 Vancouver’s Pacific Theatre presented The Furniture of Heaven as a play.
Script available from ron@ronreed.org.