Shakespeare's Landlord by Charlaine Harrisby Charlaine Harris
Lily Bard is a loner. Fiercely protective of her independence, she concentrates on her karate skills and her work as the proprietor of a cleaning and errand-running service, and pays little attention to the town around her. When her landlord is murdered, though, she looks like the prime suspect. Uncovering the real killer may be the only way to prove her innocence, and Lily realizes that she must focus on the other residents of tiny Shakespeare.
Bombs are exploding in the streets of London, but life seems to have planted more subtle booby-traps for Miles Flint. Miles is a spy. His job is to watch and to listen, then to report back to his superiors, nothing more. The job, affording glimpses into the most private lives of his victims, appeals to Miles. He doesn't lust after promotion, and he doesn't want action. He wants, just for once, not to botch a case.
Sleuth Regan Reilly and her husband, Jack, return to New York from their honeymoon in Ireland and discover that their next-door neighbour has put up his apartment for sale. They decide to buy it and enlarge the loft Jack lived in as a bachelor. Regan takes time off from her work as a Private Investigator to supervise the construction, while Jack resumes his job as head of the Manhattan Major Case Squad.
Doing their best to ensure the future of the genre, St. Martin's Press and the Private Eye Writers of America give out an award every year for the Best First Private Eye Novel. The 1997 winner was this splendidly evocative work by IBM employee Steve Hamilton, which takes just about every cliché in the field and turns it inside out. Yes, Alex McKnight was an athlete in his youth--but a minor league baseball player, not a top pro forced out by injury. And yes, he was a cop in Detroit before he moved up to the town of Paradise on the shores of Lake Superior--but even this overused genre icon is made believable by the details of a particularly bloody shootout.
European Private Law After the Common Frame of Reference: What Future for European Private Law
This book paves the way for, and initiates, the second-generation of research in European private law subsequent to the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) needed for the 21st century.
The book gives a voice to the growing dissatisfaction in academic discourse that the DCFR, as it stands in 2009, does not actually represent the condensed available knowledge on the possible future of European private law.
