Dansite Reading Journal

"Book cover for 'In a Lonely Place' by Dorothy B. Hughes. A dramatic black-and-white image shows a face in shadow, with a window casting light. The mood is tense and mysterious."
In a Lonely Place
Started April 5, 2026

Publication Details

Type: Book
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 1947

Reading Details

Pages: 198
Location: Lawrence, Kansas (US)

Highlights

First Paragraph:

It was good standing there on the promontory overlooking the evening sea, the fog lifting itself like gauzy veils to touch his face. There was something in it akin to flying; the sense of being lifted high above crawling earth, of being a part of the wildness of air. Something too of being closed within an unknown and strange world of mist and cloud and wind. He'd liked flying at night; he'd missed it after the war had crashed to a finish and dribbled to an end. It wasn't the same flying a little private crate. He'd tried it; it was like returning to the stone ax after precision tools. He had found nothing yet to take the place of flying wild.