The House of Burgess

Read The Devil's Mode, an unusual book of short stories - and one novella called "Hun" that takes us inside the tent and mind of the dreaded Attila (which means "little brother," being the diminutive of Atta, hmm) - that could only come from the slightly crazed pen of Anthony Burgess. Read it now. If you dare.

Travel with Edward Burbage, Will Shakspere, and other players to the Spanish court in the years, post-Armada, when rough and ready Englishmen were not terribly popular in Spain. See them scorned for their crude table manners and ignorance of literature. Observe the venerable Cervantes reluctantly receiving them, only to have them eat with the wrong fork and say things like, "Novel, what's a novel?"

Then read The Pianoplayers, a singularly intoxicating and sobering novel about a young girl and her musician father surviving by their wits in the hurly-burly streets of early-twentieth-century England. "She was a working girl, Northern England way, now she's hit the big time..." The characters are well-wrought, the dialog is saucy and sharp, and the narrator is one smart young lady. [Side note: the author is a leg man.]