Backstage and global politics unexpectedly collide during an amateur production of Oedipus. This powerful, timely play investigates the contemporary meaning and relevance of tragedy, launching a surprisingly funny, sharply pointed salvo directly at the heart of a generation.

A biography of a young African-American man who escaped the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets when he returned home.

It happened so very quickly, yet, the memories of this event have lingered for decades. For those who were there, the event plays over-and-over in their mind, sometimes in slow-motion where they can still see each freeze-frame moment just as it occurred. For loved ones who were not there, their vision of what occurred plays over-and over, haunting their dreams both day and night. The date was Sunday, June 26, 1977. It was a hot 90 degrees and most of the residents of the small town of Columbia, TN were taking part in church functions, spending the day with family, hanging out at the pool, or taking a pleasant afternoon nap. Little did anyone know that our town was mere moments from an epic disaster. A disaster that would leave its weighty mark on every member of this community, for years to come. The worst jail fire in the history of Tennessee, both then and now.

Shirley Jackson meets The Virgin Suicides, set at an all-girls orphanage.

What has tragedy been made to mean by dramatists, story-tellers, critics, philosophers, politicians, and journalists? This work shows the relevance of tragedy to the modern world, and extends beyond drama and literature into visual art and everyday experience.

A “perfectly executed suspense tale very much in the mode of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca” (The Washington Post) from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game, and The Turn of the Key. On a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person—but also that the cold-reading skills she’s honed as a tarot card reader might help her claim the money. Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased…where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the center of it. Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware’s signature suspenseful style, this is a “captivating and eerie page-turner” (The Wall Street Journal) from the Agatha Christie of our time.

Dazzling psychological suspense. Razor-sharp dialogue. Plots that catch and hold like a noose. These are the hallmarks of crime legend Ruth Rendell, “the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world” (Time magazine). From Doon with Death, now in a striking new paperback edition, is her classic debut novel—and the book that introduced one of the most popular sleuths of the twentieth century. There is nothing extraordinary about Margaret Parsons, a timid housewife in the quiet town of Kingsmarkham, a woman devoted to her garden, her kitchen, her husband. Except that Margaret Parsons is dead, brutally strangled, her body abandoned in the nearby woods. Who would kill someone with nothing to hide? Inspector Wexford, the formidable chief of police, feels baffled -- until he discovers Margaret's dark secret: a trove of rare books, each volume breathlessly inscribed by a passionate lover identified only as Doon. As Wexford delves deeper into both Mrs. Parsons’ past and the wary community circling round her memory like wolves, the case builds with relentless momentum to a surprise finale as clever as it is blindsiding. In From Doon with Death, Ruth Rendell instantly mastered the form that would become synonymous with her name. Chilling, richly characterized, and ingeniously constructed, this is psychological suspense at its very finest. Praise for From Doon with Death “One of the most remarkable novelists of her generation.”—People “She has transcended her genre by her remarkable imaginative power to explore and illuminate the dark corners of the human psyche.”—P.D. James

The book explores, in novel form, what can happen to us, whether professor or student, as a result of the philosophical classroom. The approach is to consider the classroom as a unique happening of philosophy, different than reporting theories or doing research, through which a distinctive mode of philosophical formation can occur.

The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature seeks to understand the ways in which literature has engaged deeply with the ever-evolving relationship humanity has with its ultimate demise. It is the most comprehensive collection in this growing field of study and includes essays by Brian McHale, Catherine Belling, Ronald Schleifer, Helen Swift, and Ira Nadel, as well as the work of a generation of younger scholars from around the globe, who bring valuable transnational insights. Encompassing a diverse range of mediums and genres – including biography and autobiography, documentary, drama, elegy, film, the novel and graphic novel, opera, picturebooks, poetry, television, and more – the contributors offer a dynamic mix of approaches that range from expansive perspectives on particular periods and genres to extended analyses of select case studies. Essays are included from every major Western period, including Classical, Middle Ages, Renaissance, and so on, right up to the contemporary. This collection provides a telling demonstration of the myriad ways that humanity has learned to live with the inevitability of death, where “live with” itself might mean any number of things: from consoling, to memorializing, to rationalizing, to fending off, to evading, and, perhaps most compellingly of all, to escaping. Engagingly written and drawing on examples from around the world, this volume is indispensable to both students and scholars working in the fields of medical humanities, thanatography (death studies), life writing, Victorian studies, modernist studies, narrative, contemporary fiction, popular culture, and more.

Marcos Piangers will put us in the backseat between his daughters Anita and Aurora, as tells us more stories—some are moving, some are funny, and others are just plain disgusting. They're all about this completely common and extremely extraordinary thing called "being a dad." Nobody has children to get benefits, discounts, tax deductions, or free balloons at the mall. Children can deplete your savings account and cut short your hours of sleep. They'll get your new shirts dirty and draw on your walls. Actually, there's only one reason why we have children: to learn how to love other people more than you love yourself.