"Winner of the 2012 Robert Lowry Patten Award, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Rice University" Simon Goldhill is professor of Greek literature and culture and fellow and director of Studies in Classics at King's College, University of Cambridge. His many books include Love, Sex, and Tragedy: How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives. How did the Victorians engage with the ancient world? Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity is a brilliant...

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked,...

Margaret Truman, who knows where all the bodies are buried inside the Beltway, has written her most thrilling novel of suspense yet. Murder at the Opera features the popular crime-fighting couple Mac Smith and his wife, Annabel Reed-Smith, as they navigate the glitz, glamour, and grime that is Washington, D.C.
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings . . . but the show hasn’t even started yet when a diva is found dead. The soprano in question,...

The beating of renowned art historian Dotoressa Brett Lynch draws Commissario Guido Brunetti out of his warm and loving home and into the yearly onslaught of acqua alta, the torrential winter rains. Brett, an American who spearheaded a recent exhibition of Chinese pottery in Venice, lives with her lover, Flavia Petrelli, the reigning diva of La Scala. Brunetti's deliberate and humane investigation to uncover a motive for Brett's beating takes him...

Peony is the cloistered daughter of a wealthy family is betrothed to a suitor she has never met, these lyrics from The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, a small theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera. Peony attends the production, watching from behind a screen, but catches sight of a handsome man and begins a journey of love and sorrow.

A chance meeting in a Gramercy Park mansion kindles a love and leads Mario Alfieri to an intrigue stretching back two decades.

There is an important decision to be made. The Cornish Foundation is thriving under the directorship of Arthur Cornish when Arthur and his beguiling wife, Maria Theotoky, decide to undertake a project worthy of Francis Cornish-connoisseur, collector, and notable eccentric-whose vast fortune endows the Foundation. The grumpy, grimy, extraordinarily talented music student Hulda Schnakenburg is commissioned to complete E.T.A. Hoffmann's unfinished opera...

"When a nobleman's mistress is gunned down on the steps of the Covent Garden opera house, brilliant adventurer Atlas Catesby discovers a sinister family connection that compels him to investigate. London, 1815. Amateur sleuth Atlas Catesby is about to discover the dark side of the bright lights. His long-awaited night at the opera with Lady Lilliana ends abruptly when a notorious courtesan is shot to death in Covent Garden. The infamous victim was...

Operas are full of plot twists and betrayals. Hailey just never expected them in real life. When Hailey and her bect friend Crissy face off in a competition for a role in a production of The Marriage of Figaro, their closeness turns into a bitter rivalry. Hailey will have to make a tough decision--is landing a role worth losing her friend.

Chicago detective Jeremy Ransom faces his most complicated case ever when he is assigned to investigate the murder of an actor who died onstage during an opening night performance of "Carmen" at the Sheridan Center for the Performing Arts.