intrigue

Rolston's work channels the vampish intrigue of vintage Hollywood with a sense of irony and wit that makes the work truly modern. —Stephanie Sung, Picture, September/October 2008

In this, as in any other enterprise where there is the promise of money, intrigues and lies and hoodwinking and bullying abound. —Alice Munro, “Hard-Luck Stories,” in In the Stacks, 2002

The story began to take on a warm, attractive glow as a Highland romantic epic of heroism and villainy, of intrigue and bravery, complete with comely maidens such as Flora MacDonald and handsome heroes such as Bonnie Prince Charlie himself. —Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, 2001

a novel of intrigue and romance

an administration characterized by intrigue and corruption

One day during math study period, after I'd finished my regular assignment, I took out a fresh sheet of paper and tried to solve a problem that had intrigued me: whether the first player in a game of ticktacktoe can always win, given the right strategy. —Martin Gardner, Scientific American, August 1998

Bundy was also a man whose thinking in foreign affairs was extremely conventional … but who in the area of domestic policy was curiously more open-minded and unconventional, so that throughout the Kennedy years, friends would be intrigued by the difference in Bundy. —David Halberstam, Harper's, July 1969

evidence that the leading manufacturers had intrigued to keep prices artificially high

the mystery story intrigued me so that I read it in one sitting