Cara Massimina
Juggling the Stars

Jacket Notes:  Morris Duckworth teaches English to the pampered rich of Verona, and Morris is not pleased. Living a meager existence in a squalid apartment, he regards his privileged students with envy and disdain, first wreaking revenge by petty theft and then, like all good criminals, graduating to grander larceny. He ultimately schemes to "steal" a seventeen- year-old heiress, but to his surprise and chagrin her parents unequivocally reject the marriage proposal. So he concocts a clumsy kidnapping that the besotted girl perceives as an elopement.

Following a frightening logic, Morris's subversions become deeper and darker, each outrage proffering its own twisted excuse. Soon events are spiraling with eerie momentum into a nightmare of deception and violence.
(© Grove Press)