The Alice Network

Why has no one invented a pill for the one thing that really hurts?

With all the advances in medicine and technology, why has someone not created a pill that cures heartbreak? Emotional penicillin. Why has someone not invented software that will sweep all traces of your ex out of your brain or an app that eliminates unrequited love?

The Hotel Nantucket · Elin Hilderbrand

The consolation a parent leaves behind: a flower that needs winter to bloom.

Caroline wiped her cheek with the back of her gardening glove, leaving a dark smudge below one eye, then pulled off her gloves. ‘But it’s fitting in a way - Father loved the fact that a lilac only blossoms after a harsh winter.’ Caroline reached over and smoothed the hair back from my brow with a light touch. How many times had my mother done that? ‘It’s a miracle all of this beauty emerges after such hardship, don’t you think?

Lilac Girls · Martha Hall Kelly

The stone

“And so the stone fell out of history. Until one day, when a French diamond trader, during a trip to the Golconda Mines in India, was shown a massive pear-cut diamond. One hundred and thirty-three carats. Near-perfect clarity. As big as a pigeon’s egg, he wrote, and as blue as the sea, but with a flare of red at its core. He made a casting of the stone and sent it to a gem-crazy duke in Lorraine, warning him of the rumors of a curse. But the duke wanted the diamond very badly. So the trader brought it to Europe, and the duke fitted it into the end of a walking stick and carried it everywhere.”

All the Light We Cannot See · Anthony Doerr