episodes were written by Stephen Sondheim. Dream's End (1927, copyright renewed 1955). A serious novel that was not a success. The Stray Lamb (1929). Mild-mannered investment banker, cuckold, and dipsomaniac T. Lawrence Lamb gains perspective on the human condition during a series of mysterious transformations into various animal forms. Lamb, his daughter Hebe, her boyfriend Melville Long, and Hebe's friend Sandra Rush (a twentyish lingerie model who becomes Lamb's love interest) pursue many adventures, most of which fall well outside the perimeter of law and order. Lamb has, like many Thorne Smith heroes, a shrewish (and in this case adulterous) wife who at one point tries to murder him (at the time he is a goldfish). As in many Thorne Smith novels, a courtroom scene involving the protagonists and an exasperated judge provides a climax to the characteristically tipsy action. This novel is included with Turnabout and Rain in the Doorway in The Thorne Smith 3-Decker (Sun Dial Press, 1933). Did She Fall? (1930). A mystery novel admired by Dashiell Hammett. The Night Life of the Gods (1931). Quirky inventor Hunter Hawk strikes gold when he invents a device enabling him to turn living matter into stone and to reverse the process at will. After a chaotic field test he meets stunning 900-year-old Megaera, who teaches him to turn stone into flesh. They and some friends set their sights on New York City to bring the Roman gods of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to life: Mercury shows himself an expert pickpocket, while Neptune causes chaos in the fish market. Turnabout (1931) pits two modern married people into a battle of the sexes. Noticing the bickering and jealousy of a young man and wife, an Egyptian idol causes them to switch bodies. Tim Willows works in an advertising agency, and several of the scenes draw on author Thorne Smith's experience. After his wife, Sally, impregnates her husband, things take a decided turn for the worse as they separately try to deal with the object of the former wife's affections—a square-jawed philanderer by the name of Carl Bently. The scene in which Tim, trapped in his wife's body, exacts an icy revenge on the unfortunate interloper is one of the unforgettable moments of Thorne Smith's peculiar humor. Both a film (1940) and a short-lived 1979 television sitcom starring Sharon Gless and John Schuck (canceled after six episodes) were based on Turnabout,