A generous selection from the work of M. F. K. Fisher, one of America's most revered writers on food, wine, and the good life.

"M" is for the Malek brothers. The four men are poised to inherit the fortune amassed by their parents...but one brother has been missing for 18 years. That's where Kinsey Millhone steps in. The family hires her to locate the missing brother, and in the process, Millhone enters a forbidding web of family secrets and resentments. She begins to suspect that the desire for the brother's return is not driven by love, but by malice.

As he nears his 35th year, and the dreaded birthday party sure to accompany it, a series of bizarre premonitions draw Ned Dunstan home--and closer to his own mysterious past.

Shakespeare's dark portrait of ambition begins when the eponymous hero, a Scottish soldier, encounters three witches, who mysteriously refer to him as the future king. As, step by step, their prophecy begins to be fulfilled, the seeds of ambition are planted not only in Macbeth but in his scheming wife, who soon is plotting the murder of Duncan, King of Scotland. This murder--and the string of killings that inevitably follow--sets in motion a series of dark deeds that torment Macbeth and Lady Macbeth with guilt, which manifests itself most pointedly when a sleepwalking Lady Macbeth attempts to wash the blood from her hands, famously uttering "Out, damn'd spot!" MACBETH was probably written between 1603 and 1606; it is the last of Shakespeare's major tragedies and is peculiarly concise, perhaps because Shakespeare had learned of King James's penchant for shorter works. The plot was inspired by the Chronicles of Holinshed's narrative of the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth in Scotland. Richard Burbage, one of the most prominent actors of the Elizabethan stage, is said to have originated the title role.

This collection includes poems written in the 1970s, when the poet was associated with the late-period Beat movement, as well as more recent pieces from the '80s and '90s which still often reflect the Beat sensibility, some of which elegize major Beat figures.

Fowles's seventh novel is a study of Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers.