title: The Fall of Rome
author:  Martha Southgate 
description: An upscale New England prep school is the setting for an intense confrontation between a brilliant Latin teacher and a precocious student in Southgate's quietly stunning second novel (after Another Way to Dance). Jeremy Washington is the erudite African-American academic whose carefully constructed world begins to collapse with the simultaneous arrival of Jana Hansen, a high-spirited, divorced English teacher, and Rashid Bryson, one of the few African-American students at the elite Chelsea School. Hansen makes the first dent in Washington's emotional armor when the attraction between the two teachers bubbles over into a romantic night after they chaperone a school dance. But Hansen is put off by Washington's reluctance to help her with the troubled Bryson, who is struggling to deal with the tragic death of his brother, Kofi, a former scholarship student whose promising stint at a private school was curtailed when he was killed in a random shooting in their Brooklyn neighborhood. Washington cites the youth's lack of discipline as the reason for his unwillingness, but when Bryson calls out Washington after receiving a blatantly unfair grade in Latin class, their meeting strikes a chord from Washington's own troubled past that reveals the real source of his antipathy. Southgate is a compelling storyteller who slowly builds tension while drawing three marvelously diverse characters, and her plot transcends its racial themes as she steers her charges toward a surprising but believable ending. This is a deeply thoughtful, literate novel, and Southgate's ability to explore the social and emotional elements that unite and divide us establishes her as a serious talent. Agent, Geri Thoma.
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  MISS WINCHELSEA'S HEART  
    
  
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  # MISS WINCHELSEA'S HEART
  
  
  ### H. G. Wells
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
      
  
  Etext scanned by Aaron Cannon, formatted and proofed by
  
  
  Stephanie Johnson
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Miss Winchelsea was going to Rome. The matter had filled her mind
  
  
  for a month or more, and had overflowed so abundantly into her
  
  
  conversation that quite a number of people who were not going to Rome,
  
  
  and who were not likely to go to Rome, had made it a personal
  
  
  grievance against her. Some indeed had attempted quite unavailingly
  
  
  to convince her that Rome was not nearly such a desirable place
  
  
  as it was reported to be, and others had gone so far as to suggest
  
  
  behind her back that she was dreadfully "stuck up" about "that Rome
  
  
  of hers." And little Lily Hardhurst had told her friend Mr. Binns
  
  
  that so far as