Sister Mary Helen is sinfully good at snooping through the San Francisco fog. Now a fellow OWL (Older Woman's League) member has disappeared. The police believe Erma Duran simply flew the coop, but Sister feels a Higher Authority pushing her to investigate. A gold medal entangled in Erma's bedsprings and a cryptic clue to a Byzantine madonna deepens the mystery. By the time Police Inspector Kate Murphy joins the hunt, Sister's good intentions have already paved her way straight to the Mission District--and a hellish encounter with sudden death.
A dashing English PI pursues a missing masterpiece and buried wartime secrets across the French Riviera in a “slick thriller with . . . heart-stopping action” (The Crime Review). Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Madonna is kept safe for the ages in the vaults of a monastery on the French island of St. Honorat—until the painting somehow disappears. Now the monastery has called upon British expat and professional fixer Patrick de Courvoisier to track an untraceable thief and recover the invaluable work of art. At the same time, an old enemy from Patrick’s past with Her Majesty’s service has arrived in Cannes to search for another stolen painting. As it becomes clear that the two investigations are linked, Patrick’s enquiries put him at odds with his former employers as he uncovers a shocking secret the British Royal family would prefer to keep hidden. “Full of fascinating history and lush descriptions of the French Riviera, this whodunit will snare readers from the opening page.” —Publishers Weekly
Brother Robert has requested Patrick de Courvoisier's help in locating a valuable painting which has disappeared. At the same time, an old enemy from Patrick's past has arrived in Cannes in search of a different stolen painting. Patrick's enquiries lead him to uncover a shocking wartime secret...
There's only one Auntie Poldi: bewigged, cursing in Bavarian, and knocking back a wee shot of grappa as a pre-breakfast aperitif . . . or is there? No one is as they seem (and sound) in this hilarious new mystery featuring Sicily's sultriest sleuth. Strange dealings are afoot in the Apostolic Palace--a nun leapt to her death shortly after participating in a seemingly routine exorcism. But when a priest clad in Gammarelli and a Vatican commissario with an almost unholy level of sex appeal turn up at her door, Poldi is shocked to hear that she's a suspect in their case. Who is the woman being exorcised, and where has she disappeared to? And why in the world does she claim, in perfect Bavarian, to be Poldi, Isolde Oberreiter, of Torre Archirafi? Poldi will need all the help she can get to clear her name, but her nephew has been distracted by a love affair gone sour, someone in the town has been spraying graffiti death threats on her front door, and her local friends seem to be avoiding her. And even Vito Montana balks when Poldi discovers that the case hinges on a lost Madonna statue, stolen years ago from the pope himself. Forza, Poldi! With a pair of mysterious twins dogging her every move and a mandate to maintain sobriety, will Poldi be able to unmask her mysterious doppelgänger, find the lost statue in time, and survive her sixty-first birthday?
The Worlding of the South African Novel develops from something of a paradox: that despite momentous political transition from apartheid to democracy, little in South Africa’s socio-economic reality has actually changed. Poyner discusses how the contemporary South African novel engages with this reality. In forms of literary experiment, the novels open up intellectual spaces shaping or contesting the idea of the “new South Africa”. The mediatising of truth at the TRC hearings, how best to deal with a spectacular yet covert past, the shaping for “unimagined communities” of an inclusive public sphere, HIV/AIDS as the preeminent site testing capitalist modernity, white anxieties about land reform, disease as environmental injustice and the fostering of an enabling restorative cultural memory: Poyner argues that through these key nodes of intellectual thought, the novels speak to recent debates on world-literature to register the “shock” of an uneven modernity produced by a capitalist world economy.
In doing so, it examines the art of Florence in the 1440s and the work of, among others, Fra Filippo Lippi, Domenico Veneziano, Luca della Robbia, and Michelozzo."--BOOK JACKET.
My mother had just turned ten in mid-1933 when a young woman approached her as they were both leaving Mass at St Joan of Arc's in Brighton...The woman was an artist and she would like to paint her portrait... After her mother's death in 2005, Anne Summers inherits a portrait of her mother as a child. Mesmerised by this image, she finds herself drawn into the story of how the portrait was painted and eventually found its way into her family. She soon learns the artist painted another portrait of her mother; this time as the Madonna. In a gripping narrative that is part art history, part detective story and part meditation on the relations between mothers and daughters, Anne's search for the Madonna painting and the mysterious Russian migr collector who bought both paintings takes her down unexpected paths. Her search soon turns into a parallel quest to rescue Constance Stokes, the artist, from obscurity, and to learn why the collector suddenly abandoned the paintings. Along the way Anne finds she must face the truth of the relationship she had with her mother. In turn hypnotic and moving, The Lost Mother is a powerful exploration of art, loss and love.
Kaskaskia Parson Bains could not have imagined what was ahead of him when he boarded the Kaskaskia in Beirut, Lebanon. Though he never thought of himself as a brave man, he became a hero to many people because he simply did what he thought was right when faced with many obstacles. He only wanted to serve his time in the Navy and get back to the real world and his true love Marci. But danger and intrigue seemed to surround him from the beginning. While trying to cope with one of the most dangerous jobs in the Navy, he had to confront stowaways, kidnapping, smuggling, a hurricane and murder. Marci was Mexican/American and drop dead beautiful. Her wealthy family in Texas was highly respected and very powerful. She tried to busy herself with her studies and social activism but she is nadvertently thrust into a whirl of celebrity that she did not seek. Her strongest desire is to fade back to anonymity and reunite with Parson. It would be an eventful two years. Vine Street 1919 Sam would sneak off every chance he got and go to J.D.'s to practice pool. He was to young to be hanging out there but he befriended Jimmy "The Fox" Darden and a two-fingered black man named Dallas and they let him stay. They quickly found out that Sam was a natural at the game. His skills became legendary. But Sam would eventually have to confront the dark and ugly racial divide of his home town and his family. Roscoe Springfield was an imposing giant of a man. He was a proud black man one generation removed from slavery in South Carolina. He and his new bride moved to beautiful East Tennessee to start a new life. Soon he would be faced with raising twin boys in a racially hostile environment. A lie told by a white woman to hide her infidelity set off a series of events in one of the worst race riots in American History. It came to its climax on Vine Street in the Summer of 1919. The Tellico Surveillance Parson Bains had dreamed of moving his wife and daughter back to the country and becoming a gentleman farmer. Life was good until the FBI approached him to help them with a special project. He soon discovered, much to his surprise, that his seemingly friendly neighbors were not only Cocaine dealers but the leaders of one of the most insidious racial hate groups in the country. They wanted Parson to infiltrate the group.
