Wanda McCaddon

Standing alone in the VIP box of the Olympic Games in 2004, Gianna Angelopoulos began to dance. The world had doubted Greece's ability to successfully stage this global event. She danced to celebrate the efforts of all Greeks-and her own-to host a phenomenally successful event, an effort that showed the world a new Greece, a Greece worthy of its illustrious heritage. Little did she know that a few years later her country would abandon the lessons...

This magnificent story of one thousand years of English history is told through the lives and deeds of Kings and Queens, from the Normans to the Windsors. Understand how the power of the crown has changed as a result of both the character and ability of each monarch and evolving historical circumstances. Eight specialist contributors depict the whole spectrum of royal life in a succinct and fascinating way. Newly revised in 1998, this edition offers...

When the president of Ng'ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old schoolmate, Chief Superintendent Alleyn, is called in to try to persuade him otherwise. Alleyn does so. However, an assassin does strike, and Alleyn discovers a wealth of suspects residing in the very shadow of the embassy.

The summer of 1276 at Tyndal Priory is peaceful-until Kenelm's corpse is found floating in the millpond. When Brother Thomas concludes that the murder occurred on priory grounds, Prioress Eleanor and Crowner Ralf swiftly agree to help each other solve the crime. The murder victim, a newcomer, was disliked in Tyndal village, and no one there wants one of their own hanged for the deed. Fingers quickly point to a Jewish family, refugees under the relocation...

Realistic, moving, engrossing, and positively brilliant, this biography recreates Mozart, the man and his music, against the background of the world he lived in. For Marcia Davenport, the research and writing of Mozart was truly a labor of love, during which she retraced every journey he made, saw every dwelling (then extant) in which he had ever lived, every theatre where his works were first performed, and every library and museum where his manuscripts...

“We work,” Aristotle wrote, “in order to have leisure.” Today, this is still true. But is the leisure that Aristotle spoke of—the freedom to do nothing—the same as the leisure we look forward to each weekend? There have always been breaks from the routine of work—taboo days, market days, public festivals, holy days—we couldn't survive without them. In Waiting for the Weekend, Witold Rybczynski unfolds the history and evolution of leisure...

It is May 1272, and Prioress Eleanor of Tyndal, recovering from a near-fatal winter fever, journeys to Amesbury Priory to visit her aunt in time for the Feast of Saint Melor. Although Eleanor hopes to regain her strength in the midst of pleasant childhood memories, death reveals a most troublesome fondness for her company.A ghost now haunts Amesbury. Is it perhaps the spirit of a pregnant woman who drowned herself in the River Avon? But soon the specter...

Witold Rybczynski takes us on an extraordinary odyssey as he tells the story of designing and building his own house. His project began as a workshed, but through a series of "happy accidents," the structure gradually evolved into a full-fledged house. In tracing this evolution, he touches on matters both theoretical and practical, writing on such diverse topics as the ritualistic origins of the elements of classical architecture and the connections...

In the gentle world of one of England's beautiful old cathedral towns, crisis looms: funds are short, and the cathedral is in need of major repair. One faction of the community argues that the obvious solution is to abolish the expensive, and nowadays rather irrelevant, boys' choir. But of course, there are those who disagree: the choir school's headmaster, a conscientious scholar somewhat out of his depth with his elusive, poetical wife; the cathedral...

There was only one mystery Agatha Christie could not solve: her own. Dame Agatha Christie is best known for her detective novels and short stories. She is one of the most popular authors of all time, her novels having sold over four billion copies and having been translated into 103 languages. On the evening of December 8, 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared from her home in Sunningdale, Berkshire, leaving only a note for her secretary indicating that...