by V.J. Banis (2015)
Nancy's vacation at her aunt's San Francisco mansion takes a nightmarish turn when she is attacked by a mysterious thief of ancient jade figurines. Her assailant's vows to kill her are very nearly successful more than once. Can she trust the stranger who has been following her ever since her arrival in the city, even though his intervention saves her life? Then she must contend with a murder she is powerless to stop, and the return of her father, who she'd been told had died when she was a child ...
Nadine Gordimer
At the heart of this story is an interracial couple, Steven and Jabulile, living in a 'free' South Africa. He is a university lecturer and she is a lawyer, both comrades in the Struggle and now parents of children born in freedom.
Stephen Wyllie
Un dalmatien, gardien de poulailler, se laisse tromper par le rusé renard, tant il a envie d'être débarassé de ses puces ... Quand il réalise le piège tendu par le renard il saura prendre sa revanche, en employant la même méthode.
Haywood Smith
Sharing a decades-long friendship in spite of disparate personalities, prim conservative Betsy and irreverent hippie Kat struggle to retain their bond when Kat marries Betsy's ex-husband, whose philandering becomes a shared grievance for both women.
Vaclav Havel
All life in a police state is interesting, probably corrupt and potentially subversive as portrayed in this absurdist but seemingly autobiographical play by Czech playwright Vaclav Havel. As in Phoenix, to cite an example, police don't care about guilt, innocence, justice or mercy. If anyone is accused of a crime, they want a conviction. In Havel's play, Professor Leopold Nettles is charged with "disturbing the intellectual peace." Only in a police state could anyone invent such a wide-ranging crime. In Phoenix, conviction means a fine. In Havel's play, a conviction may mean an indeterminate sentence in semi-starved misery in a distant gulag. Once suspected, Leopold knows he's guilty in the eyes of the state. The play portrays a variety of people who visit him, proud that he speaks up in defiance of the authorities - - - but unwilling to join him in his stand for intellectual freedom. Leopold, like Havel for much of his life, is utterly alone. But who are the well-wishers who applaud his dissidence? Are they friends, or secret police agents as provocateurs? Two police agents who visit offer a clever means to avoid prosecution; in effect, "just agree to our falsehoods and all charges will go away." Really? A trap? Are the police undermining the government they serve? How can anyone trust anything? Such is the nature of 'Largo Desolato' and life in a police state. --Theodore A. Rushton at Amazon.com.