"Calamity befalls the little Vendome Theater in the tenth installment of the sun- and wine-soaked Provençal Mystery Series"-- When Jean-Marc Sauvet, successful lawyer and the best friend of Aix-en-Provence's examining magistrate Antoine Verlaque, accepted a small role in a local theater's summer production of Marcel Pagnol's Cigalon, he had no idea that the lead actress would be played by the great Liliane Poncet. But his excitement about rubbing...

A woman who has adopted an abandoned child to give it a new life has to fight for him when his birth mother shows up and wants him back.

They are The Unit, a covert Special Forces team operating outside the usual military chain of command, risking their lives on undercover missions at home and abroad. Their identities are highly classified, a secret that's also fiercely guarded by their wives. But despite the men's determination to protect their families from the dangers of the job, they've learned that the enemy they have defeated in the field is also capable of bringing the fight...

An anthology of poetic works celebrates the American landscape with diverse selections by such contributors as Nikki Giovanni, William Carlos Williams, and Naomi Shihab Nye.

Carol White is an L.A. housewife in the late 1980s who comes down with a debilitating illness. After the doctors she sees can give her no clear diagnosis, she comes to believe that she has frighteningly extreme environmental allergies. A prescient commentary on self-help culture, as a metaphor for the AIDS crisis, as a drama about class and social estrangement, and as a horror film about what cannot be seen.

Beethoven's Skull is an unusual and often humorous survey of the many strange happenings in the history of Western classical music. Proving that good music and shocking tabloid-style stories make excellent bedfellows, it presents tales of revenge, murder, curious accidents, and strange fates that span more than two thousand years. Highlights include: A cursed song that kills those who hear it A composer who lovingly cradles the head of Beethoven's...

"Did you know that your morning coffee could be thanks to a herd of energetic goats? Or that a forgotten ingredient is behind the invention of the beloved brownie? Who got the fright of their life discovering corn could pop? And which popular soft drink started out as a medicinal syrup? Oscar Farinetti, founder of high-end global food chain Eataly, presents this collection of insightful and entertaining interviews with leading artisan food producers,...

Poems about the various stages of grief, with 150 selections from a variety of 20th-21st century poets.