About the Book: The title of the book, Moonlight, Stuff and Nonsense, reflects its nature and its genesis. The poems, mostly short and to the point, were written in part for the monthly Newsletter of the Baylor University Retired Professors/Administrators Program. While most are light and humorous, they represent a wide range of moods and feelings from sentiment to humor to the ridiculous. Some are tongue-in-cheek, some are nostalgic and reminiscent. Some are free-wheeling and border on the outrageous. The subtitle, Poems for the Reflective Years, suggests that many of the poems were written for a mature audience with a wide-range of memories and experiences, but people who are still warm in heart and possessed of keen intelligence and humor. The volume contains poems of self-examination and social comment--not untouched by an irony--love songs, poems to and about grandchildren, about insomnia, getting old, the smiles and frowns of married life, technology, daily frustrations, eye checkups, traffic, dog ownership, the natural creatures about us, and more, plus a generous helping of (printable) limericks. Dr. Christian's poetic style varies from traditional, rhyming verse, to free verse and even blank verse. It seeks to be eminently readable but, the author hopes, never shallow or glib. He hopes the reader will smile, nod knowingly, remember with pleasure or with a tear and, perhaps once or twice, laugh aloud.

'Henderson's Grace Williams Says It Loud was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and this more than matches it.' Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail In June 1914, Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family to spend the summer in their chalet, high in the French Alps. There, for the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one of the 'uglies' - village girls employed as servants and picked, it is believed, to ensure they don't catch Sir Anthony's roving eye. For Mathilde it is the start of a life-long entanglement with les anglais - strange, exciting people, far removed from the hard grind of farming. Except she soon finds the Valentines are less carefree than they appear, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks about. It will be decades - disrupted by war, accidents and a cruel betrayal - before Mathilde discovers the key to the mystery. And in 1976, the year Sir Anthony's great-great grandson comes to visit, she must decide whether to use it. Vividly evoking the dramatic landscape that so enthrals the Valentines, this deeply involving, intriguing novel tells the story of an English family through the generations and a memorable French woman, whose lives seem worlds apart yet which become inextricably connected.

A magazine of tales, travels, essays, and poems.