Literature Tragedy

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is a history play and tragedy by William Shakespeare first performed in 1599. It is one of several plays written by Shakespeare based on true events from Roman history, such as Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra. Set in Rome in 44 BC, the play depicts the moral dilemma of Brutus as he joins a conspiracy led by Cassius to murder Julius Caesar to prevent him from becoming dictator of Rome. Following Caesar's death, Rome is thrust into a period of civil war, and the republic the conspirators sought to preserve is lost forever.

In The Eating of the Gods, the distinguished Polish critic Jan Kott reexamines Greek tragedy from the modern perspective. As in his earlier acclaimed Shakespeare, Our Contemporary, Kott provides startling insights and intuitive leaps which link our world to that of the ancient Greeks. The title refers to the Bacchae of Euripides, that tragedy of lust, revenge, murder, and "the joy of eating raw flesh" which Kott finds paradigmatic in its violence and bloodshed.

Thirteen guests arrived at dinner at the actor's house. It was to be a particularly unlucky evening for the mild-mannered Reverend Stephen Babbington, who choked on his cocktail, went into convulsions and died. But when his martini glass was sent for chemical analysis, there was no trace of poison, just as Poirot had predicted. Even more troubling for the great detective, there was absolutely no motive.

The Tragedy Paper follows the story of Tim Macbeth, a seventeen-year-old albino and a recent transfer to the prestigious Irving School, where the motto is “Enter here to be and find a friend.” A friend is the last thing Tim expects or wants - he just hopes to get through his senior year unnoticed. Yet, despite his efforts to blend into the background, he finds himself falling for the quintessential “It” girl, Vanessa Sheller, girlfriend of Irving’s most popular boy. To Tim's surprise, Vanessa is into him, too, but she can kiss her social status goodbye if anyone ever finds out.

The Siren of the Seas sets sail for the much anticipated transatlantic repositioning cruise to the British Isles. It’s smooth sailing, until someone falls overboard. Millie jumps in head first to determine if the passenger's death was an accident, suicide, or murder.

Senator Fawcett, a man with many enemies, is found stabbed to death in his study. Patience and her father, Inspector Thumm, try to unravel the web of circumstantial evidence that has enmeshed an innocent man. Patience refuses to be beaten by a lack of evidence and, with the help of Drury Lane, finally stops an execution and brings the true criminal to justice.

David Wilson is called "Pudd'nhead" by the townspeople, who fail to understand his combination of wisdom and eccentricity. He redeems himself by simultaneously solving a murder mystery and a case of transposed identities.

Aleksandar and Isobel are siblings and former classical music prodigies, once destined for greatness. As the only Eastern European family growing up on their block on the far southside of Chicago, the pair were inseparable until each was forced to confront the absurdity of tragedy at an early age and abandon their musical ambitions. Now in their twenties, they find themselves encountering ridiculous jobs, unfulfilling romantic relationships, and the outrageousness of ordinary life.

Miles, Deacon, and Cassidy are Franklin’s best friends, brothers in every sense of the word. When Franklin asks his brothers to do something unorthodox as his dying wish, the trio has some reservations. When they tell his widow about the oath that they were bound in brotherhood to uphold, will she run or embrace a new phase of her life that includes the three of them?

When Robert Pomeroy, a young undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, finds a letter slipped under his door in the early hours of a rainy day, he flies into a panic. He hurries to the railway station. But he doesn’t reach his destination alive. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called upon to investigate this tragedy on the railway. It soon becomes apparent that Cambridge’s hopes of success in the forthcoming boat race rested on Pomeroy’s shoulders.

He’s trained to survive the deadliest conditions in space. But no one prepared him for the silence at home. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Booker is a decorated pilot, a respected astronaut, and a man unraveling by degrees. Beneath the surface of his perfect American life—his rising NASA career, his beautiful wife Jo, and their idyllic home on Stardust Beach—something is breaking. And when his temper flares one too many times, NASA gives him a choice: face therapy, or forfeit his place in the program. Haunted by his past, disconnected from the woman he once loved so fiercely, and quietly ...

Julia Bechtel's life seems to have reached a dead end. Her daughter, 21, is off on her own. Her husband has grown more and more distant, more and more domineering, and the result has been a further diminishing of Julia's feeling of self-worth. In an effort to buy some time and to try to figure some things out, Julia visits her daughter who has taken a summer job off the coat of Maine. When Julia misses the last ferry boat from the mainland, she catches a lobster boat that carries passengers to the island.

In The Trachinian Tragedy, better known as the Women of Trachis, the wife of Herakles, Deianeira, finds she has a rival in the house for her husband's affection. The consequences of her counteraction are incredible. In this faithful translation, F. L. Light attempts to write as good a play in English as the original in Greek. F. L. Light has also translated Antigone of Sophocles.

The impossible has happened. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. He and his wife now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and a coachhouse in Hampstead belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila. For all the benefits of a more relaxed way of life, Wexford misses being the law. But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything. Tom Ede is now a detective superintendent, and is very keen to recruit Wexford as an adviser on a difficult case.

In Agatha Christie’s short story “The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor”, Poirot investigates the case of a middle-aged man who died under suspicious circumstances just weeks after insuring his life for 50,000 pounds. Could the man, who was in financial straits, have killed himself to benefit his beautiful young wife?

Even before he was shot dead on the stairway of the tony Grand Central Hotel in 1872, financier James “Jubilee Jim” Fisk, Jr., was a notorious New York City figure. From his audacious attempt to corner the gold market in 1869 to his battle for control of the geographically crucial Erie Railroad, Fisk was a flamboyant exemplar of a new financial era marked by volatile fortunes and unprecedented greed and corruption. But it was his scandalously open affair with a showgirl named Josie Mansfield that ultimately led to his demise.

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, supportive mother she never had to her new baby Violet. But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe doesn't find the connection with her daughter she expected. She's convinced that something is wrong with Violet—the little girl is distant, rejects affection, and becomes increasingly disruptive at preschool. Or is it all in Blythe's head?

Eldene McGrady is the mother of two teenage children. Taylor, a strapping six-foot 15-and-half-year-old, and his little sister, Patty, who is 14, just 11 months younger than Taylor. Eldene is suddenly widowed due to an accident in which her husband, Jake, is killed. Her grief is such that she just can't continue their life in Baltimoret, selling all her holdings and deciding, along with her children, to plan and join a wagon train and move West to the Oregon Territory.

Pride, justice, and vengeance. Aristocracy and democracy vie for ultimate power over Rome, and each faction violently erupts when Coriolanus takes the political stage. After receiving glorious accolades for taking an enemy city when the plebian soldiers cowered without the gates, the common people find his arrogance and pride offensive. Now, banished from the very city for which he was prepared to lay down his life, he strikes up an unholy alliance with his country's enemies.

In Chia-Chia Lin’s debut, The Unpassing, we meet a Taiwanese immigrant family of six struggling to make ends meet on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska. The father, hardworking but beaten down, is employed as a plumber and repairman while the mother, a loving, strong-willed, and unpredictably emotional matriarch, holds the house together. When 10-year-old Gavin contracts meningitis at school, he falls into a deep, nearly fatal coma. He wakes up a week later to learn that his little sister Ruby was infected, too. She did not survive.