Ilse Zhalina is the daughter of one of Melnek's more prominent merchants. She has lived most of her life surrounded by the trappings of wealth and privilege. Many would consider hers a happy lot. But there are dark secrets, especially in the best of families. Ilse has learned that for a young woman of her beauty and social station, to be passive and silent is the best way to survive. When Ilse finally meets the older man she is to marry, she realizes he is far crueler and more deadly than her father could ever be. Ilse chooses to run. This choice will change her life forever. And it will lead her to Raul Kosenmark, master of one of the land's most notorious pleasure houses...and who is, as Ilse discovers, a puppetmaster of a different sort altogether. Ilse discovers a world where every pleasure has a price and there are levels of magic and intrigue she once thought unimaginable. She also finds the other half of her heart. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Infinitely varied and simple to make, homemade cookies fresh from the oven are always a delicious treat, and this superb volume brings together a wonderful and eclectic range of mouth-watering confections.

In New York City, a young man is found murdered in a dingy Times Square sex theater—his neck gruesomely snapped—and the only clue is a torn receipt from the Montpelier School for Boys bookstore.Christmas break is just a couple of weeks away when Montpelier student Russell Phillips fetches up dead. Headmaster Lane, preferring to view Phillips’s death as a suicide, decides to keep the school open for the remainder of the term. But as the nights grow longer and colder—and more corpses begin to surface in connection with the rehearsals for Othello, the winter play—it becomes all too clear that the students and faculty are being stalked by a cool and calculating killer.The local police and school administrators find themselves out of their depth. Even so, many people’s suspicions begin to focus on a single suspect—until he, too, turns up dead.A gripping tour de force that brilliantly uses an isolated boarding school campus as the setting for this propulsive mystery, Passion Play will keep the reader guessing until the final act.

The Bavarian village of Oberammergau has staged the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ nearly every decade since 1634. Each production of the Passion Play attracts hundreds of thousands, many drawn by the spiritual benefits it promises. Yet Hitler called it a convincing portrayal of the menace of Jewry, and in 1970 a group of international luminaries boycotted the play for its anti-Semitism. As the production for the year 2000 drew near, James Shapiro was there to document the newest wave of obstacles that faced the determined Bavarian villagers. Erudite and judicious, Oberammergau is a fascinating and important look at the unpredictable and sometimes tragic relationship between art and society, belief and tolerance, religion and politics.

An intimate, yet thorough, look at one of Britain’s biggest ever bands

An exploration of the relationships between religion, performance, and life. Part I is set in 1575 in an English village whose traditional annual passion-play is about to be outlawed by Queen Elizabeth's anti-Catholic rulings; Part II is set in Oberammergau, 1934, as the town and the play are becoming Nazified; Part III takes place in an American small town from 1969 through the Reagan era and the present.

In a masterpiece of love and loss by one of the world's greatest writers, Fabian travels in his VanHome from one end of the country to the other, searching, judging, and testing--himself most of all.