Natchez Burning Greg Iles $9.99 Natchez Burning is the first installment (862pages) in an epic trilogy that interweaves crimes, lies, and secrets of the past and present in a thriller featuring Southern lawyer and former prosecutor Penn Cage. The size is at first daunting but you will...

1. THE NORTH LIGHT is the fourth lighthouse built on Sandy Point. The first, finished in 1829, was washed away in a few years. A second light began operation in 1837, but was not visible to ships due to the shifting sands. The government built a third light near the end of the Point in 1857 and...

Melissa Silver, 32, and Branden Watson, 31, grew up two hours from each other, he in East Freetown, Mass., she in Sunapee, New Hampshire. But it was in Denver that they met and fell in love — the first year each had moved out there! How did Block Island enter the picture? Ever since high school...

Mikey Kiley, 32, and his family own and operate the Yellow Kittens tavern and Winfield’s Restaurant on Block Island. He and Julie Garosshen, 28, met eight years ago when Mikey was walking his dog, Grace, on the beach. He proposed six years later in the lantern of the North Light. All four island...

“Zach proposed the best and only way I would find acceptable: with a cake,” says Lily Pike, 29. “I had gone home for the weekend and Zach was stuck in New York for work. He figured that was his best chance to pull off a surprise and spent the whole weekend figuring out how to make a Funfetti cake...

“Every aspect of our wedding was done by someone we knew, every aspect,” marvels Felicia Cinquegrana, 38, a jewelry designer who lives on Block Island year round. “It reminds me of the old days when a townsperson would get married and the town would come together and bring their skills and goods to...

Emily Epstein, 28, and James Rouse, 39, met in England, where James is from and where Emily was studying in London for a semester. First chance she got, Emily brought James to her grandparents house on Block Island. Just as she had, says Emily, “He fell in love with the natural beauty and relaxed...

Kathleen Wittels, 37, met Alex Dulavitz, 31, when she traveled to Bonaire to complete her open water dive for scuba certification and he turned out to be one of the trip leaders. The two knew they wanted to get married outside overlooking the water and say that the moment they saw the views from...

It was New Year’s Eve on the Brooklyn Bridge and 10 minutes to ball drop. A German studying in Canada and visiting New York City for the evening’s merriment and a Rhode Islander living in New York and showing her under-21 cousins a night in the big city find each other. The next fall she heads to...

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the annual Holiday Shopping Stroll, a three-day event that will have some 30 stores and art galleries decorating their windows and opening their doors for a unique Block Island shopping experience — one that often comes with a cup of hot cider, cocoa and a...

Coffee lovers are finding an extra fix these days at Ben & Jerry’s on Water Street, where owner Steve Papa came up with a drink that marries the intense B&J’s flavor Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz with that uniquely Rhode Island coffee syrup known as Autocrat. Throw in a little milk, put it...

“The walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious.” – Roald Dahl , James and the Giant Peach...

Renée Meyer captured this look at the Great Salt Pond from the totally Peanuts-like red biplane we’ve been seeing in the B.I. skies all summer. The plane is a recently restored 1940 Waco UPF-7 that was originally used as a WWII trainer. Did she feel like the Red Baron? Most definitely. For more...

The path to the North Light Fibers mill, store and farm is marked by the sight of exotic animals from Abrams Animal Farm in the periphery: the cool stare of the caged lemur, a llama eating kibble from a child’s hand, even kangaroos and a giant tortoise stand by. Walk past these animals and through...

As the sun’s golden rays begin to cast longer shadows in the early evening over the rolling fields of Block Island and there’s just a hint of a chill in the night air, we cling to the balmy days of summer all the more ferociously. To banish thoughts of summer’s impending departure, I plan as many...

Andiamo (C’mon, let’s go) to Aldo’s Seafood and Pizza Restaurant for this month’s Picky Pick. There are many good restaurants on the island, some even include a few Italian dishes on their menus or serve pizza, but there is only...

Some say going to Block Island is like stepping back in time. Stepping into Red Right Return on Dodge Street is like taking a second step back. There’s no signage indicating “Antiques Store” but that seems to be how people describe it. “I’m at the antiques store” is an oft uttered phrase into cell...

On July 12th, as many admired the super moon (a full moon that appears even larger than usual because of its closeness to the earth) from their houses, I was lucky enough to be out on the Great Salt Pond, part of a group of kayakers on a tour led by Corrie Heinz, owner of Pond and Beyond Kayak...

Some things are just non-negotiable. That’s the way it is with joining our friends from Indiana (Missy and Bill, in photo at top) for mudslides at The Oar. They come to the island for a week every July-into-August and one of the first things we do is plan what night we’ll have dinner at The Oar,...

Tiffany Hewitt on the ferry Anna C. Q:How long have you been bartending on the ferry? A:I've been working for Interstate 17 years. I started out answering phones and selling tickets and in the summer of '98 I started bartending. The owner Sue Linda is my great aunt. My mom worked with Sue...

This summer, three food trucks have opened around the island after the town rewrote an ordinance to add more licenses. In previous years, there had been one Hawkers and Peddlers license, for a food cart at Settlers’ Rock. In August last year the Town Council voted 4 to 1 to allow up to three of the...

A look at some of this summer’s most popular reads, fiction and non-fiction, adult and young adult, from Cindy Lasser, owner of Island Bound Bookstore. We are Called to Rise by Laura McBride This is my favorite book of the summer. Four narrators tell a story set in...

From a distance, I have often watched the banana boats serpentine through the harbor. With great curiosity, I would listen to the shrill cries of the people aboard these absurd canary yellow, banana-shaped tubes as they tore through the water with accelerating speed. I would watch them send a few...

Eben Horton is a glass artist and the owner of The Glass Station, a 1920’s-style glass studio located in Wakefield, Rhode Island. He created “The Glass Float Project” on Block Island where he has hidden hundreds of glass floats along Greenway trails and beaches. Islanders and tourists set out to...