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A woman's earth-shattering encounter with her best friend's supremely well-hung lover sets her on a quest to reassert her sexual power. But how long will her pliant, poorly endowed husband be willing to go along for the ride? Is it really in his nature to play the willing cuckold or is his resentment building? A portrait of a very modern marriage.

Everyone in the small seaside village of Taviscombe is looking forward to the festival. So is Mrs. Sheila Malory-that is, until the unpleasant Adrian Palgrove joins the planning committee. Mrs. Malory, an avid reader of nineteenth century literature, is dismayed to find the man constantly in her path. First Adrian gleefully informs her that he has been appointed executor of the estate of a renowned author, whose private life he intends to expose. Soon his bad behavior has alienated his fellow committee members. One of his many enemies despises him enough to murder him just as the festival is underway. Mrs. Malory has impressive credentials when it comes to solving murders, but with so many suspects, she hardly knows where to begin. The fourth of Hazel Holt's Mrs. Malory mysteries.

Mrs. Edith Rossiter, a rich matron, also has a wealth of greedy relatives-a cold-blooded daughter, a wastrel son, and a desperate sister. Because she is in excellent health, none of them can hope to inherit anytime soon ... So when Edith vanishes from Taviscombe''s finest nursing home, the police suspect the worst, despite the lack of evidence. Mrs. Rossiter was a close friend of Mrs. Sheila Malory, who as usual applies her skills as an amateur detective to delve into the lives of the missing woman and her hopeful heirs. Was Edith addicted to sleeping pills? What did the mysterious couple seen in Edith''s company want from her? The truth will be stranger and more startling than even Mrs. Malory could have possibly imagined. The third of Hazel Holt''s Mrs. Malory mysteries.

Matthew Freeman''s newest poetry collection presents a romantic vision wherein the environment can range from ecstatic to sinister. Steeped in urban shamanism, the poems reflect a desperate search for the American Sublime, the author''s search for the clarity of salvation, his love of language, and his hope that the poor and destitute will not be forgotten.

Widow Sheila Malory has been looking forward to her stay at the Bodleian Library in Oxford as a chance to research wartime women writers and catch up with old friends from her college years, the one "purely happy" time in her whole life. Her relaxing idyll is interrupted when a librarian, Gwen Richmond, is crushed to death beneath collapsed bookshelves. After the "accident" proves to be murder, Mrs. Malory's godson Tony, who also works in the library, asks her to help investigate. Gwen was manipulative and unpleasant, so there are no shortage of suspects. The dead woman's World War II diary reveal dreadful truths that may lead to the killer; they will also force Mrs. Malory to revisit the past in a new and colder light. The second of Hazel Holt's Mrs. Malory mysteries.

Private Eye Jackson "Doc" Holiday investigates fraud, a crime he knows intimately. He was once a respected and successful mortgage banker who laundered more than 100 million dollars in dirty money. Although never convicted, he has been blackballed from banking. After his drinking buddy, a Catholic priest named Jesus Cortez, is shot dead in the driveway of Doc''s Berkeley home, he sets out to find his killer. The case takes him in search of an old confederate in Portland, where he begins to suspect that the murder of Jesus is connected to a money laundering scheme suspiciously similar to Doc''s own. As Doc delves in further, he crosses swords with a scheming matriarch, a bent cop, a femme fatale, and a master criminal. Whoever''s at the bottom of this business has already killed and is facing "The Big Bitch," or life in prison. And they''re not afraid to kill again. Book 1 in the Jackson "Doc" Holiday Mystery series.

The sleepy seaside town of Taviscombe has more than its share of gossips and schemers. It also has Mrs. Sheila Malory, a widow whose gift for judging character and unmasking murderers is as impressive as her knowledge of nineteenth-century literature. Mrs. Malory's sleuthing talents are tested once again when she comes upon the body of one of her friends, a sweet elderly lady. Miss Graham's death by poison is quite convenient for a local doctor of dubious reputation; the dead woman's refusal to move thwarted Dr. Cowley's plans to build a nursing home. But Mrs. Malory knows that nothing is as simple as it seems, especially when it is revealed that Miss Graham left a considerable fortune. Another suspicious death during a fireworks display further complicates matters. These two very different murders-one furtive, the other violent-can't possibly be related. Or can they? Superfluous Death is the sixth of Hazel Holt's Mrs. Malory mysteries.

Satori, this book that took my entire life to put together, is the closest I can come to an answer. I see the whole book and every poem in it as the working out of the endless possibilities of the line. In the end, I came back to the Imagists-Pound, H.D., Amy Lowell, Jack Moodey who taught me that the essence of the poetic line is the image, not the metaphor, which decodes into a system of signs, but the hard, clear, limpid image, the incontrovertible image. Without the image, the poetic line is hollow. But the goal of our art from the cave paintings at Chauvet to the '80s movie Blade Runner and on down has been to make art move.

On All Saints Day, 1954, the Algerian War of Independence from France begins, forever changing the lives of ten-year-old Nanna, her family, and a million-and-a-half French settlers. As Arab rebels carry out terrorist acts against civilians, hatred and bloodshed permeate the fabric of European and Muslim lives. A safe bus ride to town means keeping an eye out for stray shopping baskets containing hidden bombs. A day trip to the beach requires the protection of a military convoy. But life goes on, and Nanna''s loving mother, mischievous but good-natured siblings, and kind grandfathers provide plenty of adventure and humor. Nanna worships her Papa, who provides for his family and keeps them safe, but, growing up, she begins to understand that he is also a braggart with unyielding views of right and wrong, who believes that attending a supervised party with boys will compromise a girl''s virtue. Nanna defies him and falls in love, thus setting the stage for an ongoing clash of wills. As Nanna watches her beloved country torn apart by terrorism, she grieves for the French targeted by the fellagha and for the Arabs they slaughter because they are seen as pro-French. Ultimately, Nanna watches in anguish as the French generals, betrayed by De Gaulle, make a last stand for a French Algeria before laying down their arms. In the end Nanna''s family, like all the other French settlers, must choose between the suitcase and the grave.

Michael Harm is a farmer''s son in the Bavarian Rhineland who dreams of excitement and freedom-the sort of life enjoyed by Uncas, the hero in his favorite novel, The Last of the Mohicans. Every day Michael toils beside his brother in the vineyards wishing he could be a blacksmith, a singer, or an adventurer. One day the Harm family receives a letter from America offering a blacksmithing apprenticeship in a relative''s Cleveland, Ohio wagon-making shop to the eldest son. Michael begs to take his brother''s place, and at age fifteen, leaves his family behind for America. On a storm-tossed Atlantic crossing, he meets Charles Rauch, the son of a Cleveland wagon-maker, his future rival in carriage-making and love. Michael arrives in an America he can barely comprehend, confronting riots in New York, anti-immigrant bigotry in Cleveland, and his uncle, a cruel blacksmith master. Michael struggles through his indenture, inspired by rags-to-riches stories such as that of presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. He receives his freedom dues just as war threatens to destroy the country he now calls home. It is not the Civil War, but Cleveland''s post-war Gilded Age, that forces Michael to face his greatest challenge-an accelerating machine age destined to wipe out his livelihood forever. Populated by characters both historical and invented, The Last of the Blacksmiths is a tale of the disruption and dispersal of an immigrant family, the twilight of the artisan crafts, and the efforts of each generation to shape its destiny.

"Beast" is a pure innocent with one simple goal-to become an expert on the Middle Ages. He comes to Berkeley, the Cathedral of Learning, in 1971, a time of political upheaval, hallucinogenic drugs, group sex, and electric, acid, psychedelic, mind-bending rock and roll. On his quest for meaning he hangs out with a Harley-riding dwarf, a raven-haired Gothic artists' model, a sorority girl turned nymphomaniac, and the heir to a family of French aristocrats with a bloody history dating back to before Joan of Arc. Beast soon discovers that he can't live in the past but has to embrace the present, with its traps and land mines and the horrors of contemporary society-death by motorcycle and bad acid trips. The world is exploding, but students still go to classes, fall in love, get laid, study in libraries, win awards, even graduate. The country is on fire, and Berkeley supplies the fuel.

Jerry Baxter's father liked to sing the old cowboy song, "O bury me not on the lone prairie ..." when he drank. Ironically, Baxter and his two good friends, Hugh Ferguson and Al Mitchell, are soon to be buried alive, and the hole they are digging for themselves is getting deeper all the time. Baxter is racked with guilt by the sight of his father sitting semi-coherent, blind, and barely mobile in the dismal nursing home he put him in. Fearing a fate every bit as grim, Baxter finds refuge in stark rituals from his Native American heritage that animate his fitful dreams. Ferguson has found religion, or rather had it forced upon him by his wife, who otherwise wants nothing to do with him. The tedium of his job as an accountant is slowly driving Ferguson around the bend. His one solace: fantasizing about an attractive female co-worker, while Mitchell, who has lost his zest for wheeling and dealing and womanizing, looks for a new thrill. The three longtime friends are approaching middle age kicking and screaming, if only on the inside. That is about to change.