Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Message In A Bottle
    Message In A Bottle
    Message In A Bottle
    Ebook38 pages54 minutes

    Message In A Bottle

    By Joyce Melbourne

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A poor and lonely Victorian woman eking out her living in Brighton by making seashell jewelry, finds a message in a bottle on the beach and vows to find the man who wrote it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSusan Hart
    Release dateAug 15, 2015
    ISBN9781310274961
    Message In A Bottle
    Author

    Joyce Melbourne

    Joyce Melbourne lives in Southern California with her husband, numerous animals, and an unkempt garden, which she loves. She's been interested in romance and all of its sub genres for many years.

    Read more from Joyce Melbourne

    Related to Message In A Bottle

    Related ebooks

    Historical Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Women Of The Palace

      Sep 19, 2022

      At Georgia’s ragged edge stands a causeway made of earth piled by hand atop bricks and tires, long grown over with grass and sandspur and sea oxeye. It is a tenuous ribbon of stability cutting through mud and salt and spartina, connecting land and ri

      11 min read

    • Article

      Worlds Of Ink And Paper

      Nov 22, 2022

      As a young girl, I still remember my dear mother, smile on her face, curled up with Family Circle magazine in her lap. She was engrossed in an article titled “Butternut Wisdom,” written by Gladys Taber. At my age, it didn’t mean a thing to me. But as

      6 min read

    • Article

      Slavery Has Ended, But Her Journey Has Only Just Begun

      Mar 13, 2023

      In Eleanor Shearer’s eloquent debut novel, “River Sing Me Home,” Rachel, along with the other enslaved people on Providence Plantation in Barbados, has just heard the joyous news that they are now free. Except they’re not. While the British parliamen

      3 min read

    • Article

      Grandma Ruth’s UP Truck Stop

      May 10, 2021

      Rachel’s last semester at the University of Michigan would have been easy if not for the news that reached her six weeks before her final exams. It wasn’t a phone call—the phone lines were still down from the most recent blizzard to hit Paradise, she

      28 min read

    • Article

      On One’s Land

      Sep 3, 2020

      On One’s Land
      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      In class, I stared because of the blood going blue.The chalk that coated our fingerly teeth.The way we lapped each other (on the shorewhere the flowering). I gave away our location. Smacked my lips in the coat closet.Sucked at her teeth. We, on all e

      4 min read

    • Article

      Now That It’s Come to This

      Jun 3, 2021

      Now That It’s Come to This
      13 min read

    • Article

      Surf By Day Jam By Night

      Dec 9, 2019

      Surf By Day Jam By Night
      3 min read

    • Article

      Speed of Mercy

      Jul 30, 2021

      Speed of Mercy
      10 min read

    • Article

      Melt With Me

      Mar 17, 2022

      Melt With Me
      6 min read

    • Article

      Stories That Sing

      Mar 2, 2023

      Stories That Sing
      6 min read

    • Article

      Sharon Olds, America’s Brave Poet of the Body

      Mar 8, 2017

      Sharon Olds can still remember how furious editors became when she started submitting her poems, 40 years ago. “They came back often with very angry notes,” the 74-year-old poet says, sitting in her small, light-filled apartment overlooking NYU’s cam

      16 min read

    • Article

      ‘Castle on the River Vistula’: Featured Fiction by Michelle Tea

      Jan 18, 2019

      Today, we’re excited to launch a new series of fiction excerpts at The Millions. And to kick things off, we present the first two chapters of Michelle Tea’s Castle on the River Vistula, the third book in her Chelsea Trilogy, out Tuesday from McSweene

      10 min read

    • Article

      Big Wee Life

      Mar 27, 2022

      Somehow the honourable title of “bookseller” seems inadequate when reviewing Ruth Shaw’s life. The founder and proprietor of two “wee bookshops” in the isolated South Island township of Manapouri is a woman whose enduring love of books, reading, peop

      1 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Jumpers

      Nov 4, 2021

      Christmas Jumpers
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Bridle

      Oct 10, 2021

      Saliva pooled on her tongue beneath the rusty depressor. She endured a constant urge to swallow, afraid of choking on her own fluids. The taste of metal and blood are so akin, it is easy to mistake one for the other. This early in the day, blood was

      11 min read

    • Article

      Linked Lives

      Mar 7, 2024

      I write standalone family dramas, often with dual timelines. The furthest I’ve gone back to, up to now, has been the 1980s. But my eleventh novel, The Girl From Donegal, became a new departure for me, as it’s my first book with a historical strand. I

      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2019

      She grazes in a meadow, sulphur blossoms spillingfrom her jaw.At this moment she seems so calm, she could be holyif what that means is something like beingwholly unaware of the good she gives,how even her rooting tills the soiland even her shitting f

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Message In A Bottle

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Message In A Bottle - Joyce Melbourne

      Message In A Bottle

      By

      Joyce Melbourne

      Copyright 2015 Enduring Love & Hope Press

      Synopsis: A poor and lonely Victorian woman eking out her living in Brighton by making seashell jewelry, finds a message in a bottle on the beach and vows to find the man who wrote it.

      She sat on the damp rock, two bags of seashells tied to the belt of her ragged third-hand dress, water sloshing at her feet. Blue eyes watched the distant throngs of people on the long pier that stretched out from Brighton Beach, its sandy boards full of merriment and people who could eat when they wanted and play when they wanted. It was a different world than Sarah’s.

      A very different world of money and luxury that Sarah would never know. Indeed, had never known.

      For the better part of the last three years, she had gathered these shells, large ones, small ones and broken ones. The broken ones were her favorite, because they were the most like her, the story of her life at least, broken, lonely and thrown out for waste by the mighty force of water that now stole at her worn shoes and dirty feet.

      But overall, Sarah was thankful. Thankful that she was alive and well, thankful that she had her little handmade shell jewelry and trinkets to sell in the market, thankful that those people she now watched would feel sorry for her and buy them. Thankful that she made enough to buy a crust of bread or a fish or a sweet treat for her own birthday.

      Thankful for it all.

      While the pretty people on the pier came to Brighton for leisure and recreation, Sarah eked out her very meager existence from what nature gave her for free - the shells. Her unique talent for jewelry making was a blessing, and for the last two years, her goods had become a favorite for these people. She saw her necklaces and bracelets adorning their chests and their wrists.

      Everybody has a purpose and a place - Sarah was fortunate to have this purpose and this place.

      She stood and the shells clicked together in their canvas-bag homes. It was time to move on down the beach before the sun began to set, showing off its beauty and grandeur over which the rich would marvel, but by which she closed out her day. Tomorrow would be the same for her, and the next day afterward would also be.

      Life running in circles and going nowhere. That was Sarah’s world.

      The tide was almost fully in by the time she rounded the short curve the sea carved out along the rocks. She stepped gingerly over the small, pointed rocks of the last leg of her journey back to her ramshackle little living quarters two blocks from this mighty torrent of salt and water and waves and beauty, long her home.

      Something clanked behind her, the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1