Looking for a play that combines romance, intrigue, and profound insight into the human condition? Fans of top-notch dramatic writing will appreciate W. Somerset Maugham's Caesar's Wife, which explores an unusual love triangle between a distinguished, older dignitary, his personal secretary, and his much-younger wife.

Documents the stories of eight wives of Roman rulers, assessing their historical contributions and cultural influence and drawing parallels between modern first ladies and the lives of such ancient-world figures as Livia, Helena, and Julia.

This is a work of alternate history: that is, it explores what might have happened if Julius Caesar had not died at hands of assassins on the Ides of March, 44 BCE. Five of the would-be assassins (including Brutus and Cassius) are put on trial for treason. Although none of the defendants denies participating in the attempted assassination, a startling intervention by Caesar himself, late in the trial, leads to their acquittal. They are immediately attacked and killed, however, by an angry mob. The story is told from multiple points of view, including especially Caesar's wife, Calpurnia, who turns out to be much more deeply involved in the events of March 15 and the aftermath than her husband had ever supposed. All of the characters in this novel are actual historical persons, except for one: a British Gaul named Skaiva, who becomes entangled in the life of the man who conquered his country.

p.B. J. Whiting savors proverbial expressions and has devoted much of his lifetime to studying and collecting them; no one knows more about British and American proverbs than he. The present volume, based upon writings in British North America from the earliest settlements to approximately 1820, complements his and Archer Taylor's Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-1880. It differs from that work and from other standard collections, however, in that its sources are primarily not "literary" but instead workaday writings - letters, diaries, histories, travel books, political pamphlets, and the like. The authors represent a wide cross-section of the populace, from scholars and statesmen to farmers, shopkeepers, sailors, and hunters. Mr. Whiting has combed all the obvious sources and hundreds of out-of-the-way publications of local journals and historical societies. This body of material, "because it covers territory that has not been extracted and compiled in a scholarly way before, can justly be said to be the most valuable of all those that Whiting has brought together," according to Albert B. Friedman. "What makes the work important is Whiting's authority: a proverb or proverbial phrase is what BJW thinks is a proverb or proverbial phrase. There is no objective operative definition of any value, no divining rod; his tact, 'feel, ' experience, determine what's the real thing and what is spurious."

'These novellas are small, sad gems...by three completely different stylists who are implicitly banging the drum for individuality, compassion and understanding. From Wakefield's fat lady who meets and finds friendship with a lonely gay man on holiday in Tunisia, to Gale's tough career girl who compromises her independence, to King's proud Japanese servant, lover of a barrister dying of AIDS, these tales are subtle, spare, beautifully crafted. Tom Wakefield has a deceptively naive style which hides great emotional perception; Patrick Gale has a fine line in pricking contemporary cultural yuppiedom; Francis King has never, even in his early novels, been better on cultural and emotional incomprehension? Mary Hope, Financial Times