Janetta Rebold Benton

Catering the annual pre-Easter brunch and egg hunt is a hare-raising hassle for Judith McManigle, hard-working hostess of the Hillside Manor.And this year's egg scramble gets particularly messy when the reclusive wife of a local scion is fatally perforated my a fiend dressed in a bunny suit. Never one to pass up a good murder, Judith solicits the help of her sometime-beau policeman Joe and her irrepressible Cousin Renie to get energized and get hopping down the floppy-eared assassin's trail. But soon the list of suspects is multiplying faster than a hutch-full of rabbits. And Judith might very well end up a basket case-or worse-before this whole thing is through...now the the party-planning sleuth's unsolicited snooping has put a killer hot on her cottontail!

"Featuring incredible creatures and grotesque gargoyles, "The Medieval Menagerie" takes us from the improbable to the impossible as it traces the depiction and the meaning of real and imaginary animals in medieval art. From unicorns and dragons to elephants, lions, and monkeys, medieval society was fascinated with animals, whether they actually existed or not. The more fantastic the creature, the greater its hold seems to have been on the fertile imaginations of the Middle Ages. Both art and literature abound with vividly concocted examples of Gothic monsters (gargoyles and griffins), bizarre ideas about real if exotic beasts (lions were believed to be born dead and resurrected by the father lion three days later), and strange visions of composite creatures (such as a widely accepted animal believed to be a cross between an ant and a lion). Featuring the celebrated collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, "The Medieval Menagerie" is illustrated with the splendid and amusing beasts found in medieval painting, sculpture, architecture and decorative arts, as wello as in bestiaries and manuscripts. The text explores the depiction and the meaning of real and imaginary animals in medieval art. Elegant, lively and intelligent, "The Medieval Managerie" captures some of the wildest creatures ever to grace a Gothic cathedral."--Amazon.ca product desc.

The visual arts enrich our lives in many ways: bringing innovative ideas and the pleasures of beauty and emotion, but they can also confound. How To Understand Art sets out to enhance the viewer's experience by breaking down the elements of art and sculpture to provide a firm basis for simple enjoyment as well as further investigation. 0With 100 visual examples drawn from across the globe, the stress is on how to assess art objectively - a key skill for any art student, museum visitor or cultural enthusiast. Janetta Rebold Benton guides the reader to re-evaluate their experiences of looking at art by learning to move beyond 'I don't know much about art, but I know what I like,' and shift towards an understanding of 'why I like it'. 0Materials and techniques are discussed - drawing, painting, printing, photography, sculpture and decorative art - making it possible to assess what can (and cannot) be done in certain media. The book also features a section devoted to six key artists who have had a particularly notable and innovative influence on the history of art: Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn, Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Perfectly aimed at students and the general reader, this indispensable guide to the subject is well-placed to encourage questions and discussion, especially in the light of current debates surrounding class, ethnicity, gender and race.