CONVERSATIONS WITH ACHILLES

Achilles - warrior, hero, son of a demi-god sea nymph whose presence, oracles claim, is the only thing that will deliver Troy into the hands of the Achaians.

And what does he do when he's dead?

Why, he tells the tale of his life to any shades who will gather to listen.

Conversations with Achilles follows the Greek legend as he retells, in seven sets and with harsh honesty the story of his life and the war with Troy. The greatness and brutality of himself and his fellow warriors, the bickering of the gods, come through with a blend of sharp humor and dark tragedy: we relive his love for his slave-turned-bride Briseis, of his mother's desperate battle to defeat the Fates who declared he would die young in battle.

It is a comic but brutal tale in which we meet the heroes, the villains, the very gods clashed and crashed over Troy's fate-and shaped the life of that war's greatest - or was he? - hero.

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VICTORY GARDENS

Meet Connecticut Talker Tscharner – “Cat” to his friends. It’s 1941 and he wants to serve his country, but a high school football injury has left him too crippled to sign up. He has dreams of sleuthing—but how can you make a living doing that in a small, quiet Carolina town? Besides, he’s saddled with running his sick father’s grocery store. But fate is preparing a hurricane of troubles: military wives are turning up dead and buried in their gardens. A poisoner is fixing her deadly charms on Cat’s own family, and a ruthless German spy is sending convoy locations to an offshore U-boat, killing anyone who gets in his way.

Every one – victims and perpetrators – are people he knows, and many of them are ones he loves. Cat soon finds himself in the tangle of all three webs and must battle to expose them all to save himself, to serve his country, and to rescue his town.