Melodrama; 5 male roles, 3 female roles.

The essays in this collection attempt to frame a broad humanist context for various current and historical scientific topics. Subjects range from an astronomical interpretation of Van Gogh's Starry Night to popular misconceptions about Neanderthal humans to the risk factors that are inherent in the development of any new technology.--Editorial review.

Melodrama / 5m, 3f / Int. The author comes forth with another hit about a group of strangers stranded in a boarding house during a snow storm, one of whom is a murderer. The suspects include the newly married couple who run the house, and the suspicions that are in their minds nearly wreck their perfect marriage. Others are a spinster with a curious background, an architect who seems better equipped to be a chef, a retired Army major, a strange little man who claims his car has overturned in a drift, and a jurist who makes life miserable for everyone. Into their midst comes a policeman, traveling on skis. He no sooner arrives, than the jurist is killed. Two down, and one to go. To get to the rationale of the murderer's pattern, the policeman probes the background of everyone present, and rattles a lot of skeletons. Another famous Agatha Christie switch finish! Chalk up another superb intrigue for the foremost mystery writer of her time.

A novel set in the magical offices of The Portable Door, now a majorly fantastical film starring Christoph Waltz, Sam Neill, and Miranda Otto. “Tom Holt may be the most imaginative satirist to land on our shores since Douglas Adams.” — Christopher Moore, New York Times bestselling author It touches all our lives – our triumphs and tragedies, our proudest achievements, our most traumatic disasters. Alloyed of love and fear, death and fire, and the inscrutable acts of the gods, insurance is indeed the force that binds the universe together. Hardly surprising, therefore, that Frank Carpenter, one of the foremost magical practitioners of our age, felt himself irresistibly drawn to it. Until, that is, he met Jane, a high-flying corporate heroine with an annoying habit of falling out of trees and getting killed. Repeatedly. It's not long before Frank and Jane find themselves face to face with the greatest enigma of our times: When is a door not a door? When it's a mousetrap. The J.W. Wells & Co. Series: The Portable Door In Your Dreams Earth, Air, Fire and Custard You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps The Better Mousetrap May Contain Traces of Magic Other titles from Tom Holt: Doughnut When It's A Jar The Outsorcerer's Apprentice The Good, the Bad and the Smug The Management Style of the Supreme Beings An Orc on the Wild Side Holt Writing as K. J. Parker: Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City How To Rule An Empire and Get Away With It A Practical Guide to Conquering the World

Though students aren’t yet old enough to drive, that doesn’t mean they can’t satisfy their need for speed. Author and physics teacher Bobby Mercer will show readers 25 easy-to-build racecars that can be driven both indoors and out. Better still, each of these vehicles is constructed for little or no cost using recycled and repurposed materials. The Racecar Book will teach readers how to use mousetraps, rubber bands, chemical reactions, gravity, and air pressure to power these fast-moving cars. They will learn how to turn a potato chip can, a rubber band, and weights into a Chip-Can Dancer, or retrofit a toy car with a toy plane propeller to make an air-powered Prop Car. An effervescent tablet in a small canister makes an impressive rocket engine for a Mini Pop Car, and old CDs, a small cardboard food box, and drinking straws become a Mac-n-Cheese Roller. Every hands-on project contains a materials list and detailed step-by-step instructions. Mercer also includes explanations of the science behind each racecar, including concepts such as friction, Newton’s laws of motion, kinetic and potential energy, and more. Teachers will appreciate the opportunity to augment their STEM curricula while having fun at the same time. These projects are also perfect for science fairs or design competitions. Bobby Mercer has been a high school physics teacher for over two decades. He is the author of The Flying Machine Book and Smash It! Crash It! Launch It! and lives with his family outside of Asheville, North Carolina.

In 1996 Darwin's Black Box thrust Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe into the national spotlight. The book, and his subsequent two, sparked a firestorm of criticism, and his responses appeared in everything from the New York Times to science blogs and the journal Science. His replies, along with a handful of brand-new essays, are now collected in A Mousetrap for Darwin. In engaging his critics, Behe extends his argument that much recent evidence, from the study of evolving microbes to mutations in dogs and polar bears, shows that blind evolution cannot build the complex machinery essential to life. Rather, evolution works principally by breaking things for short-term benefit. It can't construct anything fundamentally new. What can? Behe's money is on intelligent design.

New college graduate Nick Adano doesn’t realize it, but he’s about to move from the frustration of unemployment into the despair of being a vital cog in a morally dubious invention-marketing company. And when Nick and his boss find themselves with a problem on their hands—a client with a good idea who’s being railroaded—will Nick have the courage to confront himself? Set against the backdrop of the early nineties’ recession, Mousetrap, Inc. explores a world before email and social media, when people relied on newspapers as a pivotal way to get information. To buoy the spirits of his equally despairing coworkers, Nick pens tales featuring an antihero named Chapel Fox, by day a respected divorce attorney, but by night a madman bringing his version of justice to his beloved hometown. Nick’s coworkers take pleasure—and maybe derive a hint of self-recognition—from these morally ambiguous stories. Capturing the essence of the awkward early twenties, when we’re adults . . . but not quite, this work speaks to anyone who’s endured a less-than-ideal work situation.