After you saying the above, I'm going to put in another vote for Mists of the Serengeti!
Well-crafted - check!
Quotable - check! (I quoted passages to friends, my husband, & my daughter for days)
Villages - check!
Lovely, well-drawn characters - check!
Old Houses - check!
Romance - check!
Instead of platters of buttered toast, African coffee & other dishes - check!
DISCLAIMER: It is NOT about murder or spies or espionage or government agencies, but there are 2 deaths at the beginning that set the stage for the story & there are some action & suspense scenes related to the local government.
Interestingly enough, right after I finished Mists, I read another book by the same author & didn't find it nearly as good. But Mists is probably now in my top 5 favorite books of all time list.
Some quotes -
"This is what it looks like when you wander somewhere between the sand and stardust, and meet a piece of yourself in someone else."
“Pull a thread here and a life unravels there.”
“We had found a pocket of quiet, where all the ghosts in our minds had gone to sleep, and we were the only two people awake.”
“ 'You know what’s heartbreaking?' He slipped his hands into his pockets, as if to keep them from touching me. 'It’s not when bad things happen to you, or when your life turns out completely different from what you thought it would be, or when people let you down, or when the world knocks you down. What’s heartbreaking is when you don’t get back up, when you don’t care enough to pick up the million broken pieces of you that are screaming to be put back together, and you just lie there, listening to a shattered chorus of yourself.' "
“I pulled back, my eyes still closed, knowing that I had just stolen an epic moment from life.”
“Sometimes heroes were found between the pages of a book, and sometimes they stood on a hill, their checkered togas fluttering in the wind, holding fort for the rest of us.”
“All this time I’ve been searching for her in the wrong places—in the rain, and in thunder, and lightning. And all this time . . . there she is, hiding in rainbows.”
“And just like that, in an old red barn at the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, I found the elusive magic I had glimpsed only between the pages of great love stories. It fluttered around me like a newborn butterfly and settled in a corner of my heart. "
"We base so much of ourselves on other people’s perceptions of us. We live for the compliments, the approval, the applause. But what we really need is a grand, spine-chilling encounter with ourselves to believe we’re freaking magical. And that’s the best kind of believing, because no one can unsay it or take it away from you.”
“I reached for the beads on my bracelet, thinking of the words on them. Taleenoi olngisoilechashur. We are all connected. How many times do we pass people on the street, whose lives are intertwined with ours in ways that remain forever unknown? How many ways are we tied to a stranger by fragile, invisible threads that bind us all together?”
(unless it's as good as Greg Iles 'The Quiet Game' then I'll take some other genre)
