The 13 Clocks

In a luxurious castle on a distant hill where thirteen clocks wouldn’t go, there lived a cold, innovative Duke and his princess niece, Saralinda. She had soft features in every wind and weather, but he was always cold. His hands were as frozen as his smile, and almost as frozen as his heart. He wore gloves when he was asleep, and he wore gloves when he was awake, which made it difficult to pick coins or nuts or pieces of fruit off the table, or to tear the wings from nightingales. So begins James Thurber's superbly transformed fairy tale The 13 Clocks, in which a wicked Duke who imagines he has destroyed time, and the Duke's beautiful niece, for whom time seems to have stopped, both meet their match courtesy of an enterprising prince in disguise.