At the Arabian Nights Bellydance Festival, Murder takes Center Stage... When lifelong friends Ginger and Susan took their first bellydance class on a dare, they never dreamed they’d end up performing in public--let alone getting mixed up in murder! Now a famous dancer has been stabbed to death with her own sword, and the police believe a good friend of theirs is guilty of the crime. As they go behind the scenes of the off-beat world of bellydance, they discover that beauty and glamour can hide some very dirty secrets. What they don’t know is that they are up against a killer who is playing for extremely high stakes, and who won’t hesitate to strike again!

Dr. Gideon Fell solves the dagger murder of a frock-coated, false-whiskered man whose corpse is discovered in the great black carriage of the eerie Wade Museum of Oriental Art

At the Arabian Nights Bellydance Festival, Murder takes Center Stage... When lifelong friends Ginger and Susan took their first bellydance class on a dare, they never dreamed they’d end up performing in public--let alone getting mixed up in murder! Now a famous dancer has been stabbed to death with her own sword, and the police believe a good friend of theirs is guilty of the crime. As they go behind the scenes of the off-beat world of bellydance, they discover that beauty and glamour can hide some very dirty secrets. What they don’t know is that they are up against a killer who is playing for extremely high stakes, and who won’t hesitate to strike again!

The Arab world's greatest folk stories re-imagined by the acclaimed Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh, published to coincide with the world tour of a magnificent musical and theatrical production directed by Tim Supple

"Slave of Desire, through its analyses of various stories, reveals The 1001 Nights to be a very different sort of work, a sophisticated and subtle piece of literature that can provoke and disturb as much as it entertains and amuses.

Americans have always shown a fascination with the people, customs, and legends of the "East--witness the popularity of the stories of the Arabian Nights, the performances of Arab belly dancers and acrobats, the feats of turban-wearing vaudeville magicians, and even the antics of fez-topped Shriners. In this captivating volume, Susan Nance provides a social and cultural history of this highly popular genre of Easternized performance in America up to the Great Depression. According to Nance, these traditions reveal how a broad spectrum of Americans, including recent immigrants and impersonators, behaved as producers and consumers in a rapidly developing capitalist economy. In admiration of the Arabian Nights, people creatively reenacted Eastern life, but these performances were also demonstrations of Americans' own identities, Nance argues. The story of Aladdin, made suddenly rich by rubbing an old lamp, stood as a particularly apt metaphor for how consumer capitalism might benefit each person. The leisure, abundance, and contentment that many imagined were typical of Eastern life were the same characteristics used to define "the American dream." The recent success of Disney's Aladdin movies suggests that many Americans still welcome an interpretation of the East as a site of incredible riches, romance, and happy endings. This abundantly illustrated account is the first by a historian to explain why and how so many Americans sought out such cultural engagement with the Eastern world long before geopolitical concerns became paramount.