Blackmail in the Big Easy turns to cold-blooded murder in this debut cozy mystery perfect for fans of Jane K. Cleland. When the mysterious letter arrives by courier, Valerie Cooper doesn’t know what to make of it. She’s become the beneficiary of her late husband’s estranged uncle’s will—a man she never knew—and inherited a majority partnership in the family’s company, New Orleans Fine Antiques. Valerie knows nothing about antiques, but she decides to learn the business and become an active partner. She’s also got her hands full fending off Collette, a woman who wants to sell the huge old house in the Irish Channel neighborhood Valerie and her husband painstakingly renovated. Valerie isn’t interested in selling—but when her best friend Lauren, drags her to a costume party for the women’s Mardi Gras club, the Krewe of Athena, she stumbles over Collette’s body, a jeweled dagger sticking out of her chest. In a rush of panic, Valerie recognizes the dagger from her shop—and before she knows it, she’s become murder suspect number one. Egged on by Lauren, she starts digging into Collette’s business dealings, and the deeper she digs, the dirtier it gets. Now all fingers are pointing at Valerie. In a desperate bid to clear her name, Valerie frantically tries to find who could have gotten hold of the dagger. But among a cadre of guests in full costume, it could be impossible to find the thief—and unmask the real killer.

Dr. Mary Wells is a psychoanalyst, whose patient, Cecily Johnson, is playing the part of Stella in a new production of "A Streetcar Named Desire." Cecily gives the doctor two tickets to see a performance of the play. She invites Lt. John Franklin, a detective who is her lover, to accompany her. During a particularly rowdy scene, the sound of a shot is heard. The audience thinks it is part of the play, until the stage manager comes out and announces that a person has been shot back stage and the performance cannot continue. The murdered man is the actor playing Stanley Kowalski. Lt. Franklin takes on the case. After checking out the ballistics and interrogating the cast, he and Dr. Wells conclude that one of the actors in the play was the killer. They consider possible motives for the murder by each actor. Utilizing Dr. Wells' psychological expertise and Lt. Franklin's experience and perceptiveness, they are able to eliminate some performers, while others remain under suspicion. Through an idea of Dr. Wells to have the cast reenact the death scene, she and the Lieutenant are able to discover and apprehend the killer.

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The “villainous homosexual” has long stalked America’s cultural imagination, most explicitly in the figure of the queer murderer, a character in dozens of plays. But as society’s understanding of homosexuality has changed, so has the significance of these controversial characters, especially when employed by LGBT theater artists themselves to explore darker fears and desires. Murder Most Queer examines the shifting meanings of murderous LGBT characters in American theater over a century, showing how these representations wrestle with and ultimately subvert notions of gay villainy. Murder Most Queer works to expose the forces that create the homophobic paradigm that imagines sexual and gender nonconformity as dangerous and destructive and to show how theater artists—and for the most part LGBT theater artists—have rewritten and radically altered the significance of the homicidal homosexual. Jordan Schildcrout argues that these figures, far from being simple reiterations of a homophobic archetype, are complex and challenging characters who enact trenchant fantasies of empowerment, replacing the shame and stigma of the abject with the defiance and freedom of the outlaw, giving voice to rage and resistance. These bold characters also probe the darker anxieties and fears that can affect queer lives and relationships. Instead of sentencing them to the prison of negative representations, this book analyzes the meanings in their acts of murder, confronting the real fears and desires condensed in those dramatic acts.

Cinema-going was the most popular commercial leisure activity in the first half of the twentieth century, peaking in 1946 with 1.6 billion recorded admissions. Though ‘going to the pictures’ remained a popular pastime, the transition to peacetime altered citizens’ leisure habits. During the 1950s increased affluence, the growth of television ownership and the diversification of leisure led to rapid declines in attendance. Cinema attendances fell in all regions, but the speed, nature and extent of decline varied widely across the United Kingdom. By linking national developments to detailed case studies of Belfast and Sheffield, this book adds nuance to our understanding of regional variations in film exhibition, audience habits and cinema-going experiences during a period of profound social and cultural change. Drawing on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative sources, Cinema and Cinema-Going conveys the diverse nature of this important industry, and the significance of place as a determinant of film attendance in post-war Britain.

A driver picks up a hitchhiker from the side of a road; a restorer develops an unusual bond with a cursed doll; a visit to the cabin in the woods goes terribly wrong... We all know how these stories end - or do we? In This Fresh Hell, every story begins with a well-known horror trope but ends with a twist, bringing new life and unexpected resolutions to old ideas. Fears are interrogated, ghosts re-examined, and monsters reconfigured. From chilling to quirky, these stories will appeal to dedicated horror fans and those dipping into the genre for the first time. A Slender Man offers help to a boy in trouble; a haunted house is reluctant to terrify its new residents; a heartbroken influencer is challenged on a luxury cruise from hell. Writers from Australia and around the world reignite and subvert horror tropes in 19 genre-bending stories: Eugen Bacon, Elle Beaumont, Katya de Becerra, Jason Franks, Raymond Gates, Narrelle M. Harris, Sarah Glenn Marsh, Greg Herren, Claire Low, Annie McCann, Chuck McKenzie, L.J.M. Owen, Gillian Polack, Tansy Rayner-Roberts, Clare E. Rhoden, Candace Robinson, Sarah Robinson-Hatch, Claire L. Smith, C. Vonzale Lewis, and A.J. Vrana.