Steven Axelrod

"Axelrod packs plenty of layers and surprises into this intelligent, twisty tale. Henry's wry humor as well as his affection for the residents he serves exude warmth and will appeal to fans of Bill Crider's Sheriff Dan Rhodes." — Booklist During a long winter and short, chilly spring, a series of disturbing incidents rock the small resort island of Nantucket. A Land Bank executive dies in a suspicious hunting accident, a prominent local family's historic summer cottage burns down in an arson fire, and a teenage girl lies comatose in the hospital from a drug overdose. When spring turns to summer and the tourists flood the island, the mysterious cycle of violence spins faster. A young Jamaican boy is found dead in the harbor, a sex-for-drugs pornography ring is exposed, and a beloved local hero is murdered in cold blood. Could all of these events be part of the same sinister conspiracy? Poetry-writing Police Chief Henry Kennis, back for his third case in Nantucket Grand by Steven Axelrod, doubts it. But his new girlfriend, Jane Stiles, an author of cozy mysteries, is certain that all these terrible events are connected. In one of her books, they would all be related. Henry scoffs, but as the cords pull tighter, drawing him into a scandal that would change Nantucket forever, he begins to realize that Jane might be right, after all. But is it already too late?

Nantucket Grand

Helen Deese

Robert Lowell is one of the most widely recognised and influential poets of the second half of this century. Yet his career is problematical and raises many questions about direction and quality, particularly in light of his repeated reorientation of thematic concern and poetic technique. Many previous studies of the poet have accounted for these radical differences in Lowell's work by examining the poet's private life, but this collection of essays attempts to reassess Lowell's poetry and to restimulate critical thinking about it by focusing on his texts to raise new questions and discussions about the work. The twelve essays in this volume, by many of the most distinguished scholars in the field, offer a chronological review of Robert Lowell's career as a poet. The book includes pieces on major works such as Lord Weary's Castle, Life Studies, For the Union Dead, 'Skunk Hour', Notebook, the sonnets of 1969-73 as well as four essays devoted to Lowell's last complete and often neglected work, Day by Day. Employing a variety of methodologies, the essays arrive at innovative and, often, controversial interpretations of Lowell's poems.

Essays on the Poetry

Robert Lowell

Trevor Ling

Aspects of the Sociology of Buddhism

Buddhist Revival in India

It's wedding season on Nantucket, and two unwelcome guests are crashing the party... When people begin disappearing from the island, Nantucket Police Chief Henry Kennis is baffled. The victims are not random—they're all Nantucket High School alumni. And the only clues left behind are pennies dropped at the sites of the kidnappings. There's an old island tradition of tossing a penny from the ferry as you depart to ensure your eventual return... Has someone come back to the island with a sinister grudge to settle? Sippy Bascomb and Doug Fraker were childhood best friends—bonded as fellow victims of bullying at the hands of their classmates. The two men hadn't seen each other in years, but when Sippy comes across Doug's blog airing grievances from the past, the two reconnect and hatch a plan to return to the island. Both seek revenge, but Doug wants their tormentors to face a tribunal and appoints himself judge, jury, and executioner... When Henry's fiancée joins the missing, he enlists the aid of former intelligence agent Mitch Stone, a native who has returned to the island hoping for a peaceful retirement. The two men know they must find where their friends are being put on trial for their childhood crimes—before their deadly sentences can be carried out.

Nantucket Penny

Some aspects of religion in the modern world

Buddha, Marx, and God

"Axelrod and his protagonist bring an amused, judicious, and ultimately tolerant eye to the foibles large and small of a mixed Santa's bag of characters." —Kirkus Reviews It's Christmas Eve on Nantucket and prominent businessman Jackson Blum is about to live out his own version of A Christmas Carol. No visions, no ghosts, just the past, represented by the exhumed skeleton of his old partner Ted Coddington with a bullet from Blum's Ruger pistol in its skull; the present, in the form of a horribly mistreated employee who reveals Blum as the Scrooge he is; and the future, invoked by a family crisis that threatens to ruin the rest of his life. Past, Present and Future, all colliding on the same dark night of the soul. Nantucket Police Chief Henry Kennis is investigating the so-cold Coddington case with Blum as the main suspect while he roots out a plot to rig the traditional five-thousand-dollar Red Tickets raffle and struggles to close down a local opioid dealer who's selling to high school kids from a house on Tuckernuck Island—a bleak vista of wild moors, dirt roads, and unpainted homes a century old. "It's a time machine," says Kennis. With a whaling history. Henry's own son has been accused of cheating, his daughter's been pushed out of the high school a capella singing group, and his girlfriend's Christmas play is careening toward disaster. It looks like a calamitous holiday for everyone. All the scandals, tragedies, and intrigues of the season close in on Blum and Kennis as the two of them face off amid the carolers and colored lights. Finally, there's nothing to save the modern-day Scrooge from his terrifying future but a decades-old secret scribbled on a stolen slip of paper, and the uncertain mercy of the son he's lost. But it's Christmas, and as the snow finally starts to fall on the decorated trees that line Main Street, it's just possible that all sins will be forgiven and all sinners redeemed. God Bless us, every one.

Steven Axelrod

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