In Wald's darkly erotic stories, characters enact the intricate and subtle ways that dominance and submission play a role in their daily lives: a young girl dreams of submitting to a boy who's not interested in controlling her, an ex-convict is so accustomed to serving his cellmate that he cannot adjust to the outside world, a professional dominatrix is beaten at her own game by a psychiatrist, and a student lies his way into the home of an army recruiter in order to become his houseboy. Meeting the Master is a provocative exploration of the pleasures and rituals of dominance and submission.

Satan, Judas, a Soviet writer, and a talking black cat named Behemoth populate this satire, “a classic of twentieth-century fiction” (The New York Times). In 1930s Moscow, Satan decides to pay the good people of the Soviet Union a visit. In old Jerusalem, the fateful meeting of Pilate and Yeshua and the murder of Judas in the garden of Gethsemane unfold. At the intersection of fantasy and realism, satire and unflinching emotional truths, Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic The Master and Margarita eloquently lampoons every aspect of Soviet life under Stalin’s regime, from politics to art to religion, while interrogating the complexities between good and evil, innocence and guilt, and freedom and oppression. Spanning from Moscow to Biblical Jerusalem, a vibrant cast of characters—a “magician” who is actually the devil in disguise, a giant cat, a witch, a fanged assassin—sow mayhem and madness wherever they go, mocking artists, intellectuals, and politicians alike. In and out of the fray weaves a man known only as the Master, a writer demoralized by government censorship, and his mysterious lover, Margarita. Burned in 1928 by the author and restarted in 1930, The Master and Margarita was Bulgakov’s last completed creative work before his death. It remained unpublished until 1966—and went on to become one of the most well-regarded works of Russian literature of the twentieth century, adapted or referenced in film, television, radio, comic strips, theater productions, music, and opera.

From the olive trees of southern France to Gnostic cults in Egypt, a man and his lovers are invented and reinvented in this first volume of a great literary adventure. For British doctor Bruce Drexel, a return to Provence is bittersweet. Here, at a rustic chateau, he once fell in love with Sylvie, the Frenchwoman who would become his wife, and befriended her brother, Piers. The three made up a peculiar, potent ménage for years until Sylvie’s descent into madness and Piers’s suicide. As Drexel attends to Piers’s affairs, he becomes steeped in the memories of a spiritually transformational trip to Egypt; the band of intellectual confederates who used to be his intimate friends; and a three-sided love that became his reason for being. So begins Monsieur, the masterful first entry of Durrell’s Avignon Quintet, an infinite regress of memory and imagination that challenges the formal conventions of fiction.

In Wald's darkly erotic stories, characters enact the intricate and subtle ways that dominance and submission play a role in their daily lives: a young girl dreams of submitting to a boy who's not interested in controlling her, an ex-convict is so accustomed to serving his cellmate that he cannot adjust to the outside world, a professional dominatrix is beaten at her own game by a psychiatrist, and a student lies his way into the home of an army recruiter in order to become his houseboy. Meeting the Master is a provocative exploration of the pleasures and rituals of dominance and submission.

Steven Diamond is a high-powered LA attorney by day, but by night he uses his wealth and influence to indulge his most intimate desires. His life is a waking dream until his half-brother presents him with a unique gift: the eponymous O, a mysterious, seductive and submissive hedonist in search of a master deserving of her complete devotion.

Written with an astonishing voice that penetrates wisdom far beyond the author's years, Meeting the Master is a provocative exploration of the pleasures and rituals of dominance and submission.In Wald's darkly erotic stories, characters enact the intricate and subtle ways that dominance and submission play a role in their daily lives: a young girl dreams of submitting to a boy who's not interested in controlling her, an ex-convict is so accustomed to serving his cellmate that he cannot adjust to the outside world, a professional dominatrix is beaten at her own game by a psychiatrist, and a student lies his way into the home of an army recruiter in order to become his houseboy.A subtle, beautifully crafted collection, Meeting the Master presents an accomplished new author whose lyrical economy and ability to see the erotic in everyday life make her stories a riveting pleasure to read.

Every child's potential is regularly determined by a standardized measurement: their quotient (Q). Score high enough, and attend a top tier school with a golden future. Score too low, and it's off to a federal boarding school with limited prospects afterwards. The purpose? An improved society where education costs drop, teachers focus on the more promising students, and parents are happy.Elena Fairchild is a teacher at one of the state's elite schools. When her nine-year-old daughter bombs a monthly test and her Q score drops to a disastrously low level, she is immediately forced to leave her top school for a federal institution hundreds of miles away. As a teacher, Elena thought she understood the tiered educational system, but as a mother whose child is now gone, Elena's perspective is changed forever. She just wants her daughter back.And she will do the unthinkable to make it happen. (4e de couverture)