This book attempts to make sense of the current increase in violence, cruelty, hate and humiliation, arguing that an overly organised economic world has provoked desire for extreme forms of popular and personal pleasure.

In these 23stories, Brown never rails to surprise and delight. Time after time the reader anticipates the ending only to discover that once more the author has proved too clever. Yet Brown never "cheats," never feeds false clues, and his endings are always plausible. His imag­ination is by turns puckish, grim, out­landish--but forever fresh. Brown's stories run from the fifty-word "Mistake" to a novelette ("The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches"). In "Granny's Birthday," a two-page short short, with Granny supervising like a benign queen, the party goes splendidly, marred only by manslaughter and murder.

Kansas, 1959. When a travelling carnival appears overnight, the townsfolk of Seneca Falls are entranced. But the circus brings more than just magic and illusion to the small town: a dead man is discovered beneath the carousel. For FBI Special Agent Michael Travis, the world is clear cut. But there are a lot of grey areas in this case. The carnival folk are unwilling to answer a straight question and they begin to challenge Travis's once unshakeable faith in solid facts and hard evidence... As the investigation turns ever more disturbing, Travis is forced to question everything he believes in as a dark and horrifying conspiracy comes to light.

Decadence and murder found on the dark side of the big city pales in comparison to the freak show found by undercover US narcotics agent Bob Clark in The Carnival of Death. Clark's investigation begins with cocaine and leads to cold-blooded murder--the discovery of one, and then another, headless corpse. Who is behind the slaughter? Are the killings tied to the drug traffic? Or is a deeper, darker, and even more sinister conspiracy unfolding in the carnival? There are plenty of distractions--bright lights and beautiful girls--but Clark better find the murderers of the midway fast. Because the next head that rolls could very well be his own. Also includes the mystery "The Death Flyer," in which a man and woman find themselves trapped on a ghost train and bound for a deadly crash ... unless they can find a way to derail fate and cheat death--on the fly. Experience the spinning wheels, the pleasure-seeking crowds and the screams of horror as the The Carnival of Death takes you on a roller-coaster ride of suspense. "Highly recommended." --Midwest Book Review "Roars to life." --Library Journal

Ten exciting new adventures for the famous boy detective! Everyone's favorite fifth-grade gumshoe is back on the case! Following the classic Encyclopedia Brown formula, this installment presents ten mysteries, complete with answers at the end of the book that allow the reader to solve the cases along with the boy detective. Join Encyclopedia Brown as he takes on cases of giant diamonds, lazy lions, a country singer, and of course a trip to the carnival.

One July week in 1900 an obscure black laborer named Robert Charles drew national headlines when he shot twenty-seven whites—including seven policemen—in a series of encounters with the New Orleans police. An avid supporter of black emigration, Charles believed it foolish to rely on southern whites to uphold the law or to acknowledge even minimal human rights for blacks. He therefore systematically armed himself, manufacturing round after round of his own ammunition before undertaking his intentionally symbolic act of violent resistance. After the shootings, Charles became an instant hero among some blacks, but to most people he remained a mysterious and sinister figure who had promoted a “back-to-Africa” movement. Few knew anything about his early life. This biography of Charles follows him from childhood in a Mississippi sharecropper’s cabin to his violent death on New Orleans’s Saratoga Street. With the few clues available, William Ivy Hair has pieced together the story of a man whose life spanned the thirty-four years from emancipation to 1900—a man who tried to achieve dignity and self-respect in a time when people of his race could not exhibit such characteristics without fear of reprisal. Hair skillfully penetrates the world of Robert Charles, the communities in which he lived, and the daily lives of dozens of people, white and black, who were involved in his experience. A new foreword by W. Fitzhugh Brundage sets this unique and innovative biography in the context of its time and demonstrates its relevance today.

Carnival for the Dead is a suspenseful spin-off from the Nic Costa series, David Hewson's detective novels of love and death in Italy. In Venice the past was more reticent. Beyond the tourist sights, San Marco and the Rialto, it lurked in the shadows, seeping out of the cracked stones like blood from ancient wounds, as if death itself was one more sly performance captured beneath the bright all-seeing light of the lagoon. It’s February, and Carnival time in Venice. Forensic pathologist Teresa Lupo visits the city to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her beloved bohemian Aunt Sofia. But from the moment she is greeted off the vaporetto by a masked man dressed in the costume of The Plague Doctor, Teresa starts to suspect that all is not well. The puzzle deepens when a letter reveals a piece of fiction in which both Sofia and Teresa appear. Even more strange, are the links to the past which gradually begin to surface. Are the messages being sent by Sofia herself? Her abductor? Or a third party seeking to help her unravel the mystery? The revelation is as surprising and shocking as Sofia’s fate. And Teresa herself comes to depend upon the unravelling of a mystery wrapped deep inside the art and culture of Venice itself.