What do dragons, feet, empty chairs, lilies and art deco architecture have in common? All have been incorporated into funerary art over the years and convey a host of meanings to cemetery wanderers in the know. If you’d like to be one... Read More

Where some might say, “If you can’t win, why fight?” the author would ask, “If you don’t fight, how can you win?” Condemned by the Chinese Communist regime to live all his life as a cave-dwelling peasant, Shen-with an... Read More

When the author, forty-something, single, and an admitted “compulsive reader of the classifieds,” spies a notice of cottages for sale, she is immediately intrigued. The thought of adding to her very small Cape Cod house with a... Read More

“As long as we rule India we are the greatest power in the world,” said Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1901. “If we lose India, we shall drop straightaway to a third-rate power.?” In 1583 English traders arrived in India; in... Read More

“I do not remember much more, except the pushcarts laden with emaciated, naked corpses, their limbs often hanging over the side of the cart. Once in a while some would fall off … being picked up and thrown back on the heap.” This... Read More

“True love, by definition, is unrequited,” claims the narrator of this polished debut novel, recounting her love affair with the troubled Louis. The first-person protagonist goes unnamed, but that seems inconsequential-what matters... Read More

It’s tempting to think of the current era as unique. Popular culture and the news media are filled with pronouncements that society is in the process of the greatest transformation since the development of agriculture, or since the... Read More

Many readers would be interested in cultivating relationships with a group of friends who might offer encouragement in times of need, listen with patience to complaints about a miserable day, or offer sage advice about work and family... Read More