The Orchid Affair

The Orchid Affair
Author: Lauren Willig
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2011-01-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101495456

Veteran governess Laura Grey joins the Selwick Spy School expecting to find elaborate disguises and thrilling adventures in service to the spy known as the Pink Carnation. She hardly expects her first assignment to be serving as governess for the children of André Jaouen, right-hand man to Bonaparte's minister of police. At first the job is as lively as Latin, but Laura begins to notice Jaouen's increasingly strange behavior. As Laura edges closer to her employer, she is surprised to learn that she has much in common with him. And Jaouen finds he's hired more than he's bargained for...

The Moors

The Moors
Author: Jen Silverman
Publisher: Methuen Drama
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2025-08-21
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1350516864

“There is great imagination and intrigue here, and it is eminently entertaining.” - The Guardian Backdropped by the bleak English moors, two sisters (and their dog) live a dreary existence, as they dream of forbidden love and power. So, when a hapless governess and a moor-hen arrive at their manor house, the two see a chance to claim what they've always wanted... no matter how destructive. A loving pastiche of the gothic genre, Jen Silverman echoes and channels the Brontë sisters in this irreverent celebration, that is equal parts brutal, lusty, and deranged. A macabre, queer thriller, The Moors is published in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series, featuring a new introduction by Christine Scarfuto.

Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and the Art of the Detective Short Story

Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and the Art of the Detective Short Story
Author: Laird R. Blackwell
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2019-03-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1476676526

Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) was--with his partner Manfred Lee--the creator of the Ellery Queen detective novels and short stories. Dannay was also a literary historian and critic, and the editor of the renowned Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Queen--both a pen name and the fictional protagonist of the stories--was also a vital force behind the continuing popularity of crime fiction in the early to mid-20th century, after the deaths of Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Melville Davisson Post, and other Old Masters of the genre. This book presents the first critical study of Ellery Queen's role in the preservation of the detective short story. Many of the writers, characters and stories EQMM championed are covered, including such celebrated authors as Allingham, Ambler, Ellin, Innes, Vickers, and even William Butler Yeats.

[Environment] Most Important Current Affairs With PYQs For UPSC CSE Prelims 2024

[Environment] Most Important Current Affairs With PYQs For UPSC CSE Prelims 2024
Author: MYUPSC
Publisher: R P Meena
Total Pages: 205
Release:
Genre: Study Aids
ISBN:

[Environment] Most Important Current Affairs With PYQs For UPSC CSE Prelims 2024. Total Page - 205 Language - English What you will get? - Environment Current Affairs with Previous Year Prelims Questions with detailed solution and Practice MCQs for UPSC IAS Prelims 2024 Examination GS Paper -1.

The Mutilated

The Mutilated
Author: Tennessee Williams
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Total Pages: 56
Release: 1967-10
Genre: Friendship
ISBN: 9780822207948

"The Mutilated, as described in Variety, "is about a pair of alternately friendly and quarrelsome floozies in a fleabag hotel in the French quarter of New Orleans in the 1930s. Margaret Leighton plays the one who has inherited an income just sufficient to give her pretensions and keep her supplied with the wine. Kate Reid plays a raucous hag just out of jail on a shoplifting charge. The would-be genteel lady is morbidly senstive about being physically mutilated, having had a breast removed. Her harpy companion, Williams seems to be saying, is spiritually deformed, having suffered the cruelty of fellow humans. The implication is that all of us are maimed in some form or other. The play is written as a sort of Christmas parable, with a chorus of incidental characters singing hymns resembling carols ..."--Back cover.

Love Affairs for Grown-Ups

Love Affairs for Grown-Ups
Author: Debby Holt
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2010-03-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1849831688

Cornelius Hedge finds it difficult enough to talk to people he does know let alone people he doesn't. So he's plunged into gloom when he is dragooned into driving the female friend of a colleague's wife through France. How on earth is he expected to make small talk from Boulogne to Montelimar? First impressions are not auspicious: the moment he introduces himself, the woman inexplicably bursts into tears. But by the time they've reached their destination, Cornelius has grown increasingly fond of the unassuming Katrina. She is interesting, entertaining, amusing; he'd actually like to see more of her. At their age however, the past has a habit of intruding on the present. Ex-husbands, ex-wives, selfish sisters and sulky teenagers all seem to conspire to thwart the budding romance. What's worse, both Katrina and Cornelius are hiding secrets from their past. Secrets that burst into the open – with rather surprising results. The sparkling romance from the much-loved, bestselling author of Recipe for Scandal. If you love Wendy Holden, Elizabeth Buchan, Katie Fforde and Catherine Alliott, make Debby Holt your next read! What everyone is saying about Love Affairs for Grown-Ups: ‘Thoroughly enjoyable ... Had me smiling from start to finish’ Erica James ‘I absolutely love this book. It is as funny as it is wise and I couldn’t put it down’ Katie Fforde ‘A wickedly comical read’ Heat ‘From the author of the superb Ex-Wife’s Survival Guide comes another wicked treat’ Daily Mirror ‘This fast-paced romantic comedy is perfect bad-weather escapism’ She ‘Clever and surprising’ Daily Mail ‘Laced with wise and witty humour this is great fun’ Woman ‘A deliciously funny, gently ironic novel, Jane Austen-like in its elegance and playfulness’ Women’s Weekly

Empress Orchid

Empress Orchid
Author: Anchee Min
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2004
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0618562036

From a master of the historical novel, Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the heart of the Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young concubine who becomes China's last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of a country girl who seized power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enemies, she alone seems capable of holding the country together. In this "absorbing companion piece to her novel Becoming Madame Mao" (New York Times), readers and reading groups will once again be transported by Min's lavish evocation of the Forbidden City in its last days of imperial glory and by her brilliant portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman who survived, and ultimately dominated, a male world.

Family Affair

Family Affair
Author: Rex Stout
Publisher: Crimeline
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2011-07-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307768155

What could make Nero Wolfe so determined to solve a crime that he would be willing to work entirely without fee or client? What would it take to put him, for the first time, at a loss for words? What would make him so angry about at case that he would refuse to speak to the police, even if he has to spend fifty-one hours in jail as a result? Never before in the Nero Wolfe books has Rex Stout shown us the extremes to which the greatest detective in the world can be pushed, but never before has a bomb blown up in the old brownstone on West 35th Street, murdering someone right under Wolfe's nose. When in October 1974 Pierre Ducos, one of Wolfe's favorite waiters at Rusterman's, Wolfe's favorite restaurant, dies just down the hall from Archie's Bedroom, Wolfe is understandably eager to find the perpetrator, but when that murder somehow becomes connected with tape recorders, Washington lawyers, and maybe even a conspiracy to obstruct justice, his fury becomes so intense that even Archie is puzzled. Not only is this a great chapter in the Nero Wolfe legend; A Family Affair is a splendid mystery novel that should capture many new fans and will delight (and amaze) the long-standing admirers of Wolfe and Archie.

Tigerlily's Orchids

Tigerlily's Orchids
Author: Ruth Rendell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2011
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439150397

INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL'S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS Is it dangerous to know too much about your neighbors? When Stuart Font throws a housewarming party, he invites all the residents of his new building--among them, three flippant young girls, a lonely spinster, a man with a passion for classical history, and a woman determined to drink herself to death. He definitely does not want his girlfriend, Claudia, in attendance, as he would also have to invite her lawyer husband. But careful planning can only get a person so far. As it turns out, this party will be one everyone remembers. Meanwhile, living in a town house opposite Stuart's building, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman known as Tigerlily. As though from some strange urban fairy tale, she emerges infrequently to exert a terrible spell. In Tigerlily's Orchids, Ruth Rendell has written a darkly humorous and psychologically thrilling novel about the eccentric inhabitants of a London terrace--about the secrets they keep, and what they will do to hide them.