An Object of Beauty: A Novel (Audiobook, MP3) 2010
This thoroughly engaging primer on the art world is unusual on a number of levels. Although the lead characters are unlikable, the novel is hard to put down, offers an enlightening explication of how the market for art is created, and includes photos and absorbing detail on many of the artworks under discussion. The narrator, Daniel Franks, is an arts journalist who relates the story of avaricious, amoral Lacey Yeager, who is willing to do almost anything to move ahead in the art world. After landing an entry-level job at Sotheby’s, where her stint cataloging dusty works in the basement helps develop her eye for good art, Lacey moves on to working in a gallery
Fans of antiquities dealer Alex Benedict will find their expectations fully met by his fifth outing (after 2008's The Devil's Eye). Benedict innocently arranges the purchase of a curious but not obviously significant stone tablet with an unreadable inscription. When the slab proves inexplicably difficult to collect, Benedict and his partner, Chase Kolpath, investigate its connections to explorer Sunset Tuttle's abrupt abandonment of his quest to find another intelligent race. Death hounds Benedict and Chase as they inch closer to an old shame someone will kill to protect. McDevitt's characters may live 9,600 years in the future, but their values are entirely 21st century,
Judge Atlee has been a powerhouse in local politics and law in his hometown of Clanton, Mississippi for over forty years. But he is dying, and has turned into a recluse. He has summoned his two boys, Ray and Forrest, home to discuss his estate before he dies. Ray is a good son, recently divorced, a professor of law at the University of Virginia. Forrest is a black sheep to end all black sheep. Forrest doesn't show up at the appointed time, and Ray himself is too late. His father has died before any discussion could take place, and Ray is left knowing a shocking secret that he hopes only he knows.
Capitalism deals with the issues that have preoccupied thinkers from Marx and Weber through to Cuddens and Soros. It examines not only issues of great contemporary importance, such as modern globalization and ecological crises, but also looks at examples from the ancient world.
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome (Audiobook, mp3)
This is a comprehensive collection of all the major and minor gods of Rome and Greece, with descriptions of festivals and retellings of major mythological stories.
