As Karl Marx the icon has fallen along with so many communist regimes, we are left with the mystery of Karl Marx the man, the complexities of a life that has profoundly affected millions. A Requiem for Karl Marx is Frank Manuel's searching meditation on that life, a learned and elegantly written engagement with the man and his work. Manuel gives us a psychological portrait rendered with sympathy and critical detachment, a probing look at the connections between the private drama of Marx's life and his revolutionary ideas. Manuel pursues these connections from Marx's adolescence and education in Trier through his university studies, marriage to a German baroness, and early affiliation with French and German radical groups. Here we see Marx in moments of youthful rapture, in periods of despair, in maneuvers of blatant hypocrisy, in outbursts of self-mockery. We follow his involuted response to his status as a converted Jew, observe the psychic toll of debilitating bouts of illness, and witness the shattering effects of his aggressive, often brutal conduct toward friend and foe alike. Manuel analyzes in intricate detail the central role of Marx's enduring relationship with Friedrich Engels, which appears to transcend the bounds of friendship, and his changing behavior toward his wife, Jenny, the neurotic and tragic figure who shared his dismal London exile. What becomes clear in this narrative is the link between Marx's personal life and his ideas about class struggle, revolutionary strategy, and utopia--as well as the impact of his personal vision and political tactics on the movements that followed him, down to our day.

A young woman investigates her adventurous sister’s death in this mystery from a Shamus Award–winner who “can raise emotional bruises” (The New York Times). Annie Honeycut is one of the country’s most daring freelance photographers, known for her willingness to risk anything for the perfect shot. Working on an assignment about a mysterious house outside Denver, the site of a string of grisly murders a century ago, Annie needs just one more picture to make it perfect: a shot of the murder room, for which she must scale the wall of the creaky old Victorian. She gets the picture, but it will be her last. Annie is found the next morning on the house’s lawn, dead with a broken neck. After Annie’s funeral, her sister inherits the camera. As cautious and sensible as Annie was wild, Nora is nevertheless intrigued by Annie’s final picture, which shows a seemingly human shape in the corner of the room. To solve the mystery of her sister’s final moments, Nora digs into the forgotten killing spree, and a house with secrets just as dangerous today as they were a century ago.