Why I recommend this book…

To this day I remain haunted by Alfred Noyes’s evocative imagery in his narrative poem, “The Highwayman.”

Just thinking of it, I hear the wind rushing through the trees, the galloping of a horse. I see a ghostly moon dancing across rippling water. And I see Bess, the landlord’s daughter, her black eyes flashing in the dark as she loosens her plait and spills her hair over an open window. I see the highwayman, her lover, rising up from his saddle, his boots tightening around his muscular thighs as he presses her hair against his face.