From the best-selling author of the famous Mrs. Pollifax series comes another delightfully eccentric and sage female sleuth-the exotic Madame Karitska. Although she is a genuine countess, Marina Elena Provovnitchek Gaylord Von Domm Karitska is foremost a psychic. When one of her clients turns up dead, Madame Karitska makes the acquaintance of Detective-Lieutenant Pruden, and an uncanny partnership is born. Madame Karitska forms images with the psychic...

How much truth and how much illusion does a persion need to live a balanced life. Four actors sit on a darkened stage, awaiting the arrival of the stage manager who has called them together. Lacking his authoritative presence they are merely characters in search of a play to become part of, for their own personalities seem unformed and shallow next to the full-blooded figures they are used to playing. They are also "types," and each of them has absorbed...

Paints a portrait of the African-American experience in the changing decade of the 1960s through the lives of restaurant owner Memphis Lee and the people who live in his Pittsburgh block, which is scheduled for demolition.

This lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of America in the midst of the Depression. Set in Ybor City (Tampa) in 1930, Cruz imagines the catalytic effect the arrival of a new "lector" (who reads Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family. Cruz celebrates the search for identity in a new land.

At first the Sycamores seem mad, but it is not long before we realize that if they are mad, the rest of the world is madder. In contrast to these delightful people are the unhappy Kirbys. The plot shows how Tony, attractive young son of the Kirbys, falls in love with Alice Sycamore and brings his parents to dine at the Sycamore home on the wrong evening. The shock sustained by the Kirbys, who are invited to eat cheap food, shows Alice that marriage...

Presents one of Shakespeare's earliest plays about the mistaken identity of two sets of twins. This volume includes the full text of the play, plus an introduction to the play, a scene-by-scene analysis, commentary on past and current productions, photographs of key RSC productions, and an overview of Shakespeare's theatrical career and chronology of his plays.

"The Bacchae" was part of a trilogy that won first place at the Athens City Dionysia. In addition to "The Bacchae" this edition includes "Ion," "The Trojan Women" and "Helen."

Steven Millhauser, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Martin Dressler, creates a magical spell of the moon in this beguiling short work. It’s fascinating visions make Enchanted Night a symphony of light and shadow. One hot summer night, as the full moon rises over a small Connecticut town, people are pulled outside by its radiant force. A 14-year-old girl throws her bedclothes aside. An aspiring author leaves his attic room. A gang of masked young women...