Books by Elizabeth Fuller

At the behest of his patron, a medieval scribe narrates his ordeal as an inquisitive, befuddled six-year-old on tour with his family troupe of players. Performing their farces across a landscape of war, plague, religious strife and feral cats, they travel from sunny Greece into the uncharted north, playing market fairs and noblemen's banquets, while transporting a hamper of curse-bearing masks that intrude themselves into the boy's dreams and the troupe's reality, culminating in a Nordic Armageddon. Though set in Late Antiquity, it's based on the authors' own experience as a family of traveling players with an offbeat mix of farce and tragedy: playing for gods, playing for peasants, playing for cats. It's about carrying the curses bequeathed by previous generations, dealing with catcalls and calamities, improvising making sense of the fears that provoke self-destruction and improvising the strategies of daily survival.

It's a monstrous maze of a mansion, built by a grief-ridden heiress. A tour guide, about to retire, has given his spiel for so many years that he's gone blind. On this last tour, he's slammed with second sight.He sees the ghosts he's always felt were there: the bedeviled heiress, her servants, and a young carpenter who lands his dream job only to become a lifelong slave to her obsession. The workman's wife makes it to shore, but he's cast adrift.And the tour guide comes home to his cat.