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A lot of people are attracted to their in-laws. But they pay attention to the warning signals. Usually prudent, history professor Jon Marcus has blundered through the flashing red lights. Twice. He's sleeping with his brother's wife and his wife's sister. Compounding Marcus's problems is the fallout, twenty-five years later, from a teenage romance with his cousin. When Jon's mother is diagnosed with lung cancer, relations with his wife, his contentious brothers, and the sisters-in-law begin to unravel. Outlaws is more than the story of illicit affairs with relatives. Marcus is helping direct an unorthodox production of The Magic Flute, with a subversive take on Sarastro and the Queen of the Night. He also volunteers at his local animal shelter on weekends, where he walks the dogs that will be euthanized on Monday. These activities weave their way into the plot, as does his passion for Venice and his curiosity about "the sister-in-law problem" in European history. Set in Tampa, Los Angeles, New York, and Las Vegas, and Venice, California, and Venice, Italy, Outlaws is an erudite, entertaining, and moving narrative about some of the most dangerous of liaisons, a subject that's apparently taboo even today. The disgruntled academics, eccentric singers, quarrelsome brothers, appealing cousins, and seductive sisters-in-law are rendered with sympathy and wit, and their tragicomic story is one that readers won't soon forget.

Rehearsals is the first book to provide a detailed account of the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 as it affected civilians. Based on extensive eyewitness testimony, the book chronicles events in and around the towns of Liège, Aarschot, Andenne, Tamines, Dinant, and Leuven. Fearing resistance from guerilla fighters and determined to cross rapidly through Belgium, German armies, particularly in locations where they met resistance from Belgian or French forces, treated civilians with great ruthlessness. Nearly 6,000 non-combatants were executed as "franc-tireurs," including women and children (the equivalent of about 230,000 Americans today), and some 25,000 homes and other buildings were burned. But there were no franc-tireurs, only innocent Belgians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even today, accounts of the killing, looting, and arson are dismissed as "atrocity propaganda," particularly in the U.S. and U.K. Those historians who acknowledge that the German war crimes took place attribute them to a spontaneous outbreak of paranoia about franc-tireurs. Rehearsals offers evidence that the executions were part of a deliberate campaign of terrorism ordered by military authorities, and reflected beliefs that differed from those of their counterparts in other Western European nations.

Except for a thin slice of territory south of the Yser River, Belgium was entirely occupied by the Germans from October 15, 1914 until the end of the First World War. The suffering of the Belgian people, which made such a vivid impression on Americans, British, Canadians, and Australians at the time, has been largely forgotten. The invasion was accompanied by mass executions and wholesale arson; nearly 6,000 civilians were killed. Over 2 million Belgians escaped to the Netherlands, France, and Britain. When order was restored, the nation faced a grave economic crisis. A major exporter and among the most prosperous countries in Europe, Belgium was now cut off from its supplies of raw material and its markets, and subject to heavy war taxes, fines, and requisitions. As Germany began increasingly to feel the effects of the Allied blockade, the temptation grew to exploit to the hilt all Belgian resources, including labor. With eloquence and passion, the eminent medievalist Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) describes the hunger, the deprivations, the unemployment, the arbitrary arrests and deportations, the indignities of home invasions and confiscations, the censorship, the conscription of workers, the dismantling and destruction of Belgian factories, and the administrative division of the country. Belgium and the First World War comprehensively surveys the catastrophe and chronicles the stoicism and the resiliency with which Belgians responded.

The characters in this collection of five short stories by renowned poet Barry Spacks are poets, screen-writers, painters, musicians, and actors struggling with the conflicts between their demanding muses and their desires-carnal and professional. Spiritual cravings tug at them as well, and deliverance sometimes comes from unlikely bodhisattvas. Written with verve and wit, the stories are enlightening as well as entertaining.