The Mayor of Casterbridge The Mayor of Casterbridge The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character is an 1886 novel by the English author Thomas Hardy. One of Hardy's Wessex novels, it is set in a fictional rural England with Casterbridge standing in for Dorchester in Dorset where the author spent his youth. It was first published as a weekly serialisation from January 1886. The novel is considered to be one of the Hardy's masterpieces, although it has been criticised for incorporating too many incidents: a consequence of the author trying to include something in every weekly published instalment.
William Alexander (author) of Vermont, located in Burlington, Vermont. His first published speculative fiction was a seven-page short story, "The Birthday Rooms" ("Zahir", Summer 2005), which earned a 2006 Calvino Prize nomination. Alexander acknowledges that his writing style is influenced by well-known fantasy and mystery authors, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Susan Cooper. "Goblin Secrets" has received praise from Alexander's literary heroine Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series, and from Peter S. Beagle, author of "The Last Unicorn", and a starred review from "Kirkus Reviews". Alexander plans a series of novels set in Zombay. After the release