This is a collection of six interlinked stories about a family preparing for the parent's silver wedding anniversary and the skeletons this drags from the cupboard. Gradually, as the stories develop, it becomes obvious that the marriage is far from happy and the anniversary itself a sham.
It began with an advertisement in the paper requesting descendants of the late innkeeper to stay for a weekend at the inn. They arrived eager, a mixed assortment, but one of them got hideously murdered bringing the inn's stormy past to focus. Maud Silver was sent to investigate.
First she felt herself being pushed downstairs. Then there was the bowl of poisoned mushroom soup. Finally the tampered-with tablet amongst her sleeping pills was the last straw. Adriana Ford, famous actress and mistress of the house decided to call in Miss Silver. And Maud Silver, with impeccable logic, pointed out that the person who was trying to kill her must be a member of her own household. And then the murders started...
Taking its title from John Keats, My Silver Planet contends that the problem of elite poetry's relation to popular culture bears the indelible mark of its turbulent incorporation of vernacular poetry-a legacy shaped by nostalgia, contempt, and fraudulence. Daniel Tiffany reactivates and fundamentally redefines the concept of kitsch, freeing it from modernist misapprehension and ridicule, by tracing its origin to poetry's alienation from the emergent category of literature.
To win without fighting is best, Sun Tzu said. For the Chinese philosopher/general war was coeval with life. Tzu viewed the world as a network of combat zones where the stakes are high and struggle is the primary mode of being, where no one is to be trusted, and survival depends on nothing less than unconditional victory. Actors Ron Silver and B.D. Wong narrate this 2,500-year-old work of wisdom that continues to guide and inspire people of all cultures, teaching the principles of strategy required in everything from sports to business to affairs of the heart.
