The dungeon was always that dark place beneath us. We prefer to not enter there for the very purpose it serves. We prefer to remain above in our understanding, appreciation, our loves, and we deem that to be living. But isn't below merely the result of what we do above? We remove it from the light and cast it into that darkness so it is unseen, so it seems. It's there festering and filling up, but we can't seal it because we need it-so it seems. Perhaps the real dungeon is right where we are-just as cold and dark? It is this that we need to light up to understand what must be purged and what must be salvaged. And what is salvagable, God has made, and what must be purged, man has fostered. Scott Koch hails from Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Although he was a technical school graduate with honors, he never found any of those fields to be inspirational, even though his skills are diverse. He grew up in a neighborhood with an older brother and a younger sister and brother, and was packed with kids. He considers himself a "spoiled poor kid" because of this and the fact that it wasn't far to get to a field, woods, or a creek or river. Of course, the fields and woods are gone now so others may have quite a different childhood. Our author was always drawn to the abstract, or the not so evident, but would also express that Van Gogh merely had his grandchild do his paintings because he could do no less. Scott now resides in Pottstown, PA with his wife, Trudy. Scott B. Koch

In the vast expanse of the Azure Sky Prairie, the sky was covered in a haze. The biting cold gale swept through the entire prairie, causing layers of grass to turn over, causing people to be unable to open their eyes. Dark clouds also accumulated in the sky, and the clouds intersected and overlapped with each other. A thunderstorm that covered the entire prairie was about to arrive. Such weather was extremely rare in this famously sunny prairie.

The rooms we live in are always more than just four walls. As we decorate these spaces and fill them with objects and friends, they shape our lives and become the backdrop to our sense of self. One day, the houses will be gone, but even then, traces of the stories and the memories they contained will remain. In this dazzling work of imaginative re-construction, Edward Hollis takes us to the sites of five great spaces now lost to history and pieces together the fragments he finds there to re-create their vanished chambers. From Rome's Palatine to the old Palace of Westminster and the Petit Trianon at Versailles, and from the sets of the MGM studios in Hollywood to the pavilions of the Crystal Palace and his own grandmother's sitting room, The Memory Palace is a glittering treasure trove of luminous forgotten places and the people who, for a short time, made them their home.