Hoodlums steal a worthless painting, and Kent Murdock wants to know whyDIVA collection of valuable Italian paintings finds its way to Boston, placed in the care of Professor Andrade. Before passing them to a museum, the professor hires newspaper photographer Kent Murdock to document them. On his way to the assignment, Murdock is stopped by a gunman named Erloff, who steals the reporter’s identification—and pays his own visit to the professor./divDIV /divDIVBut Erloff is not after the expensive stuff. He cracks Andrade on the skull and leaves with nothing but a worthless painting of a green-hued Venus. Murdock is perplexed. Why all the trouble for an ugly piece of modern art? But the jade Venus holds a terrible secret—and blood will flow before it comes to light./div

Made speechless by her eccentric father, the beautiful Etheria is traded for a piece of precious jade. Memory, her sister, tells her story, that of a childhood enlivened by Lewis Carroll and an orangutan named Dr. Johnson and envenomed by the pernicious courtship of Radulph Tubbs, Queen Victoria's own Dragon of Industry. The novel travels from Oxford to Egypt where one million ibis mummies wait to be transformed into fertilizer, where Baconfield the architect will cause a pyramid to collapse, and where a scorned and bloated hunger artist who speaks in tongues will plot a bloody revenge. The fourth element in a tetralogy of novels - Earth (The Stain), Fire (Entering Fire), Water (The Fountains of Neptune) and Air - The Jade Cabinet is both a riveting novel and a reflection on the nature of memory and desire, language and power. Following the novel is an afterword, "Waking to Eden, " in which Ducornet reflects on the sources for her writing and on the quartet of novels completed by The Jade Cabinet.

'This Complete Sonnets and Poems is a distinguished addition to a distinguished series. It will repay continuing study, and act as a valuable point of reference for readers concerned more generally with Shakespeare's art and language. Colin Burrow's good sense, tact and balance as aneditor are deeply impressive.' -H. R. Woudhuysen, Times Literary SupplementThis is the only fully annotated and modernized edition to bring together Shakespeare's Sonnets as well as all his poems (including those attributed to him after his death). A full introduction discusses his development as a poet, and how the poems relate to his plays; detailed notes explain the language and allusions in clear modern English. While accessibly written, the edition takes account of the most recent scholarship and criticism.