"For Chicago sociology professor Amelia Emmet, violence was a research topic--until a student she'd never met shot her. He also shot himself. Now he's dead and she's back on campus, trying to keep up with her class schedule, a growing problem with painkillers, and a question she can't let go: Why? All she wants is for life to get back to normal, but normal is looking hard to come by. She's thirty-eight and hobbles with a cane. Her first student interaction...

Von Igelfeld is quite pleased with his role as a visiting scholar at Cambridge, even if his English colleagues can be difficult to comprehend. They frequently speak in metaphors and make peculiar assumptions, saying such odd things as "I take it your journey went well," when that is not the case at all. But von Igelfeld settles in the best he can, and is soon deeply embroiled in some shady political scheming at the university. After returning to the...

With millions of copies of his New York Times best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency mysteries in print across the globe, Alexander McCall Smith is one of the most popular novelists and humorists in the world. Starring the brilliant but bumbling Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs is a wonderfully entertaining showcase for Smith's award-winning wit. Invited to lecture in America, von Igelfeld envisions...

Prof. Brandt Savage--grandson of the legendary action hero--is forced into a top-secret training program where he discovers his true calling...as the perfect assassin. Dr. Brandt Savage is on sabbatical from the University of Chicago. Instead of doing solo fieldwork in anthropology, the gawky, bespectacled PhD finds himself enrolled in a school where he is the sole pupil. His professor, "Meed," is demanding. She's also his captor. Savage emerges...

Picture this: 'A most extraordinary painting in which a young girl wearing a short blue smock over a rust-colored skirt sat in profile at a table by an open window.' Susan Vreeland imagined just such a humble domestic scene, suggested it was created in 17th-century Holland, and attributed it to Jan Vermeer. Then she wrote a beguiling novel about this canvas, which so closely resembles the 35 extant works of the Dutch master that it might as well be...

"When a gang of terrorists invade a campus building, it's up to English professor Joe McCann to save the day in this action packed spoof of Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, and countless other action epics."--Container.

In present-day New Orleans, Polly Deschamps finds herself at yet another lonely crossroads in her life until she encounters architect Marshall Marchand, a lifelong bachelor who spends most of his time with his brother Danny. When Polly's two young daughters from her previous marriage are likewise taken with Marshall, she marries him. But then an ominous prediction by a New Orleans tarot card reader proclaims that Polly will murder her husband, and...

Philosophy professor Abe Lucas is at rock bottom emotionally, unable to find any meaning or joy in life. He feels that everything he's tried to do from political activism to teaching hasn't made any difference. Abe gets involved with two women: Rita Richards, a lonely professor who is unhappy in her marriage; and Jill Pollard, his best student, who becomes his closest friend. Pure chance changes everything when Abe and Jill overhear a stranger's conversation...

"In this wickedly sharp, propulsive debut, a classicist must outmaneuver her manipulative mentor. Tessa Templeton has thrived at Oxford University, under the tutelage and praise of esteemed classics professor Christopher Eccles. Yet shortly before her thesis defense, Tessa learns that Chris has sabotaged her career -- and realizes their relationship is not at all what she believed. Driven by what he mistakes as love for Tessa, Chris has ensured that...

"'Revenge of the Scapegoat' is an original satirical novel by contemporary American author Caren Beilin. A summary description: One day Iris, an adjunct at a city arts college, receives a terrible package: recently unearthed letters that her father had sent in her teens, in which he blames her for their family's crises. Driven by the raw fact of receiving these devastating letters not once but twice in a lifetime, Iris escapes to the countryside --...