Literature Tragedy

Eamon Redmond is a judge in Ireland’s high court, a completely legal creature who is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Tóibín reconstructs the history of Eamon’s relationships - with his father, his first "girl", his wife, and the children who barely know him - and he writes about Eamon’s affection for the Irish coast with such painterly skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel of stunning power.

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.

When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle, in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became inseparable. Both children of professors, the boys were best friends and fierce rivals who soon followed each other to Yale University. Michael blazed through Yale in three years, graduating summa cum laude and landing a top-flight consulting job. Then one day, Jonathan received a devastating call: Michael had suffered a psychotic break and was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Michael was still in hospital when he learned he'd been accepted to Yale Law School.

When peddler John Durbeyfield learns that he may be a descendant of a noble family, he sends his oldest child, Tess, to “claim kin.” Blindly ushered into harm’s way, the strong-willed yet untinctured peasant girl is not prepared for the blighted course her life will take. Nor for those whose destructive desires will determine her fate, and force Tess to make only the most desperate of choices. From her tragic loss of innocence through betrayal and revenge, Tess’s struggle for survival challenged the era’s mores and the cruel indifference shown women in Victorian society.

An aging, heavily-insured country squire whose estate is in financial ruin is thought to have committed suicide. Hercule Poirot investigates, in the guise of a representative of the victim's insurance company, to uncover the identity of the real murderer.

Olivia Andrews is locally famous for her blog and podcast, Forget Me Not: A Crime Victim’s Storyboard, which is dedicated to telling the stories of victims of crime. Now she has a stunning story to tell about a decades-old murder mystery involving a prominent citizen of Pecan Springs—someone who isn’t the man everybody thinks he is. But she is killed by a hit-and-run driver while she’s out jogging early one morning. Was it an accident—or something else? Her sister wants to know.

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.

A man climbs over the railings and plunges into Niagara Falls. A newlywed, he has left behind his wife, Ariah Erskine, in the honeymoon suite the morning after their wedding. "The Widow Bride of The Falls", as Ariah comes to be known, begins a relentless, seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found.

Jack and Dean introduce Carmen to a world she’s never known—one filled with young love, first heartbreak, and sinister secrets. When a body is found at Hunter’s Hollow, instantly shattering the tranquil façade that has surrounded the campground, the residents are forced to accept the truth: a killer is among them. As the police search for answers to no avail, Carmen leaves the campground in hopes of clearing her mind and healing her broken heart.

With its trademark "you are there" style, Mark Zuehlke's 10th Canadian Battle Series volume tells the story of the 1942 Dieppe raid. Nicknamed "The Poor Man's Monte Carlo", Dieppe had no strategic importance, but with the Soviet Union thrown on the ropes by German invasion and America having just entered the war, Britain was under intense pressure to launch a major cross-Channel attack against France. Since 1939, Canadian troops had massed in Britain and trained for the inevitable day of the mass invasion of Europe that would finally occur in 1944.

The son of a serial killer, investigative reporter Rooker Lindström has been shadowed by death. He believes the worst is behind him, until a body is discovered in California that matches the MO of Tate Meachum, the Madman killer. But Meachum, who counted Rooker’s son among his victims, has been in prison all these years. Did Rooker help lock away the wrong man? Or is the latest kill the work of a copycat?

In this, perhaps Dickens' most profound and personal novel, we are invited to share in the sentimental education of Pip, the poor boy from the village forge who risks losing himself in snobbery and selfishness when he mysteriously inherits a fortune. The story moves from the bleak Kentish marshes of Pip's childhood to a thrilling climax that mingles tragedy and triumph.

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?

In an immersive, exciting narrative nonfiction format, this powerful book follows a selection of people who experienced the events surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

It's fall 1987, and life as normal is ending for the Malone family. With their sterile Dallas community a far cry from the Irish-American Bronx of their youth, Pat and Anne Malone have reached a breaking point. Pat, faced with a debilitating MS diagnosis, has fallen into his drinking. Anne, his devoutly Catholic wife, is selected as a juror for a highly publicized attempted murder trial, one that raises questions - about God, and about men in power - she has buried her entire life. Together, they try to raise their only son, Daniel.

In the late 1950s, in a small New England town, Reverend Tyler Caskey has suffered a terrible loss and finds it hard to be the person he once was. He struggles to find the right words in his sermons and in his conversations with those facing crises of their own, and to bring his five-year-old daughter, Katherine, out of the silence she has observed in the wake of the family’s tragedy. Tyler’s usually patient and kind congregation now questions his leadership and propriety, and accusations are born out of anger and gossip.

Not sure that a modernized movie-version of Hamlet is your goblet of tea? Hear Frank Muller, the preeminent narrator of the audiobook world, play every part in arguably the best audio version of Hamlet available.

It's 412 BC, and Athens' invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected and hanging on by the slimmest of threads. Lampo and Gelon are local potters, men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. With not much to fill their time, they take to visiting the nearby quarry, where they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides in return for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives. And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry.

A WW1 vet with extreme PTSD struggles to hold on to his sanity while living with the harsh reality of the Great Depression in 1933.

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.