Kirjahaku

Some of the most raucous evenings in the history of theater are chronicled in this lively discussion of occasions when theater-makers changed the course of theatrical, and sometimes world, history. Covering a wide range of events from the inauspicious opening of Oedipus Rexin Athens, to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., to the violence-riddled performance of Halla Bol in New Delhi, this book offers detailed and studied observations of specific minutes, hours, and days on the stage. For each staging covered, the author examines the reactions of critics and the public and tells the inside story, identifies the key players, and examines why these events still resound today.

"I remember thinking to myself, as I said goodbye to my friends and walked home through the dimly lit backstreets, that the past comes back to haunt everybody sooner or later." In this finely honed collection of short fiction, Dwayne Brenna creates a series of unforgettable characters, from academics and street people to musicians, movie stars, videogame players and their mothers, cooks, actors, boxers, and even a parrot, and, with compassion and affection (and sometimes laugh-out-loud humour) tests their mettle in a variety of fascinating locations, from Saskatoon to Victoria to Libya to Los Angeles to London to Hawaii and beyond, with familiar and homey details and a fidelity to mood and atmosphere.Along the way, Brenna tackles a wide selection of conflicts and social ills--good versus evil, scruples and the lack of them, doing or not doing the "right thing," yielding or not yielding to temptations, and the many other struggles of the human heart--all without being didactic or preachy, but simply by addressing the very human circumstances his characters find themselves in, and how they manage to escape, or not escape, the predicaments arising because of who they are, who they've been, and who they could be.

In the frozen heart of the 1883 Canadian frontier, a single death unveils a darkness that could consume a town--and the men sworn to protect it. Corporal Belvedere, a Mountie scarred by a brutal past, and Surgeon Virgil Montgomery, a newcomer haunted by his own doubts, are drawn into a murder investigation in the isolated settlement of Prince Albert. As winter's grip tightens, the killing exposes a web of secrets buried beneath the snow, threatening to unravel the fragile order of the North-West Territories. In a community steeped in mistrust, Belvedere's unyielding quest for justice collides with Montgomery's struggle to uphold his oath to do no harm. Each clue they uncover draws them deeper into a maze of deception, where allies and enemies blur and every step risks a deadly reckoning. As the ice on the Saskatchewan River begins to crack, they must confront a truth that could cost them their lives--or their souls. A gripping tale of vengeance and redemption, The Laundryman plunges you into a world where justice battles betrayal, and the truth lies buried in a frozen wilderness.