In the story of the great lyric poet Simonides, Mary Renault brings alive a time in Greece when tyrants kept an unsteady rule and poetry, music, and royal patronage combined to produce a flowering of the arts.
The Murders in the Run Morgue and The Purloined Letter. (level 6)
Two cases of detection for Monsieur Auguste C. Dupin, Poe's great detective. Who could have committed the atrocioius murders in the Rue Morgue and so how did the murderer get in, or out? Will Dupin find the purloined letter and save the royal personage? Where is the minister hiding it?
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are summoned to the aid of Queen Victoria in Scotland by a telegram from Holmes’ brother, Mycroft, a royal advisor. Rushed northward on a royal train—and nearly murdered themselves en route—the pair are soon joined by Mycroft, and learn of the brutal killings of two of the Queen’s servants, a renowned architect and his foreman, both of whom had been working on the renovation of the famous and forbidding Royal
Citizen in Chief - The Second Lives of the American Presidents
Eight presidents died in office, leaving 34 whose subsequent careers make up this remarkably revealing history. Journalists Benardo and Weiss (coauthors of Brooklyn by Name) point out that America's founders believed pensions smacked of royal privilege, so ex-presidents were on their own. Some have handled the transition more gracefully than others.
Every time Crawford caught sight of his ordinary raven's feathers, he wished he looked differently. From the minute he pops out of the egg, Crawford wants to be special. The raven finally gets his wish when an old woman transforms him into a spectacular creature with dazzling feathers. He has a brief spell of glory as the chained fancy of a princess, but all too soon is relegated to a golden cage in an obscure part of the garden. He then pines only for freedom, which he achieves by plucking out his shiny feathers so that the princess, horrified by his ugliness, banishes him. He returns to his friends a wiser bird.
