Crime reporter Samantha Adams hits the Big Easy for Mardi Gras—and sticks around to catch a killer—in this “witty mystery [with] swift repartee” (Publishers Weekly). This Mardi Gras, crime reporter Samantha Adams is heading to New Orleans to visit her old college roommate Kitty. Together they’ll see a few parades, dance in the streets, and watch Kitty’s debutante niece be crowned queen of Comus. But the fun turns frightening when Sam witnesses a masked driver commit what looks like vehicular homicide. When the victim’s aristocratic family asks Sam to investigate, she finds a few more skeletons in the closet than they care to have uncovered. Teaming up with handsome insurance investigator Harry Zack, and enlisting the help of a voodoo priestess, Sam picks up a trail that leads her from the parade grounds into a dangerous web of deceit, old money, and murder.

An epic tragedy of love, war, murder, and madness, plucked from the pages of Shakespeare In All the World’s a Grave, John Reed reconstructs the works of William Shakespeare into a new five-act tragedy. The language is Shakespeare’s, but the drama that unfolds is as fresh as the blood on the stage. Prince Hamlet goes to war for Juliet, the daughter of King Lear. Having captured Juliet as his bride—by reckless war—he returns home to find that his mother has murdered his father and married Macbeth. Enter Iago, who persuades Hamlet that Juliet is having an affair with Romeo. As the Prince goes mad with jealousy, King Lear mounts his army. . . This play promises to be the most provocative and entertaining work to be added to the Shakespeare canon since Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

'The Phoenix and the Turtle' is an allegorical poem about the death of ideal love by William Shakespeare. It is widely considered to be one of his most obscure works and has led to many conflicting interpretations. The poem describes a funeral arranged for the deceased Phoenix and Turtledove, respectively emblems of perfection and of devoted love. Some birds are invited, but others excluded. It goes on to state that the love of the birds created a perfect unity which transcended all logic and material fact. It concludes with a prayer for the dead lovers.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. -- from Sonnet 18 No home should be without this: every play, from the early histories to the sad, wise Winter's Tale and The Tempest; every exquisitely crafted sonnet; every long poem (such as Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece) written by the greatest writer in the English language. This edition of the Bard of Avon's complete works is a facsimile of the definitive Shakespeare Head edition published originally in Oxford, England. All the plays are arranged in chronological order of their composition, rather than by genre, so that the evolution of Shakespeare's monumental genius can be more easily followed and appreciated.