"From the faun forever gone, in the towers of your honeycomb."

I first saw The Distant Hours on a grocery store shelf (yes, I am someone who actually browses the paltry book section at the supermarket - political memoirs and fad diet betsellers galore). I rarely seek out stories to read. I like to just find them. And maybe you can never judge a book by its cover, but title and artwork had me picking up this tiny giant of a novel and, next, I was off to my public library to check it out (get yourself the best present ever, if you don't have one: a library card). I cannot get over this book. It haunted me. It haunts me still (like, up-late-into-the-summer-nights, listening-for-creaks-in-floorboards haunting). Kate Morton's tale of the Sisters Blythe crazy-eights through decades, weeks, and days as a young editor, her mother and an isolated family of ancient spinsters piece together a mystery of literature, loneliness, and madness. Just like Edie and Meredith, I became enchanted by these characters, despite my instigated imaginings of the unspeakable things they'd done. Morton's charming and suspenseful ramble towards closure is tragic with a touch of bittersweet. The past will always hold on to some secrets.

Though it hardly felt it to me, The Distant Hours is nearly 600 pages long. A book (though deliciously) so cumbersome needs a gargantuan playlist. This mixtape is that - it's 24 songs. The list was grown from two instrumental tracks shuffled back-to-back one night in novel-and-mixtape serendipity: "Sydney to Newcastle" (The Middle East) and "The Violet Hour" (The Civil Wars). After this, I found myself searching for lyricless songs, wanting moments in this book to have accompaniment, but to talk for themselves. "Sydney to Newcastle" soundtracked Meredith's evacuation to Milderhurst (train conductor-speak and all), The Low Anthem's "Music Box" the night Tom Cavill never came, Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore's "Flyrock #2" and Noah & the Whale's "Paradise Stars" the fading ghosts of two lovers on a Notting Hill windowsill.

This story takes place between 1939 and 1992. Not a single song on this mixtape comes from any of the time in between (or the bookends). I let it be this way, not hoping to score the era of Morton's paper dolls. Instead, I wanted songs that evoked a sense of another time (those distant hours) as a young person can only imagine it: Johnny Flynn's folktale warble on "Lost and Found", Beirut's whimsical waltz "Forks and Knives (La Fete)", Grizzly Bear's "Dory" (opening with an otherworldly chorus that could have been Juniper Blythe's 'visitors'). Tori Amos and Florence + the Machine match Juniper's fiercely independent spirit in song - and even her appearance as a cat-eyed enchantress. Rogue Wave's "Love's Lost Guarantee" starts musically clock-like, ticking time and channeling June's abandonment. The inevitable tragedy, when told, had to beat like a heart in my head; cue Nick Cave's "Midnight Man" (also so close to Saffy's nightmare Mud Man). I cannot think of an album that does melancholia more beautifully than Beck's Sea Change ("It's All In Your Mind"). Laura Marling sings of "Night Terror", a man's madness and his protector. Finally, I titled this novel and a mixtape with a line from Bon Iver's "Towers". A story like this cannot be told in tunes without Justin Vernon's ethereal voice, singing of young love (and where there is a castle, there is a tower). Morton wrote, "The ancient walls sing the distant hours". This is how they sing to me.

Soundtrack to a novel: The Distant Hours, Kate Morton

1. Vapour Trail, Josh Ritter as The Cake Sale

2. Lost and Found, Johnny Flynn

3. Welcome to England, Tori Amos

4. Pear, Damien Jurado

5. Love's Lost Guarantee, Rogue Wave

6. The Violet Hour, The Civil Wars

7. It's All In Your Mind, Beck

8. Sydney to Newcastle, The Middle East

9. Forks and Knives (La Fete), Beirut

10. Dory, Grizzly Bear

11. I Remembered What I Was Going To Say (The Silly Pillows), Nada Surf

12. Towers, Bon Iver

13. The Garden That You Planted, Sea Wolf

14. Remnants and Pictures, Mimicking Birds

15. Lemonworld, The National

16. Night Terror, Laura Marling

17. Midnight Man, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

18. Music Box, The Low Anthem

19. To The Ghosts Who Write History Books, The Low Anthem

20. What the Water Gave Me, Florence + the Machine

21. Shallow Grave, The Tallest Man on Earth

22. You Are One of the Only Outsiders Who Really Understands Us, Fanfarlo

23. Flyrock #2, Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore

24. Paradise Stars, Noah & the Whale

Listen to this mixtape on Spotify (partial)

"By that lonesome graveyard, a ghost jumps up and says, 'Come on, be my man'."

My first novel and a mixtape. I was swimming in Her Fearful Symmetry during an April trip to Portland, Maine (oh, I love Portland!). I passed a couple of gray, spring, post-check-in hours listening to harbor winds, drinking bad hotel coffee, reading in a big, fluffy bed. Jeff and I saw The Low Anthem (a band that makes magic out of music) and Iron & Wine at the State Theatre that night. It was during The Low Anthem's set that I lost myself, submerged in memories of scenes from this story while beautiful, melancholic songs twirled and danced around me like ghosts. And this is a ghost story, after all - haunting and young. But no need to worry. Unlike Niffenegger's fragile escapist Valentina, I came up for air a few songs in - to exist in my own world.

Soundtrack to a novel: Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger

1. Delivered, Admiral Fallow

2. Disguised as Someone Else, Joe Pug

3. England, The National

4. Ghost Woman Blues, The Low Anthem

5. Lavender Street, David Wax Museum

6. Is There a Ghost, Band of Horses

7. Blood Bank, Bon Iver

8. Arms of a Thief, Iron & Wine

9. Two Small Deaths, Wye Oak

10. My Boy Builds Coffins, Florence + the Machine

11. Time Travel Is Lonely, John Vanderslice

12. These Days, Foo Fighters

13. Dead and Done, Bobby Long

14. Finish Line, Fanfarlo

15. Memory Lane, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals

Listen to this mixtape on Spotify (partial - 'til more bands are on the bandwagon)

here it goes

I love little more than novels and mixtapes - the way words and melodies weave together to create magical things: stories.

I adore the moment a song comes through my headphones at just the right place in story time to make something completely cinematic burst to life inside my head.

Here, I am sharing the soundtracks to the books I'm devouring - the little time capsules of adventures I get lost with - along the way to everywhere else. Let's get lost together.