These stories," writes Cheever in the preface to this Pulitzer Prize winning collection of stories, "seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationary store, and when almost everybody wore a hat. Here is the last of that generation of chain smokers who woke the world in the morning with their coughing, who used to get stoned at cocktail parties and perform obsolete dance steps like 'the Cleveland Chicken,' set sail for Europe on ships, who were truly nostalgic for love and happiness, and whose gods were as ancient as yours and mine, whoever you are.
In this run-of-the-mill police procedural from bestseller Kellerman, his 23rd novel to feature L.A. consulting psychologist Alex Delaware (after Compulsion), high school miscreant Chance Brandt has been assigned to perform community service at the Bird Marsh, a nature sanctuary near Marina del Rey. After
Elektra Natcios died, once. But the beautiful, dangerous heiress was resurrected and recruited by a mysterious group known as The Chaste, who trained Elektra in the art of combat, then cast her out when her anger and lust for vengence became more than they could bear. Now she works as a paid assassin, the very best that money can buy, one who is notorious for her lethal speed and precision. Elektra is careful to treat each assignment as just another job, providing a service she can perform better than anyone else. When Elektra is hired by an unknown client to eliminate an attractive, friendly widower and his young daughter, she finds that things aren't so simple any more.
For forty years, the Twelve Colonies of Man were at peace, united since the war against the robotic Cylons. These mechanical beings, created by mankind to perform the manual labor civilization required, were gone forever…or so humanity thought.
"Nathan Field, an teen orphan from North Carolina, is a talented actor who is chosen for the Company of Boys, who will rehearse Shakespeare, be flown to England, and perform the plays "as they were done" at the Globe Theater. Shortly after arriving in London, he falls very sick -- perhaps with bubonic plague -- and wakes up to find himself in London 400 years before: in 1599, shortly after the original Globe opened. He learns how rough and hard life was in Shakespeare's time, runs afoul of a rival in the cast, but is befriended by the great playwright himself and gets to perform as Puck in a performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" before Queen Elizabeth herself. "
