My Mad Russian

My Mad Russian: Three Tales collects three absorbing tales about the legendary Caramoor estate in New York's Westchester County.

The title piece fictionalizes the true-life connection of Caramoor's founders to Dr. Léon Theremin, inventor of the first electronic musical instrument, and his unexplained 1930s disappearance: Max Berlin invests in the new technology, while his wife Dora Berlin forms a more intimate partnership with the inventor. Max hires detectives, but Stalin intervenes.

In Another's Fool, set in 1953 during the Cold War, Dora Berlin gets her music festival under way after hiring young music manager Bruce Harnes. But the FBI blackmails Bruce into spying for it, even as-jealous of his Russian ex-lover's closeness to his new patroness-he conceives a mad scheme to liquidate him.

I Remember Caramoor-Steven Key Meyers' memoir of his 1970s stint as Caramoor's teen-aged underbutler as it began transitioning from private mansion to public resource-recounts the challenges of getting to know the house, its high-society history and its staff, both below-stairs and above, at a time when its way of life was already that of a bygone age.