An unusual mystery anthology of 14 stories in which dance is put to darker uses such as luring prey, a cold business proposition, etc. Authors inlcude Andrew kennedy, Brendan Dubois, John Lutz and more.

"Nostalgic, richly textured. Sweetly evokes an innocent if hardscrabble lost age."
--Publishers Weekly
Six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and his spirited but vulnerable young mother have been abandoned--again--by his father, a charming con artist. With no money and nowhere else to go, the LaPointes create a fragile nest in a tenement building at 238 North Pearl Street in Albany, New York. For the next eight years, through the Great Depression and Second World War, they live in the heart of the Irish slum, surrounded by ward heelers, unemployment, and grinding poverty. Pearl Street is also home to a variety of "crazyladies": Miss Cox, the feared and ridiculed teacher who ignites Jean-Luc's imagination; Mrs. Kane, who runs a beauty parlor/
fortune-telling salon in the back of her husband's grocery store; Mrs. Meehan, the desperate, harried matriarch of a thuggish family across the street; lonely Mrs. McGivney, who spends every day tending to her catatonic husband, a veteran of the Great War; and Jean-Luc's own unconventional, vivacious mother. Colorful though it is, Jean-Luc never stops dreaming of a way out of the slum, and his mother's impossible expectations are both his driving force and his burden.
As legendary writer Trevanian lovingly re-creates the neighborhood of his youth in this funny, deeply moving coming-of-age novel, he also paints a vivid portrait of a neighborhood, a city, a nation in turmoil, and the people waiting for a better life to begin.
"Literary time travel, meticulously remembered and set down. . . . This book is in some ways a key to our country; America was made by people like this." --Washington Post

TREVANIAN is the author of Shibumi, The Eiger Sanction,
The Loo Sanction, The Main, The Summer of Katya, Incident at Twenty-Mile, and Hot Night in the City. Visit www.trevanian.com for the Crazyladies cybernotes, Trevanian's commentaries, items from the author's desk, and more.

The fourteen stories of this unusual anthology are of the dance put to other, darker uses. Here it appears as the means of luring prey, a cold business proposition, a hard-fought competition and aggression, an expression of misogyny, a manifestation of an unhealthy mind and even a pathway to madness. The stories contain strong plot lines and denouements that are both plausible and satisfying, but the moods they evoke, their settings, and the characters they reveal are refreshingly varied. Included in this stellar anthology are the following: "In Our Part of the World" by Andrew Kennedy; "Dirty Dancing" by Carole Nelson Douglas; "Changing Partners" by Henry Slesar; "Dancing the Night Away" by Brendan DuBois; "The Trespasser" by Alexandra Whitaker; "Mrs. Website's Dance" by Ina Bouman; "At the Hop" by Bill and Judy Crider; "The Dance of the Apsara" by Joan Richter; "Death of a Damn Moose" by Barbara Burnett Smith; "Jookin' and Jivin' " by Linda Kerslake; "Dance with Death" by Carmen Iarrera; "The Mechanique Affair" by Ruth Cagin; "You Can Jump" by Mat Coward; "Tango Was Her Life" by John Lutz

Nicholai Hel is the world's most wanted man. Born in Shanghai during the chaos of World War I, he is the son of an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father and is the protege of a Japanese Go master. Hel survived the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world's most artful lover and its most accomplished--and well-paid--assassin. Hel is a genius, a mystic, and a master of language and culture, and his secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection known only as "shibumi.
Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his exquisite mistress, Hel is unwillingly drawn back into the life he'd tried to leave behind when a beautiful young stranger arrives at his door, seeking help and refuge. It soon becomes clear that Hel is being tracked by his most sinister enemy--a supermonolith of international espionage known only as the Mother Company. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other . . . "shibumi.

In the golden summer of 1914, Jean-Marc Montjean, recently graduated from medical school, comes to the small French village of Salies to assist the village physician. His first assignment is to treat the brother of a beautiful woman named Katya Treville. As he and her family become friendly, he realizes they are haunted by an old, dark secret . . . but he can't help falling deeply in love with Katya.
Jean-Marc is warned by Katya's brother that she is delicate and that he should curb his attentions, but he is young, hopeful, and in love . . . and he is certain that Katya returns his affections. When Jean-Marc learns that the Trevilles are planning to leave the village forever, he insists on a final meeting with Katya. That meeting and the events that follow turn what was an idyllic romance into an unending nightmare. Katya's secret is revealed in a thrilling tale that is part love story and part psychological thriller, and the chilling climax will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.

A gripping thriller that follows assassin Nicholai Hel across Asia as he fights to regain his freedom. Sugamo Prison, Japan, October 1951. Nicholai Hel has spent the last three years in solitary confinement for the murder of his mentor. A formidable assassin as well as a master of hoda korosu or 'naked kill', he has developed a supreme awareness of the presence of danger. Suddenly offered the chance of freedom, he feels it now as never before... Overseen by Haverford, his American spymaster he must go to Beijing and kill the Soviet Union's commissioner to China. In a landscape primed for war this is a suicide mission he has no choice but to accept. Can Hel succeed in winning his freedom and if so, at what cost? And can he ever achieve his ultimate goal of satori - the possibility of true understanding and harmony with the world?

The Main is Montreal's teeming underworld, where the dark streets echo with cries in a dozen languages, with the quick footsteps of thieves and the whispers of prostitutes. It is a world where violence and brutality are a way of life. To the people of the Main, police lieutenant Claude LaPointe is judge and jury, father confessor and avenging angel. Montreal's police force has changed over time, but LaPointe has not. His commitment to justice is total, as is his devotion to the Main and its underworld community. But when a cold-blooded murderer invades LaPointe's territory, he is forced to examine his long-held beliefs and secrets and to confront his own loneliness and mortality. With a cast of unforgettable supporting characters and an unusual and remarkable hero, "The Main" is another gripping tale of death and danger, of action and mystery, by the incomparable Trevanian.

Look for these other Trevanian classics from Three Rivers Press: "The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, Shibumi," and "The Summer of Katya.
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Jonathan Hemlock lives in a renovated Gothic church on Long Island. He is an art professor, a mountain climber, and a mercenary, performing assassinations (i.e., sanctions) for money to augment his black-market art collection. Now Hemlock is being tricked into a hazardous assignment that involves an attempt to scale one of the most treacherous mountain peaks in the Swiss Alps, the Eiger.
In a breathtakingly suspenseful story that is part thriller and part satire, the author traces Hemlock’s spine-tingling adventures, introducing a cast of intriguing characters—villains, traitors, beautiful women—into the highly charged atmosphere of danger. The accumulating threads of suspicion, accusation, and evidence gradually knit themselves into a bizarre and death-defying climax in this exciting, entertaining novel that will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the last absorbing page.