Deadly Intrigues Meet the Midmoor family and take part in all the intrigues, inside and around the castle walls, before and after the First World War. This book is about deadly intrigues and about the power at Midmoor Castle. It is also about getting more money, collateral, jewelry, and everything else, which can make life easier in the corridors of power where corruption is rampant. A found glass jar with Cyanide will also have meaning in the course of events within this story. This book is also about standing up in the world and taking part in the circle of politics and power that reigns at Midmoor Castle.

Learn to "think laterally" and you'll solve pesky puzzles. These 110 puzzles start out fairly easy and the clues get more and more tantalizingly hard to figure out. They come in five sections: Dangerous and Deadly, Easy and Elementary, Interesting and Intriguing, Chastening and Challenging, and Fascinating and Fiendish. Just when you're on a roll, here comes a "Wally Test," a series of rapid-fire questions to make sure you're paying attention. 96 pages, 25 b/w illus., 5 3/8 x 8 1/4.

Distributed in the United States by Firefly Books (U.S.) Inc.

A wide-ranging look at the interplay of opera and political ideas through the centuries The Politics of Opera takes readers on a fascinating journey into the entwined development of opera and politics, from the Renaissance through the turn of the nineteenth century. What political backdrops have shaped opera? How has opera conveyed the political ideas of its times? Delving into European history and thought and an array of music by such greats as Lully, Rameau, and Mozart, Mitchell Cohen reveals how politics—through story lines, symbols, harmonies, and musical motifs—has played an operatic role both robust and sotto voce. Cohen begins with opera's emergence under Medici absolutism in Florence during the late Renaissance—where debates by humanists, including Galileo's father, led to the first operas in the late sixteenth century. Taking readers to Mantua and Venice, where composer Claudio Monteverdi flourished, Cohen examines how early operatic works like Orfeo used mythology to reflect on governance and policy issues of the day, such as state jurisdictions and immigration. Cohen explores France in the ages of Louis XIV and the Enlightenment and Vienna before and during the French Revolution, where the deceptive lightness of Mozart's masterpieces touched on the havoc of misrule and hidden abuses of power. Cohen also looks at smaller works, including a one-act opera written and composed by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Essential characters, ancient and modern, make appearances throughout: Nero, Seneca, Machiavelli, Mazarin, Fenelon, Metastasio, Beaumarchais, Da Ponte, and many more. An engrossing book that will interest all who love opera and are intrigued by politics, The Politics of Opera offers a compelling investigation into the intersections of music and the state.

The single mother hasn't been found. And all her daughter, Sarah, has is her uncle. Clueless at parenting, Clint Herald seeks a loving, responsible nanny. What he finds instead is a stranger as mysterious as his sister's disappearance. Mandy Erick is secretive and seems scared, yet she's so good with Sarah that Clint can't help but trust her. In fact, he even enters Mandy in the town's Mother of the Year contest. But attention is the last thing Mandy wants. Her time in the public eye may prove just as dangerous as she fears.