Fun With Teachers
In the mists of Oxford, Regent Master William Falconer, philosopher and amateur sleuth, searches for the whereabouts of his mentor, Roger Bacon. But political chaos is about to explode. The Papal Legatee's brother is killed during a student riot. Now, the man of reason must enter a labyrinth of madness--where ambition, deceit, and murder are the order of the day.
Eight linked stories tracing the history of a painting by the 17th-century Dutch artist, Vermeer. In one, he paints his daughter to pay off debts, a second story describes the loss of the ownership papers, a third takes place on the eve of its theft by the Nazis.
Finding love in middle age can be wonderfully unexpected and heartbreaking. Leah Rose is a never-married microbiologist in a rut. She returns to her parent’s summer home to rest and recharge her batteries. She meets, and is reluctantly wooed, by Oliver Marcus – an English teacher and year-round resident. He has never married, lives in the house he grew up in, and cares for his mentally handicapped sister. Ollie and Leah aren’t looking for love – they’re too old, too jaded, too damaged by life – but love finds them in spite of themselves.
"Madame tells the story of a charmingly self-absorbed teenager as he pursues sexual and intellectual maturity-and the woman of his dreams-in Communist-dominated Warsaw of the early '70s. His French teacher, 'Madame,' is the object of both his affections and aspirations as news of the Cultural Revolution in the West seeps through the Communist walls. Libera paces his exuberant young hero's fulminations, fantasies, and discoveries beautifully, building a remarkably subtle characterization of a free mind in a repressive culture."
Dr. Sally Good is head of the English and Fine Arts Department at a community college on the Gulf Coast of Texas. It’s an easy-going place where the faculty is more likely to write articles for music magazines than pompous literary rags. A popular professor dies under suspicious circumstances – rumors veer between sexual hijinks and/or Satanism. Dr. Good must run the department – and find the killer.
"Nancy's loss of her own specialness deepens as she keeps getting the other, more glamorous Nancy's mail, phone calls and party invitations by mistake. It's all too much to bear -- until a man calls one night, intending to ask the other Nancy out on a blind date. In a moment of madness, Nursery School Nancy accepts, and what follows is a raucous tale of mix-ups, murder and mistaken identity."
Enfield College is shattered when a professor tumbles into Professor Karen Pelletier's arms at a cocktail party--strangled to death with his own necktie. It is up to Karen to find the killer, lest another scholar publish and perish.
"Although there is a murder in Shaber's Bug Funeral, the bugs themselves aren't the victims. In the engaging series launched by Shaber's Malice-winning first novel, Simon Said, the author's amateur sleuth is a professor of history, particularly that of a relatively recent period. In each of the stories, Shaber has set her pleasant, somewhat bumbling and extremely likeable detective figuratively and often literally digging into a happening that could reveal its long-ago tale to him.
"But even Simon finds is very reluctant to be involved in the current cry for help from a woman sent to him by a professor friend - a man whose judgment has always seemed before to be excellent. The woman, who amazes Simon by turning out to be intelligent, sophisticated and very attractive woman indeed, confesses that she believes she has murdered an infant in a past life."
"To escape a dreary spring break on campus, Ezra heads to Los Angeles to visit Isaac Schwimmer, an old college friend. There's nothing wrong with Isaac's life -- he's a fabulously successful publisher of pornographic books, his social life is a bachelor's fantasy, and he lives next door to a Penthouse model as smart as she is beautiful (well, almost). When Isaac proposes that Ezra write a dirty book for a little fast cash, Ezra takes him up on the offer. Little does he know that his book, Every Inch a Lady (by "E.A. Peau") will radically change his life, and throw the campus into chaos."
"This romance from Lisa Samson is set in a country inn in the Blue Ridge Mountains where Natalie St. John, the proprietor, takes a special interest in a handsome and fascinating college professor who's come to her inn to find the quiet to write a book."
The story unfolds in the alternating voices of Ralph Messenger, the director of the Holt Belling Center for Cognitive Science at the University of Gloucester in England, and Helen Reed, a recently widowed novelist who has taken up a post as writer-in-residence at Gloucester. Ralph, who is much in demand as a pundit on developments in artificial intelligence, believes that computers may one day be conscious; Helen believes that literary fiction constitutes the richest record of human consciousness. The two are mutually attracted and fascinated by their differences, but Helen resists Ralph's bold advances on moral principles. The standoff between them is shattered by a series of events and discoveries that dramatically confirm the truth of Ralph's dictum that "we can never know for certain what another person is thinking"
"A wildly funny, brilliantly inventive novel about a man torn between two obsessions: the desperate need to win back his former wife and a craving to test his erotic charms on every woman he meets.
"He is 6'6" tall, a cross between Ichabod Crane and Abe Lincoln. He is a professor of linguistics, bewitched by language, deluded about his ability to win the hearts of women with his erudition and physical appeal. He is Thomas H. Chippering, a.k.a. Tomcat, a masterly addition to the pantheon of unforgettable characters in American fiction."
A lonely schoolteacher reveals more than she intends when she records the story of her best friend’s affair with a pupil in this sly, insightful novel Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary existence; aside from her cat, Portia, she has few friends and no intimates. When Sheba Hart joins St. George’s as the new art teacher, Barbara senses the possibility of a new friendship. It begins with lunches and continues with regular invitations to meals with Sheba’s seemingly close-knit family. But as Barbara and Sheba’s relationship develops, another does as well: Sheba has begun a passionate affair with an underage male student. When it comes to light and Sheba falls prey to the inevitable media circus, Barbara decides to write an account in her friend’s defense—an account that reveals not only Sheba’s secrets but her own.
Money is a problem for Ben Lindberg. As a college professor, he's fought long and hard to keep his intellectual life--and his family life--safe and secure. But he can't afford to replace his broken-down car, can't even afford to fix it, can't even afford to move his family into a better part of Austin.
Then, one night, things change. Searching for the stray family cat, Ben finds in the basement of an abandoned feed store eight coolers filled with fifty-dollar bills. A windfall.
