Anne Stevenson

"The poems of Stone Milk address the way the written word preserves yet distorts the lives depending on it for fame or survival. Anne Stevenson's new collection opens with "A Lament for the Makers", an experimental sequence based on medieval dream poetry that plays with a Dante-inspired yet modern, scientific vision of an underworld of poets. This is followed by a series of shorter poems, mostly related to aging and the prospect (even the comfort) of dying. "The Myth of Medea" ends the book on a note both stoic and merry, despite its frank look at the reality of death. Stevenson rewrites the myth as an 'entertainment' to be set to music - her own original take on how ancient, classical stories are reinterpreted by societies that inherit and retell them."--book jacket.

In Turkish Rondo, Anne Stevenson once again combines the classic ingredients of her novels of romance and suspense and demonstrates anew the sure storytelling skill that is winning her an ever-widening audience of avid readers. Her heroine is Frances Howard, a plucky and attractive young Englishwoman. Her setting is contemporary Turkey and Greece, the teeming cities of Athens and Istanbul, the remote mountains of Anatolia and the long-buried archaeological ruins of Macedonia. The identity of her hero, as always, is in doubt. Is it Robert Denning, the handsome ne'er-do-well writer whom Frances marries after only the briefest of courtships? Or is it John Nairn, Robert's American friend who reputedly comes through in Frances's times of need? Frances realizes that the question of which of these men she really loves can be answered only after she uncovers the truth about Robert. For shortly after their wedding he vanishes, leaving behind, as almost the only due to his whereabouts, a small golden bull that his father brought back from an Urartian tomb in eastern Turkey. Undeterred by arguments that she should leave well enough alone or by an act of physical violence committed against her, Frances sets out to find Robert. Her search leads her to threats, murder, a startling revelation about her husband's family and finally to a dramatic confrontation on the Turkish-Russian border, where the past and the present converge in a thrilling denouement.

In a book that The New Yorker's Janet Malcolm called "by far the most intelligent and the only aesthetically satisfying" Plath biography, the poet Anne Stevenson narrates and illuminates the ways in which Sylvia Plath created her own legend in life and in poetry, one at odds with the posthumous myth that has grown up around her since her suicide in 1963.

"This work consists of full color portraits of 20th century figures and writers by Bernice Eisenstein, paired with a poem of literary elegy by Anne Michaels"--

When Fiona Grant sets out from London for a Scottish holiday at her parents' home, she has no inkling that her well-ordered life is about to dissolve into chaos and terror. But the mysterious quickly becomes commonplace: Blocking the highway home is a car with a dead driver at the wheel, and a strange figure systematically searching both the car and the body. He is Max Wyndham, an attractive naval officer assigned to plug leaks of important military secrets to enemy agents at a military installation near Fiona's home. With growing apprehension, she learns from Max that the townspeople living near the installation—even her parents—are suspected of involvement with foreign agents. In a tale studded with the unexpected, Fiona is drawn into a world of spies and counter-spies—where nothing is at it seems. Filled with action, surprises and a heart-stopping climax, Mask of Treason confirms Anne Stevenson's place as a master of the suspense genre.