Theatre and Disorder In Late Georgian London

Marc Baer

In September 1809, during the opening night of Macbeth at the newly rebuilt Covent Garden theatre in London's West End, the audience rioted over the rise in ticket prices. Disturbances took place on a further 66 nights that autumn and the Old Price riots became the longest running theatre disorder in English history.

This book describes the events in detail, sets them in their wider context, and uses them to examine the interpenetration of theatre and disorder. Previous understandings of the riots are substantially revised by stressing populist rather than class politics. The book concentrates on the theatricality of audiences, the role of the stage in shaping the English self-image and the relationship between contention and consensus. Theatre and theatricality are rediscovered as explanations for the cultural and political structures of the Georgian period. Based on meticulous research in theatre and governmental records, newspapers, private correspondence, and satirical prints and other ephemera, this study is an unusually interesting and original contribution to the cultural and political history of early nineteenth-century Britain.

The Blood of Caesar

Albert A. Bell, Jr.

In the summer of 83 AD Pliny the Younger receives a visit from the disguised emperor Domitian. Domitian is afraid that a previously unknown relative of Nero, supposedly the last of Julius Caesar's relatives, may be about to claim the throne. Or that Nero himself may be back from the dead. Domitian wants Pliny and his friend Tacitus to find out if any other descendants of Caesar survive, fifteen years after Nero's supposed death. Did Nero's mother, Agrippina the Younger, have any other children? What has become of her diary? Those auestions seem somehow connected to the death of a mason working on Domitian's new house on the Palatine hill. Wheh Pliny learns that the mason and his family were on the island of Pandateria while Agrippina was in exile there, he begins to make some surprising connections.

All Roads Lead To Murder

Albert A. Bell, Jr.

In April of AD 83 a caravan of travelers stop at an inn for the night. The next morning one of them is dead, butchered in horrific fashion. No Roman magistrates are on the scene, so Pliny the Younger, Rome's answer to Sherlock Holmes, takes charge until the provincial governor can be summoned. Pliny surprises his friend, Cornelius Tacitus, by suggesting that the cause of death might be something other than the obvious knife wounds.

Suspects abound: a man who owed money to the victim, the priestess of an arcane religious cult, two travelers who have kept aloof from others in the caravan. And Pliny learns some sruprising things about one of the victim's slave girls, a beautiful young blond. But all of Pliny's sleuthing may be in van if it turns out that the killer had another victim in mind--Pliny himself.

Death Goes Dutch

Albert A. Bell, Jr.

Death Goes Dutch is the first in a new series, the Wooden Shoe Mysteries, set in west Michigan, with a population descended from Dutch settlers of the mid-19th century. Although the area is growing more diverse, that Dutch heritage is still pervasive. The Tulip Time Festival, held in Holland each May, is the second largest flower festival in the U. S., even though many of the children who participate in it are now of Asian, Hispanic, and African origins.

Against that backdrop, Sarah de Graaf, a Korean-American adoptee, works in a social services agency, uniting adoptees with their biological families – bittersweet for a Korean-American adoptee unlikely to ever have the same experience. When she finds that her client's mother, a furniture industry heiress, died under mysterious circumstances that were never investigated, her personal commitment takes her farther than agency regulations allow. As long-concealed family secrets unravel, more is at stake than the job Sarah loves and the possibility of fortune for her client. Someone will kill to protect what they've gained.

go to http://www.claystonebooks.com to read the first three chapters

Kill Her Again

Albert A. Bell, Jr.

Corie Foster, a travel writer, and Professor Michael Herrington meet in Italy. At first they joke about how many people in the small town where they're staying react to Corie as if they've seen her before. They learn that she bears a striking resemblance to the late wife of a local wealthy politician. It soon becomes apparent that someone doesn't consider that resemblance so amusing. Two young women are murdered. Michael and Corie are convinced that Corie was the real target, but the police are reluctant to admit that possibility. Can Michael and Corie find the killer before he gets to Corie? And is Corie's resemblance to the senator's wife just coincidental?

Perfect Game, Imperfect Lives

Albert A. Bell, Jr.

1956 - what a year! "Ozzie and Harriet" and Lawrence Welk on TV. The Cold War and the Civil Rights movement in the news. And Elvis everywhere. In the mdist of it all, an 11-year-old boy, an avid New York Yankees fan, finds himself uprooted from the security of a close-knit family in South Carolina and moved to Cincinnati. His new best friend proves to be a transplanted Brooklynite, a rabid Dodger fan. Their lives center around baseball--playing it, talking about it, and collecting baseball cards and autographs. On October 8, a Monday, they skip school to watch the fifth game of the World Series on TV. As amazed as the rest of the country, they see a journeyman pitcher named Don Larsen hurl his way into the record books with the only perfect game ever pitched in the Series.

Exploring the New Testament World

Albert A. Bell, Jr.

Many people find reading the New Testament difficult because they don't know much about how people lived in those days. Too often when we read a New Testament passage we assume the people of that time meant what we mean by certain terms that appear similar. But they lived two thousand years ago, in quite a different world. Even when we recognize that they were different from us, we may still wonder how different? How did they dress? What did they eat? How did they behave toward one another? And how did those differences affect what they thought and believed and ultimately wrote down? This book provides an introduction to numerous aspects of life and thought in the first century A. D. and will help its readers "read between the lines" of the New Testament books to gain a fuller understanding of those documents.

Daughter of Lazarus

Albert A. Bell, Jr.

The slave Lorcis, a talented musician and entertainer, learns one morning that she has been sold to a new master. In her new household she doesn’t enjoy the privileged status she had held in her old home. But she makes a friend in her master’s steward, kindly Nestor, who is able to tell her the secret behind a painted medallion she received from her mother and has kept hidden for years. That medallion links her to her father and to a past she herself knows nothing about, since she was sold into slavery as a child. Now she must gain her freedom, with the help of an unlikely set of allies: a Roman nobleman, a poet, and a group of Christians. Her path takes her from the ashes of Vesuvius to the palace of the emperor Domitian and to the Colosseum.

The Secret of the Lonely Grave

Albert A. Bell, Jr.

Eleven-year-old Steve Patterson and his friend Kendra Jordan walk by a cemetery on their way to school each day. Their curiosity is aroused when they notice flowers left on an old grave off in one corner of the cemetery.

No one has ever left flowers there before. Who could have left them? Why? As they look for the answers to these questions they discover some things about the history of their small Kentucky town that take them back to the Civil War and the Underground Railroad. But not everyone is pleased that they've solved their town's oldest mystery.

Winner of the Evelyn Thurman Young Readers Book Award!

Bittersweet

Fred L. Johnson III

Clifford. Victor. Nathan. Three brothers as different as they come. Three lives that veer off course. One bond that heals them all.... While Clifford, Victor, and Nathan struggle with the unexpected--faltering marriages, breaking hearts, and torn childhoods that threaten to repeat themselves in the lives of their children--each will discover the true redemptive power of a brother's love.

By turns fierce and passionate, tender and humorous, this wise novel blasts the stereotype that black men's ties to their families are tenuous at best. Freddie Lee Johnson III tells a refreshing story of three complex men who fight to do right by their families--both the ones they created, and the one they were born into.

A Man Finds His Way

Fred L. Johnson III

A college professor sets out to rebuild his world after a series of bitter blows and shattering events.

Lately, Professor Darius Collins's life has been as tumultuous as the history he teaches in his university class. His girlfriend left him for another dude, his ex-wife's screwing the mayor and going down in political flames along with him, and his son Jarrod has been accused of a vicious crime. And adding insult to injury, several of his black colleagues are calling him an Uncle Tom for opposing a university visit by the controversial black activist and anti-Semite Osmani Bornu.

A gripping novel that plunges into the depths of conflicts within the black community and the system that fuels them. This novel brings home real issues under the guise of a genuinely heartfelt story: a family struggling to keep itself intact despite all that rails against it.

Other Men's Wives

Fred L. Johnson III

In this gritty revenge tale, Freddie Lee Johnsn III takes us into the mind of a man consumed with grief and rage. Full of jump-off-the-page characters and fast-paced drama, Other Men's Wives is an explosive ride fueled by love, lust, and deceit.

At Freedom's Edge: black mobility and the southern white quest for racial controls 1861-1915

William S. Cohen

Dutch Chicago: a history of the Hollander in the Windy City

Robert P. Swierenga

Now at least 250,000 strong, the Dutch in greater Chicago have lived for 150 years "below the radar screens" of historians and the general public. Their story is told for the first time. The author offers a colorful, comprehensive history of the Dutch Americans who haev made their home in the Windy City since the mid-1800s.

Family Quarrels in the Dutch Reformed Churches in the 19th Century

Robert P. Swierenga

Through a variety of approaches--personal accounts, facts and figures, and historical research--the volumes in this series recount the history of the Reformed Church in America and its churches, ministers, and missionaries.

Faith and Family

Dutch Immigration and Settlement in the United States, 1820-1920

Robert P. Swierenga

Iowa Letters

Dutch Immigrants on the American Frontier

Robert P. Swierenga

Features correspondence between the 19th century Dutch immigrants to Pella, Iowa, and their families back in the Netherlands. The book features 215 letters written from the 1840s to the 1870s. Beyond sharing family and church news, economic and political conditions, and the joys and sorrows of everyday life, the letters portray the inner feelings and faith struggles of the devout Netherlanders as they sought to understand God's will in the face of their experiences.

Elim: A Chicago Christian School and Life Training Center for the Disabled

Robert P. Swierenga

Elim Christian Services, which operates the only Reformed residential school in North American for special needs children, began in 1948 at Second Christian Reformed Church in Englewood, Illinois. From seven Chicago-area students in the church's basement in the beginning, the school now serves hundreds from around the nation on a 34-acre campus in Palos Heights, Illinois. In addition to serving school-aged children on-site, Elim works with 15 mainstream Christian schools to assist them in their work with special-needs children, and also operates Oasis Enterprises, a workshop that provides occupational training and employment for nearly 200 adults each year. Elim is named after the oasis in the Sinai Desert where the Israelites camped after leaving bondage in Egypt, as told in Exodus 15.

The discussion of Elim's history includes the emergence of academic programs in special education, and exploration of the impact of the shift in the 1970s from church contributions and individual gifts to government funding and correspondingly greater regulation. In addition to examining Elim's history, the volume features nearly 200 photographs and illustrations and focuses on the program's students and their achievements.