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An engaging look at how debates over the fate of literature in our digital age are powerfully conditioned by the nineteenth century's information revolutionWhat happens to literature during an information revolution? How do readers and writers adapt to proliferating data and texts? These questions appear uniquely urgent today in a world of information overload, big data, and the digital humanities. But as Maurice Lee shows in Overwhelmed, these concerns are not new—they also mattered in the nineteenth century, as the rapid expansion of print created new relationships between literature and information.Exploring four key areas—reading, searching, counting, and testing—in which nineteenth-century British and American literary practices engaged developing information technologies, Overwhelmed delves into a diverse range of writings, from canonical works by Coleridge, Emerson, Charlotte Brontë, Hawthorne, and Dickens to lesser-known texts such as popular adventure novels, standardized literature tests, antiquarian journals, and early statistical literary criticism. In doing so, Lee presents a new argument: rather than being at odds, as generations of critics have viewed them, literature and information in the nineteenth century were entangled in surprisingly collaborative ways.An unexpected, historically grounded look at how a previous information age offers new ways to think about the anxieties and opportunities of our own, Overwhelmed illuminates today’s debates about the digital humanities, the crisis in the humanities, and the future of literature.

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Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet's hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This knowledge rests not only on the recordings of seismographs but also on the observations of eyewitnesses to destruction. During the nineteenth century, a scientific description of an earthquake was built of stories - stories from as many people in as many situations as possible. Sometimes their stories told of fear and devastation, sometimes of wonder and excitement. In The Earthquake Observers, Deborah R. Coen acquaints readers not only with the century's most eloquent seismic commentators, including Alexander von. Humboldt, Charles Darwitt, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Karl Kraus, Ernst Mach, John Muir, and William James, but also with countless other citizen-observers, many of whom were women. Coen explains how observing networks transformed an instant of panic and confusion into a field for scientific research, turning earthquakes into natural experiments at the nexus of the physical and human sciences. Seismology abandoned this project of citizen science with the introduction of the Richter Scale in the 1950s, only to revive it in the twenty-first century in the face of new hazards and uncertainties. The Earthquake Observers tells the history of this interrupted dialogue between scientists and citizens about living with environmental risk.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING MEMOIR OF SPY-WRITING LEGEND JOHN LE CARRÉ*NOW A MAJOR APPLE TV MOTION PICTURE*'As recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen' Financial TimesFrom his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War to a career as a writer, John le Carré has lived a unique life.In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive - reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's interviewing a German terrorist in her desert prison or watching Alec Guinness preparing for his role as George Smiley, this book invites us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer's journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.'No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times' Guardian'When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carré . . . These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind' Aung San Suu Kyi

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At the start of another pitiless winter, the wolves have come for the children of Keelut. Three children have been taken from this isolated Alaskan village, including the six-year-old boy of Medora and Vernon Slone. Stumbled by grief and seeking consolation, Medora contacts nature writer and wolf expert Russell Core. Sixty years old, ailing in both body and spirit, and estranged from his daughter and wife, Core arrives in Keelut to investigate the killings. Immersing himself in this settlement at the end of the world, he discovers the horrifying darkness at the heart of Medora Slone and learns of an unholy truth harbored by this village. When Vernon Slone returns from a desert war to discover his son dead and his wife missing, he begins a methodical pursuit across this frozen landscape. Aided by his boyhood companion, the taciturn and deadly Cheeon, and pursued by the stalwart detective Donald Marium, Slone is without mercy, cutting a bloody swath through the wilderness of his homeland. As Russell Core attempts to rescue Medora from her husband’s vengeance, he comes face to face with an unspeakable secret at the furthermost reaches of American soil—a secret about the unkillable bonds of family, and the untamed animal in the soul of every human being. An Alaskan Oresteia, an epic woven of both blood and myth, Hold the Dark recalls the hyperborean climate and tribalism of Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone and the primeval violence of James Dickey’s Deliverance.

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Shortlisted for the 2022 Plutarch Award A Washington Post 2021 Non-Fiction Book of the Year New York Times Review of Books Editors' Choice Non-Fiction Title Longlisted for the 2022 PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography A Sunday Times Best Paperback of 2022 'Brilliant, heart-stopping ... reads like a thriller, a memoir and a provocative piece of literary fiction all at the same time ... magical and compelling' Washington Post 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,' Elizabeth Barrett Browning famously wrote, shortly before defying her family by running away to Italy with Robert Browning. But behind the romance of her extraordinary life stands a thoroughly modern figure, who remains an electrifying study in self-invention. Elizabeth was born in 1806, a time when women could neither attend university nor vote, and yet she achieved lasting literary fame. She remains Britain's greatest woman poet, whose work has inspired writers from Emily Dickinson to George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. This vividly written biography, the first full study for over thirty years, incorporates recent archival discoveries to reveal the woman herself: a literary giant and a high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery who believed herself to be of mixed heritage; and a writer who defied chronic illness and long-term disability to change the course of cultural history. It holds up a mirror to the woman, her art - and the art of biography itself.

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Tracing the progression of images of women's bodies through nearly two centuries of literature, Fasick analyzes selected novels from Samuel Richardson to D. H. Lawrence to construct a historical overview of class and gender relations as reflected and refracted in the pages of the English novel. Though recent discussion and women's roles in literature and culture has centered on women's sexuality as the defining factor in the female character, Fasick focuses instead on ways that writers have depicted women as possessing nurturing qualities that distinguish them from men. Rigid adherence to this idealization of femininity constructs a standard difficult for women to achieve. Held to the ideal, Fasick asserts, women appear grossly culpable rather than simply human. Fasick begins with an analysis of Samuel Richardson's novels that examines three linked themes: sensibility, maternity, and anorexia. She continues with a discussion of Frances Burney's treatment of the expressive female body. She then analyzes novels by Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charlotte Bronte in light of Victorian attitudes toward women and food and toward female invalidism. In conclusion, she returns to Richardson, pairing his novel Pamela with Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover for an examination of cross-class romance and the resulting implications for class and gender. Throughout, references to conduct books and periodical literature of the time provide contexts that illuminate the primary texts. Fasick's insights will interest students of the novel, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction, women's studies and gender studies, and class relations in literature.

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When Margaret Thatcher called in 1979 for a return to Victorian values such as hard work, self-reliance, thrift, and national pride, Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock responded that “Victorian values” also included “cruelty, misery, drudgery, squalor, and ignorance.” The Victorians in the Rearview Mirror is an in-depth look at the ways that the twentieth century reacted to and reimagined its predecessor. It considers how the Victorian inheritance has been represented in literature, politics, film, and visual culture; the ways in which modernists and progressives have sought to differentiate themselves from an image of the Victorian; and how conservatives (and some liberals) have sought to revive elements of nineteenth-century life. Nostalgic and critical impulses combine to fix an understanding of the Victorians in the popular imagination. Simon Joyce examines heritage culture, contemporary politics, and the “neo-Dickensian” novel to offer a more affirmative assessment of the Victorian legacy, one that lets us imagine a model of social interconnection and interdependence that has come under threat in today’s politics and culture. Although more than one hundred years have passed since the death of Queen Victoria, the impact of her time is still fresh. The Victorians in the Rearview Mirror speaks to diverse audiences in literary and cultural studies, in addition to those interested in visual culture and contemporary politics, and situates detailed close readings of literary and cinematic texts in the context of a larger argument about the legacies of an era not as distant as we might like to think.

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Just who did the British think they were? For much of the last 1,500 years, when the British looked back to their origins they saw the looming mythological figure of Brutus of Troy. A great-great-grandson of the love goddess Aphrodite through her Trojan son Aeneas (the hero of Virgil's Aeneid), Brutus accidentally killed his father and was exiled to Greece. He liberated the descendants of the Trojans who lived there in slavery and led them on an epic voyage to Britain. Landing at Totnes in Devon, Brutus overthrew the giants who lived in Britain, laid the foundations of Oxford University and London and sired a long line of kings, including King Arthur and the ancestors of the present Royal Family.Invented to give Britain a place in the overarching mythologies of the Classical world and the Bible, Brutus's story long underpinned the British identity and played a crucial role in royal propaganda and foreign policy. His story inspired generations of poets and playwrights, including Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Dickens and Blake, whose hymn 'Jerusalem' was a direct response to the story of Brutus founding London as the New Troy in the west.Leading genealogist Anthony Adolph traces Brutus's story from Roman times onwards, charting his immense popularity and subsequent fall from grace, along with his lasting legacy in fiction, pseudo-history and the arcane mythology surrounding some of London's best-known landmarks, in this groundbreaking biography of the mythological founder of Britain.

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A celebration of reading, of libraries, and of the mysterious human desire to give order to the universe Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. “Libraries,” he says, “have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been seduced by their labyrinthine logic.” In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries.Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the “complete” libraries of the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria as well as the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought—the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral “memory libraries” kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, the library of books never written—Manguel illuminates the mysteries of libraries as no other writer could. With scores of wonderful images throughout, The Library at Night is a fascinating voyage through Manguel’s mind, memory, and vast knowledge of books and civilizations.

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The second novel in the uplifting railway girls series. Perfect for fans of Nancy Revell and Margaret Dickinson.--------------------------------- Manchester, November 1940As the war continues and secrets threaten the railway girls, they will discover the true meaning of friendship.---------------------------------For Dot, her job on the railways is everything. Transporting parcels around the country gives her pride that she is doing her bit for the war effort, but a growing friendship causes problems when home and work collide.Joan loves her boyfriend Bob dearly, but when tragedy strikes, her heart is torn apart, and she is forced to make a decision that could hurt those she loves most.Meanwhile Mabel has finally found a place to call home and her relationship seems to be going from strength to strength. However, the relentless bombing in the Christmas blitz is about to destroy everything she holds dear, and she will need her friends' courage and generosity now more than ever.Brought together by their work on Manchester's railways, the three women find that with the support and encouragement of each other, they can get through even the most challenging of times. --------------------------------- **Maisie's brand new novel THE RAILWAY GIRLS IN LOVE is available to pre-order now. Just search: 9781787463981** Readers LOVE the Railway Girls . . .'Beautifully written with a quiet charm' Jaffareadstoo 'Suberbly written . . . a gripping read' Ginger Book Geek 'Stunning . . . perfectly paced' Frost Magazine 'Poignant' Donna's Book Blog

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'Heartwarming historical fiction ... The perfect stocking filler for fans of Nancy Revell, Daisy Styles and Margaret Dickinson' Eastern Daily Press__________________The sixth heartwarming, feel-good instalment in the much-loved Railway Girls series!Manchester, 1942. There are surprises in store for the railway girls this festive season...When Cordelia's daughter Emily falls for a young chap who doesn't meet the approval of her father, Cordelia is reminded of her own first love - a love that she has never forgotten.Mabel is determined to get to the bottom of a spate of local burglaries. Her heart is in the right place as she sets out on a quest to clear her friend's name, but there will be unforeseen consequences.It's nothing short of a miracle when Colette returns to Manchester. But it's not going to be easy for her to keep living the life she once knew, and an impossible situation lies ahead.There will be more than one storm for the railway girls to weather but with the friendship and support of one another, there's hope that all will be well by Christmas...Readers LOVE the Railway Girls:'Make yourself a cuppa and find a comfy spot on the sofa because you are not going to be able to put this down''I simply cannot wait for the next one - I am hooked!''Gives a vivid picture of women's lives in wartime Manchester''Dramatic, intriguing and sprinkled with plenty of wit and heart''It's just like catching up with old friends'

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'The dream was football . . .'John Giles had a gift. At the age of three, he could kick a ball the way it was supposed to be kicked. And he knew that every hour that passed without kicking a ball was an hour wasted.'It was the same dream that most of the kids had at that time . . .'In A Football Man, Giles tells the story of a dream pursued and realised beyond his wildest imaginings, from his humble beginnings in Ormond Square in 1940s' Dublin,counting down the minutes to his next game of football, to that unforgettable moment when the original football man - his dad, 'Dickie' - announced that his young son, at just fourteen, was on his way to Manchester United.'What I didn't realise was that my dream would come true.'Full of anecdote, insight and wry humour, Giles recounts his rise through the ranks at Manchester United, before and after the Munich Disaster; the great players he knew, the good and the bad times under Matt Busby; his sensational debut for Ireland which he served as player and manager; his starring role in the brilliant, controversial Leeds United of the '60s and '70s; and his challenge to the portrayal of himself and Brian Clough in The Damned United. He also describes his enduring friendship with the 'kid from across Dublin's Tolka Park', Eamon Dunphy, and his career on RTÉ2's football panel, where Giles' intelligent and insightful analysis have made him an even more well-loved and respected national figure.

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Many of the greatest names in literature have visited or made their home in the colourful and diverse metropolis of London. From Charles Dickens to George Orwell, Virginia Woolf to Bernadine Evaristo, London's writers have bought the city to life through some of the best known and loved stories and characters in fiction. This book takes you on an area-by-area journey through London to discover the stories behind the stories told in some of the most famous novels, plays and poems written in, or about, the city. * Find out which poet almost lost one of his most important manuscripts in a Soho pub. * Discover how Graham Greene managed to survive the German bomb that destroyed his Clapham home. * Climb down the dingy steps from London Bridge to Thames path below and imagine how it felt to be Nancy trying to save Oliver Twist, only to then meet her own violent death. * Drink in same pub Bram Stoker listened to the ghost stories that inspired Dracula, the plush drinking house where Noel Coward performed, and the bars and cafes frequented by modern writers. * Tour the locations where London's writers, and their characters lived, worked, played, loved, lost and died. This is the first literature guide to London to be fully illustrated with beautiful colour photographs throughout the book. This unique book can be used a guidebook on a physical journey through London, or as a treasury of fascinating, often obscure tales and information for book lovers to read wherever they are.

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It is no surprise that one of the earliest works in English literature should be a poem about the sea: the sea has been a source of fascination from the earliest times, and the Anglo-Saxon poem 'The Seafarer' is only the first in a long series of writings which ponder its mystery. A powerful and restless presence in real life, the sea is one of the most ubiquitous and protean symbols in literature, changing in response to shifts in sensibility, and holding a mirror to all who confront it - Renaissance explorers and Augustan gentlemen, Romantic outcasts and Victorian travellers, small-boat sailors, naturalists and novelists, poets and oceanographers: men and women in a state of wonder before the sea. Jonathan Raban brings a special awareness and knowledge to his role as editor; in the words of Colin Thubron, 'nobody of his generation writes more subtly or imaginatively on travel'. Raban's introduction constitutes an important essay on the meaning of the sea in literature, and the pieces he has chosen display the exhilarating richness of writing in the tradition. Alongside extracts from the acknowledged marine masterpieces are many unexpected delights: Emily Dickinson's affirmative poem 'Exhalation is the Going'; a meditation on a seaside holiday by Larkin; Jane Austen's tart satirizing of Byron's Romanticized sea; Thoreau's contemplation of monsters and lost anchors off Cape Cod; Willard Bascom's brilliantly observed description of breaking waves. As richly varied and enthralling as the sea itself, this sparkling collection spans the centuries from AD 900 to the present and forms a unique and important body of writing to delight in and admire.

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The vast and mysterious universe is explored in this anthology from award-winning editor and anthologist Neil Clarke (Clarkesworld magazine, The Best Science Fiction of the Year).The urge to explore and discover is a natural and universal one, and the edge of the unknown is expanded with each passing year as scientific advancements inch us closer and closer to the outer reaches of our solar system and the galaxies beyond them.Generations of writers have explored these new frontiers and the endless possibilities they present in great detail. With galaxy-spanning adventures of discovery and adventure, from generations ships to warp drives, exploring new worlds to first contacts, science fiction writers have given readers increasingly new and alien ways to look out into our broad and sprawling universe. Stories include are: A Jar of Goodwill — Tobias S. Buckell Mono no aware — Ken Liu Rescue Mission — Jack Skillingstead Shiva in Shadow — Nancy Kress Slow Life — Michael Swanwick Three Bodies at Mitanni — Seth Dickinson The Deeps of the Sky — Elizabeth Bear Diving into the Wreck — Kristine Kathryn Rusch The Voyage Out — Gwyneth Jones The Symphony of Ice and Dust — Julie Novakova Twenty Lights to “The Land of Snow” — Michael Bishop The Firewall and the Door — Sean McMullen Permanent Fatal Errors — Jay Lake Gypsy — Carter Scholz Sailing the Antarsa — Vandana Singh The Mind is Its Own Place — Carrie Vaughn The Wreck of the Godspeed — James Patrick Kelly Seeing — Genevieve Valentine Travelling into Nothing — An Owomoyela Glory — Greg Egan The Island — Peter Watts The Final Frontier delivers stories from across this literary spectrum, a reminder that the universe is far large and brimming with possibilities than we could ever imagine, as hard as we may try.

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Samuel Rogers was arguably the most widely read poet of the early nineteenth century. He was also a prominent figure in the literary and cultural life of London and owned one of the largest private art collections of his day. He was well known to at least three generations of celebrated figures, ranging from John Wilkes and Dr. Burney, through Wordsworth, Scott and Byron, to Tennyson, Dickens and Ruskin. He was also associated with other prominent national figures such as Charles James Fox, Joseph Priestley, Lord Holland, and the Duke of Wellington. Known throughout his life (not always sympathetically) as the Banker Poet', he came from a radical, Dissenting background. He was supportive of the French Revolution and politically active in the 1790s when to be so involved personal danger (he attended the treason trials of Tom Paine and Horne Tooke). Nevertheless he considered his true vocation to be poetry and achieved considerable success and fame when The Pleasures of Memory was published in 1792. Ten years later he retired' to a civilised home in St. James's Place where his breakfast and dinner parties were legendary. His art collection attracted visitors from all over the world, and his poem Italy, composed after an extended tour there in 1815, was widely read. Martin Blocksidge considers the nature of Rogers' poetry and the reputation it acquired, and examines its cultural context; likewise Rogers' connoisseurship of paintings. Rogers was famous, but controversial, provoking some distaste and consequent satirical treatment, most notably from his erstwhile friend, Byron. Biographical and interdisciplinary, this narrative is relevant not only to literary historians but to those interested in the history of Dissenting and radical groups, picturesque travel, art history and the cultural history of London.

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An entertaining mathematical exploration of the heat equation and its role in the triumphant development of the trans-Atlantic telegraph cableHeat, like gravity, shapes nearly every aspect of our world and universe, from how milk dissolves in coffee to how molten planets cool. The heat equation, a cornerstone of modern physics, demystifies such processes, painting a mathematical picture of the way heat diffuses through matter. Presenting the mathematics and history behind the heat equation, Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons tells the remarkable story of how this foundational idea brought about one of the greatest technological advancements of the modern era.Paul Nahin vividly recounts the heat equation’s tremendous influence on society, showing how French mathematical physicist Joseph Fourier discovered, derived, and solved the equation in the early nineteenth century. Nahin then follows Scottish physicist William Thomson, whose further analysis of Fourier’s explorations led to the pioneering trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. This feat of engineering reduced the time it took to send a message across the ocean from weeks to minutes. Readers also learn that Thomson used Fourier’s solutions to calculate the age of the earth, and, in a bit of colorful lore, that writer Charles Dickens relied on the trans-Atlantic cable to save himself from a career-damaging scandal. The book’s mathematical and scientific explorations can be easily understood by anyone with a basic knowledge of high school calculus and physics, and MATLAB code is included to aid readers who would like to solve the heat equation themselves.A testament to the intricate links between mathematics and physics, Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons offers a fascinating glimpse into the relationship between a formative equation and one of the most important developments in the history of human communication.

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A colorful history of utilitarianism told through the lives and ideas of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and its other founders In The Happiness Philosophers, Bart Schultz tells the colorful story of the lives and legacies of the founders of utilitarianism--one of the most influential yet misunderstood and maligned philosophies of the past two centuries. Best known for arguing that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong," utilitarianism was developed by the radical philosophers, critics, and social reformers William Godwin (the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Shelley), Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart and Harriet Taylor Mill, and Henry Sidgwick. Together, they had a profound influence on nineteenth-century reforms, in areas ranging from law, politics, and economics to morals, education, and women's rights. Their work transformed life in ways we take for granted today. Bentham even advocated the decriminalization of same-sex acts, decades before the cause was taken up by other activists. As Bertrand Russell wrote about Bentham in the late 1920s, "There can be no doubt that nine-tenths of the people living in England in the latter part of last century were happier than they would have been if he had never lived." Yet in part because of its misleading name and the caricatures popularized by figures as varied as Dickens, Marx, and Foucault, utilitarianism is sometimes still dismissed as cold, calculating, inhuman, and simplistic. By revealing the fascinating human sides of the remarkable pioneers of utilitarianism, The Happiness Philosophers provides a richer understanding and appreciation of their philosophical and political perspectives--one that also helps explain why utilitarianism is experiencing a renaissance today and is again being used to tackle some of the world's most serious problems.

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‘This book is one hell of a ride. Neil Lancaster’s Blood Runs Cold is spellbinding.’ NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ She was taken against her will. On her fifteenth birthday, trafficking victim Affi Smith goes for a run and never returns. With a new identity and secure home in the Scottish Highlands, she was supposed to be safe… She escaped once. With personal ties to Affi’s case, DS Max Craigie joins the investigation. When he discovers other trafficking victims have disappeared in exactly the same circumstances, he knows one thing for certain – there’s a leak somewhere within law enforcement. She won’t outrun them again. The clock is ticking… Max must catch Affi’s kidnappers and expose the mole before anyone else goes missing. Even if it means turning suspicions onto his own team… Don’t miss the next book in the DS Max Craigie series! Fans of Ian Rankin and Marion Todd will love this utterly gripping Scottish thriller! Readers LOVE Blood Runs Cold! ‘A nailbiting, energetic read.’ The Sun ‘Utterly compelling, ingeniously plotted and incredibly entertaining.’ Liz Nugent ‘A masterclass in how to deliver a taut pacy thriller hot off the page.’ Imran Mahmood ‘Compelling, emotionally charged, and impossible to put down… the stand out crime read of the year so far.’ John Barlow ‘Want pulse-pounding, shallowed-breathed, toe-curling police action? Here you go. Thank me later.’ Helen Fields ‘Thrilling, gripping, breathlessly brilliant crime-thriller that just won’t let you go until you know how it ends.’ Miranda Dickinson ‘A dark, gritty and fast paced police procedural that I was totally and completely absorbed by from the very start.’ NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘One of my favourite crime writers by a country mile.’ NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Featuring ships from the first season of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY! The story of how the creative teams reimagined STAR TREK for the 21st Century with previously unseen production art and interviews with the show's artists and designers. Every ship for season 1! Showcasing ships such as the U.S.S. Shenzhou, the U.S.S. Discovery and the Klingon bird-of-prey, this book brings you all the Federation and Klingon ships as they appeared in the decade before Captain James T. Kirk's five-year-mission, and is packed with original concept art from STAR TREK artists John Eaves, Sam Michlap, John 'JD' Dickenson and Goran Delic. This latest volume in the Designing Starships series shows how artists and designers reinvented STAR TREK for a new era, taking the classics and reinventing them to build a whole new look for the Federation and the Klingons featured in the hit Star Trek: Discovery TV series. Explore the process behind the creation of the Starships featured in the hit Star Trek: Discovery TV

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For this book Lawrence Harbison has interviewed successful playwrights who have developed relationships with theaters that regularly produce their plays have had at least one major New York production have their plays published by a licensor such as Dramatists Play Service or Samuel French have received commissions and have an agent. Harbison asks each of them the same question: How did you do it? ÊHow I Did ItÊ features an introduction by Theresa Rebeck and interviews with David Auburn Stephen Belber Adam Bock Bekah Brunstetter Sheila Callaghan John Carlani Eric Coble Jessica Dickey Kate Fodor Gina Gionfriddo Daniel Goldfarb Kirsten Greenidge Rinne Groff Lauren Gunderson Michael Hollinger Rajiv Joseph Greg Kotis Neil LaBute Deborah Zoe Laufer Wendy MacLeod Itamar Moses Bruce Norris Lynn Nottage Aaron Posner Adam Rapp J.T. Rogers Lloyd Suh Carl Thomas Sharr White and Anna Ziegler.ÞA valuable tool for playwrights daunted by the extremely difficult task of getting their work produced as well as to playwriting students ÊHow I Did ItÊ is full of stories of how it's done.

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This memoir is of the schooldays of one of the most extraordinary minds Scotland has produced, Hugh Miller. Miller rose, if not from absolute poverty, certainly from a modest background, to become both a specialist in the field of geology and a generalist in the wider literary world, covering, as writer and editor, subjects as diverse as poetry, folklore, science, education, religion, history and travel. In his working life he was a stonemason, banking accountant, journalist, editor, lecturer and defender of Christianity against the evolutionists. By the time of his tragic suicide in 1856, Miller's prodigious output had made him among the best known of Victorian literary figures, admired by Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens and John Ruskin. By the latter part of the 19th century, his reputation extended across the world - his books were widely translated, and in America, according to the geologist Sir Archibald Geikie, "They were to be found in the remotest log huts of the far west." In 1879, the great environmentalist John Muir named one of the glaciers of Glacier Bay, Alaska, after the Cromarty stonemason.

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'Compelling . . . almost Dickensian' The Times'The best thriller writer in the world' Daily Telegraph*****Jonas Merrick. At MI5 they call him 'the eternal flame', because he never goes out. Never goes undercover, or on surveillance, or kicking down doors. If he's studying a map, he's probably planning his caravan holiday.But what the hot-shots fail to notice in Jonas is a steely concentration, a ruthless ability to find the enemy who hides in plain sight like a submerged crocodile, waiting for prey.Cameron Jilkes. A young man from a broken background, trained as a Jihadi in the harshest theatre of war. Coming ashore near Dover, he plans to live unnoticed, before unleashing a terrifying strike.And this time, Jonas Merrick must go out - to hunt the crocodile himself.Featuring a chapter from the new Jonas Merrick novel The Foot Soldiers, publishing in 2022*****Readers love THE CROCODILE HUNTER:'Another winner from Gerald Seymour' 5*'An outstanding book and thoroughly recommended' 5*'Every year without fail . . . Gerald Seymour comes up with a masterful thriller . . . A wonderful read from a master of his craft' 5*

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Critics of American exceptionalism usually view it as a destructive force eroding the radical energies of social movements and aesthetic practices. In A Desire Called America, Christian P. Haines confronts a troubling paradox: Some of the most provocative political projects in the United States are remarkably invested in American exceptionalism. Riding a strange current of U.S. literature that draws on American exceptionalism only to overturn it in the name of utopian desire, Haines reveals a tradition of viewing the United States as a unique and exemplary political model while rejecting exceptionalism’s commitments to nationalism, capitalism, and individualism. Through Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William S. Burroughs, and Thomas Pynchon, Haines brings to light a radically different version of the American dream—one in which political subjects value an organization of social life that includes democratic self-governance, egalitarian cooperation, and communal property. A Desire Called America brings utopian studies and the critical discourse of biopolitics to bear upon each other, suggesting that utopia might be less another place than our best hope for confronting authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and a resurgent exclusionary nationalism.

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Gothic death 1740-1914 explores the representations of death and dying in Gothic narratives published between the mid-eighteenth century and the beginning of the First World War. The book investigates how eighteenth century Graveyard Poetry and the tradition of the elegy produced a version of death that underpinned ideas about empathy and models of textual composition. Later accounts of melancholy, as in the work of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley, emphasise the literary construction of death. The shift from writing death to interpreting the signs of death is explored in relation to the work of Poe, Emily Brontë and George Eliot. A chapter on Dickens examines the significance of graves and capital punishment during the period. A chapter on Haggard, Stoker and Wilde explores conjunctions between love and death and a final chapter on Machen and Stoker explores how scientific ideas of the period help to contextualise a specifically fin de siècle model of death.This book will be of interest to academics and students working on literature on the Gothic and more generally on the literary culture of the period.

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Can she find freedom against the odds?As the Great War ends Serena Fleming is due an inheritance that could free her from a bullying father. But little does she know how far he will go to prevent her leaving home. Or how desperate he is to limit her and keep his secrets hidden. When she turns thirty, Serena must risk everything to escape his iron rule. Meanwhile, Marcus Graye’s life has also been changed by the War. His injuries may heal, but his elderly aunt and a crumbling old house are now in his sole care. When he saves Serena from a kidnapping, his life will take an unexpected turn, one that may bring him love but will put his life in danger.Can they survive a wicked man’s attacks? And can Serena at last fulfil her true potential?From the bestselling and much-loved Anna Jacobs, this inspirational saga is perfect for fans of Kitty Neale, Ellie Dean and Margaret Dickinson, a heart-warming tale of one woman’s fight for a life worth living.

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A powerful, authentic verse novel exploring a teen boy's experience with disordered eating, charting the successes and setbacks of his journey toward recovery.Jake feels alone at school and alone at home. Some days it feels like the only people who understand him is the poet Emily Dickinson and Jake''s beloved grandma. But there is also the Voice inside him, louder than any other, who professes to know him best of all.The one that says You have me.The Voice is loud enough to drown out everything else, even the hunger Jake feels, until his mom intervenes and sends him to Whispering Pines.Here Jake will learn how to confront the loneliness inside him, and find out who he is and what he has to live for. That is, if he can quiet the Voice...Told in succinct and powerful verse, this novel is a stunning and wholly authentic expression of a young man finding the will and the power to wrest control from the intrusive thoughts that crowd his mind

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Colleen Glenney Boggs puts animal representation at the center of the making of the liberal American subject. Concentrating on the formative and disruptive presence of animals in the writings of Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson, Boggs argues that animals are critical to the ways in which Americans enact their humanity and regulate subjects in the biopolitical state. Biopower, or a politics that extends its reach to life, thrives on the strategic ambivalence between who is considered human and what is judged as animal. It generates a space of indeterminacy in which animal representations intervene to define and challenge the parameters of subjectivity. The renegotiation of the species line produces a tension that is never fully regulated. Therefore, as both figures of radical alterity and the embodiment of biopolitics, animals are simultaneously exceptional and exemplary to the biopolitical state. An original contribution to animal studies, American studies, critical race theory, and posthumanist inquiry, Boggs thrillingly reinterprets a long and highly contentious human-animal history.

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During his years as executioner between 1901 and 1924, John Ellis hanged over 200 men andwomen. Among them were some of the most infamous killers of the 20th century including DrCrippen, John Dickman ''The Railway Murderer'', George Smith ''The Brides in the Bath'' murderer,Henry Jacoby, poisoners Frederick Seddon and Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong. Ellis also hangedSir Roger Casement for treachery and carried out the execution of Edith Thompson, one of themost controversial hangings in the history of capital punishment.British executioners kept their own legers recording brief details of those they hanged, John Ellismaintained just such a leger too but he is believed to be the only British executioner to have kept anadditional scrapbook of his personal accounts of those he executed and their crimes and as such it isa unique volume in the annals of British crime and punishment.Rediscovered after being lost for decades, John Ellis'' scrapbook - its cuttings, manuscript texts, andannotati

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Acclaimed historian Gordon S. Wood presents the first volume in a stunning collection of British and American pamphlets from the political debate that divided an empire—and created a nationIn 1764, in the wake of its triumph in the Seven Years War, Great Britain possessed the largest and most powerful empire the world had seen since the fall of Rome and its North American colonists were justly proud of their vital place within this global colossus. Just twelve short years later the empire was in tatters, and the thirteen colonies proclaimed themselves the free and independent United States of America. In between, there occurred an extraordinary contest of words between American and Britons, and among Americans themselves, which addressed all of the most fundamental issues of politics: the nature of power, liberty, representation, rights and constitutions, and sovereignty. This debate was carried on largely in pamphlets and from the more than a thousand published on both sides of the Atlantic during the period.Here, Gordon S. Wood has selected thirty-nine of the most interesting and important pamphlets to reveal as never before how this momentous revolution unfolded. This first of two volumes traces the debate from its first crisis—Parliament's passage of the Stamp Act, which in the summer of 1765 triggered riots in American ports from Charleston, South Carolina, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire—to its crucial turning point in 1772, when the Boston Town Meeting produces a pamphlet that announces their defiance to the world and changes everything. Here in its entirety is John Dickinson's justly famous Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, considered the most significant political tract in America prior to Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Here too is the dramatic transcript of Benjamin Franklin's testimony before Parliament as it debated repeal of the Stamp Act, among other fascinating works. The volume includes an introduction, headnotes, a chronology of events, biographical notes about the writers, and detailed explanatory notes, all prepared by our leading expert on the American Revolution. As a special feature, each pamphlet is preceded by a typographic reproduction of its original title page.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

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A book for those drawn back to Aldeburgh year after year for the music, writing and arts - and to all who care for the landscape, the sea and the ongoing life of the Suffolk Coast. The New Aldeburgh Anthology takes its inspiration from Ronald Blythe's classic Aldeburgh Anthology of 1972, which summoned the spirit of Aldeburgh and the Suffolk coast in words and images that resonate still, and has proved enduringly popular. This new volume brings the story up to date and distils the very essence of the place just at the point when its identity might seem diluted by the accelerating pace of change. It speaks for and to thepresent generation, combining young voices with old, those of writers and musicians with poets and artists, of historians with naturalists, architects and ecologists, and local people. Britten and Pears' Aldeburgh Festivallies at the heart of the enterprise. Much has changed, but the Festival still owes its unique appeal and character to the remarkable history and the inspiration of its founders, as well as their strong sense of place. Their legacy is re-examined by musicians such as Ian Bostridge, Steven Isserlis and Roger Vignoles, and music writers James Fenton, Paul Kildea, Peter Dickinson and Rupert Christiansen. Aldeburgh and the east coast of Suffolk is about so much more than music, however: the poets Andrew Motion, Blake Morrison, Kevin Crossley-Holland and Lavinia Greenlaw and other writers as diverse as Craig Brown and Wilkie Collins have all been inspired by its bright yet haunting atmosphere, Maggi Hambling and Alison Wilding are sculptors who have left their mark on the landscape, while artists as varied as Sidney Nolan and John Piper, Arthur Boyd and Louise Wilson have all derived rich inspiration from it. The very landscape and ecology of east Suffolk is on the move, too, the coastline responding to the vagaries of climate change, the traditional ways of life, of farming and of fishing giving way to new. George Ewart Evans, W.G. Sebald and Richard Mabey are among those who respond to the power of the landscape, others to the spell of the sea, and the life that has evolved around both is evoked in words and images, some of them startling in their intensity. Amongst the many contributions, the new Anthology contains some of the classic articles from the original, including writings by WH Auden, George Crabbe, Eric Crozier, Imogen Holst, Norman Scarfe and of courseRonald Blythe himself. Published in association with Aldeburgh Music.

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A masterful synthesis of literary readings and poetic reflections, making profound contributions to our understanding of chronic painAt the intersection of queer theory and disability studies, acclaimed theorist Michael D. Snediker locates something unexpected: chronic pain. Starting from this paradigm-shifting insight, Snediker elaborates a bracing examination of the phenomenological peculiarity of disability, articulating a complex idiom of figuration as the lived substance of pain’s quotidian. This lexicon helps us differently inhabit both the theoretical and phenomenal dimensions of chronic pain and suffering by illuminating where these modes are least distinguishable. Suffused with fastidious close readings, and girded by a remarkably complex understanding of phenomenal experience, Contingent Figure resides in the overlap between literary theory and lyric experiment. Snediker grounds his exploration of disability and chronic pain in dazzling close readings of Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and many others. Its juxtaposition of these readings with candid autobiographical accounts makes Contingent Figure an exemplary instance of literary theory as a practice of lyric attention.Thoroughly rigorous and anything but predictable, this stirring inquiry leaves the reader with a rich critical vocabulary indebted to the likes of Maurice Blanchot, Gilles Deleuze, D. O. Winnicott, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A master class in close reading’s inseparability from the urgency of lived experience, this book is essential for students and scholars of disability studies, queer theory, formalism, aesthetics, and the radical challenge of Emersonian poetics across the long American nineteenth century.

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A masterful synthesis of literary readings and poetic reflections, making profound contributions to our understanding of chronic painAt the intersection of queer theory and disability studies, acclaimed theorist Michael D. Snediker locates something unexpected: chronic pain. Starting from this paradigm-shifting insight, Snediker elaborates a bracing examination of the phenomenological peculiarity of disability, articulating a complex idiom of figuration as the lived substance of pain’s quotidian. This lexicon helps us differently inhabit both the theoretical and phenomenal dimensions of chronic pain and suffering by illuminating where these modes are least distinguishable. Suffused with fastidious close readings, and girded by a remarkably complex understanding of phenomenal experience, Contingent Figure resides in the overlap between literary theory and lyric experiment. Snediker grounds his exploration of disability and chronic pain in dazzling close readings of Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and many others. Its juxtaposition of these readings with candid autobiographical accounts makes Contingent Figure an exemplary instance of literary theory as a practice of lyric attention.Thoroughly rigorous and anything but predictable, this stirring inquiry leaves the reader with a rich critical vocabulary indebted to the likes of Maurice Blanchot, Gilles Deleuze, D. O. Winnicott, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A master class in close reading’s inseparability from the urgency of lived experience, this book is essential for students and scholars of disability studies, queer theory, formalism, aesthetics, and the radical challenge of Emersonian poetics across the long American nineteenth century.

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Literary traditions of urban description in the nineteenth century revolve around the figure of the stroller, a man who navigates and observes the city streets with impunity. Whether the stroller appears as fictional character, literary persona, or the nameless, omnipresent narrator of panoramic fiction, he casts the woman of the streets in a distinctive role. She functions at times as a double for the walker's marginal and alienated self and at others as connector and contaminant, carrier of the literal and symbolic diseases of modern urban life. In Walking the Victorian Streets, Deborah Epstein Nord explores the way in which the female figure is used as a marker for social suffering, poverty, and contagion in texts by De Quincey, Lamb, Pierce Egan, and Dickens. What, then, of the female walker and urban chronicler? While the male spectator enjoyed the ability to see without being seen, the female stroller struggled to transcend her role as urban spectacle and her association with sexual transgression. In novels, nonfiction, and poetry by Elizabeth Gaskell1 Flora Tristan, Margaret Harkness, Amy Levy, Maud Pember Reeves, Beatrice Webb, Helen Bosanquet, and others, Nord locates the tensions felt by the female spectator conscious of herself as both observer and observed. Finally, Walking the Victorian Streets considers the legacy of urban rambling and the uses of incognito in twentieth-century texts by George Orwell and Virginia Woolf.

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The Story of the Greatest Yankees Team—and Baseball Team—of All Time New York, 1936. Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, Bill Dickey, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, and rookie Joe DiMaggio—with these six future Hall of Fame players, the Yankees embarked on a four-year run that would go down in the history books as the greatest Yankees team, if not, the greatest baseball team of all time. Over the next four years, the Yankees won four straight pennants, finishing an average of nearly fifteen games ahead of the second-place team. They won their four World Series by an overall margin of 16-3, sweeping the last two, putting the punctuation mark on baseball’s first true dynasty. Even the Ruthian Yankees of the twenties never won more than two consecutive world championships. From 1936 to 1939, the world was changing rapidly. America was in the grip of the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected president in the greatest landslide in American history. And Hitler’s Germany was on the move in the fall of 1939, just as the Yankee dynasty reached its climax. Against the backdrop of a world in turmoil, baseball, and America’s love for baseball, thrived. Starring the best team of all time, featuring little-known anecdotes of players and set against a history of the world, Yankees 1936–39, Baseball's Greatest Dynasty tells the tale of a legendary team that changed history.

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Friends are at the centre of novels by everyone from George Eliot to Elena Ferrante. It is nearly impossible to name a work of fiction that is not enriched by the tensions and magnetisms of friendship.Friendship and the Novel focuses on the affective and narrative possibilities created by friendship in fiction. Friendship enables plots about rivalry, education, compassion, pity, deceit, betrayal, animosity, and breakup. It crosses boundaries of gender, class, nationality, disposition, race, age, and experience. Some novels offer lessons about distinguishing good friends from bad. In a Bildungsroman, friends contribute to the development of the protagonist through example or advice, as if novels were manuals for making and keeping friends. Sometimes sparks fly between friends and friendship swerves into sexual intimacy. Sally Rooney and other contemporary writers take friendship online.The essays in Friendship and the Novel illustrate how friendship, in its many forms – short or lifelong, intense or circumstantial – is a central problem and an abiding mystery in fiction as in life, a subject that continues to shape the novel as a literary form and, in turn, its readers.Contributors include Robert L. Caserio (Penn State), Maria DiBattista (Princeton), Jay Dickson (Reed), Brian Gingrich (Texas), Jonathan Greenberg (Montclair State), Barry McCrea (Notre Dame), Deborah Epstein Nord (Princeton), Erwin Rosinberg (Emory), Jacqueline Shin (Towson), Lisa Sternlieb (Penn State), and Emily Wittman (Alabama).

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A handsome anthology of 366 poems from around the world and throughout history, all especially selected for reading aloud, with one glorious poem for every day of the year. Everyone benefits from reading aloud, whether it's a bedtime story with Dad or Granny, an intimate moment with a loved one, or a performance to a group of people. When spoken, the poet’s words hit us more powerfully and meaningfully, and what's more, it's good for our health: mindfully reading aloud helps with relaxation, improves working memory and aids vocabulary acquisition. With a wide and diverse range of poets including the 14th-century Persian poet Hafiz and Mary Oliver in the 21st century, old favourites such as Emily Dickinson and more recent voices such as Lemn Sissay, the obvious classics such as Wordsworth’s Daffodils and slightly more offbeat fare like Spike Milligan, there's something for everyone in this book: poems that are funny, sad, consoling, uplifting and everything in between. Whether you're a teacher enthralling a class of children or a carer entertaining a group of pensioners, if you're looking for a reading for a special occasion or a powerful piece for a performance, you'll find everything you need here. It's the perfect book to dip into daily to share a poem with anyone, to hear the true beauty and rhythm of words and the magic they can weave.

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Maybe Jesus was joking, the disciples didn’t know what they were doing and the New Testament is a lot funnier than you might think. You would think it weird if someone suddenly ascended into heaven, right? Reading between the lines, do we detect a touch of rivalry between Peter and John? And surely the lack of parables in the latter’s mystical tome is simply crying out to be redressed . . . In this sparklingly witty book, BBC sitcom writer James Cary gives us a new and liberating way of looking at the gospel as he entertainingly relates it to a modern context, with references ranging from Charles Dickens to The Vicar of Dibley. Cheerfully playing around with the text, he takes the Bible seriously but allows us to laugh at our own petty vanities and foibles – and be enlightened in the process. The Gospel According to a Sitcom Writer is ideal for anyone wanting to liven up their Bible reading and looking for new ways to be thrilled by this sacred text. It’s also perfect for priests, pastors, youth leaders and all those involved in ministry and giving sermons, as James Cary shows using comedy and humour is a brilliant way to communicate the gospel. Warm, funny and full of brilliant insight and Christian humour, The Gospel According to a Sitcom Writer will make you laugh out loud and shake your head in awe. You’ll never read the Bible the same way again.

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Dear reader, There is nothing to be found in Lemony Snicket’s ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ but misery and despair. You still have time to choose another international best-selling series to read. But if you insist on discovering the unpleasant adventures of the Baudelaire orphans, then proceed with caution… Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent children. They are charming, and resourceful, and have pleasant facial features. Unfortunately, they are exceptionally unlucky. In The Slippery Slope the siblings face a secret message, a toboggan, a deceitful trap, a swarm of snow gnats and a scheming villain… In the tradition of great storytellers, from Dickens to Dahl, comes an exquisitely dark comedy that is both literary and irreverent, hilarious and deftly crafted. Despite their wretched contents, ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ has sold 60 million copies worldwide and been made into a Hollywood film starring Jim Carrey. And in the future things are poised to get much worse, thanks to the forthcoming Netflix series starring Neil Patrick Harris. You have been warned. Are you unlucky enough to own all 13 adventures? The Bad Beginning The Reptile Room The Wide Window The Miserable Mill The Austere Academy The Ersatz Elevator The Vile Village The Hostile Hospital The Carnivorous Carnival The Slippery Slope The Grim Grotto The Penultimate Peril The End And what about All the Wrong Questions? In this four-book series a 13-year-old Lemony chronicles his dangerous and puzzling apprenticeship in a mysterious organisation that nobody knows anything about: ‘Who Could That Be at This Hour?’ ‘When Did you Last See Her?’ ‘Shouldn’t You Be in School?’ ‘Why is This Night Different from All Other Nights?’ Lemony Snicket was born before you were and is likely to die before you as well. He was born in a small town where the inhabitants were suspicious and prone to riot. He grew up near the sea and currently lives beneath it. Until recently, he was living somewhere else. Brett Helquist was born in Ganado, Arizona, grew up in Orem, Utah, and now lives in New York City. He earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Brigham Young University and has been illustrating ever since. His art has appeared in many publications, including Cricket magazine and The New York Times.

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Dear reader, There is nothing to be found in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events but misery and despair. You still have time to choose another international best-selling series to read. But if you insist on discovering the unpleasant adventures of the Baudelaire orphans, then proceed with caution… Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent children. They are charming, and resourceful, and have pleasant facial features. Unfortunately, they are exceptionally unlucky. In The Reptile Room the siblings endure a car accident, a terrible smell, a deadly serpent, a long knife, a brass reading lamp, and the re-appearance of a person they’d hoped never to see again. In the tradition of great storytellers, from Dickens to Dahl, comes an exquisitely dark comedy that is both literary and irreverent, hilarious and deftly crafted. Despite their wretched contents, A Series of Unfortunate Events has sold 60 million copies worldwide and been made into a Hollywood film starring Jim Carrey. And in the future things are poised to get much worse, thanks to the forthcoming Netflix series directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. You have been warned. Are you unlucky enough to own all 13 adventures? The Bad Beginning The Reptile Room The Wide Window The Miserable Mill The Austere Academy The Ersatz Elevator The Vile Village The Hostile Hospital The Carnivorous Carnival The Slippery Slope The Grim Grotto The Penultimate Peril The End And what about All The Wrong Questions? In this four-book series a 13-year-old Lemony chronicles his dangerous and puzzling apprenticeship in a mysterious organisation that nobody knows anything about: ‘Who Could That Be at This Hour?’ ‘When Did you Last See Her?’ ‘Shouldn’t You Be in School?’ ‘Why is This Night Different from All Other Nights?’ Lemony Snicket was born before you were and is likely to die before you as well. He was born in a small town where the inhabitants were suspicious and prone to riot. He grew up near the sea and currently lives beneath it. Until recently, he was living somewhere else. Brett Helquist was born in Ganado, Arizona, grew up in Orem, Utah, and now lives in New York City. He earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Brigham Young University and has been illustrating ever since. His art has appeared in many publications, including Cricket magazine and The New York Times.

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Before phonographs and moving pictures, live performances dominated American popular entertainment. Carnivals, circuses, dioramas, magicians, mechanical marvels, musicians, and theatrical troupes-all visited rural fairgrounds, small-town opera houses, and big-city palaces around the country, giving millions of people an escape from their everyday lives for a dime or a quarter. In From Traveling Show to Vaudeville, Robert M. Lewis has assembled a remarkable collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century primary sources that document America's age of theatrical spectacle. In eight parts, Lewis explores, in turn, dime museums, minstrelsy, circuses, melodramas, burlesque shows, Wild West shows, amusement parks, and vaudeville. Included in this compendium are biographies, programs, ephemera produced by theatrical entrepreneurs to lure audiences to their shows, photographs, scripts, and song lyrics as well as newspaper accounts, reviews, and interviews with such figures as P. T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill Cody. Lewis also gives us reminiscences about and reactions to various shows by members of audiences, including such prominent writers as Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, O. Henry, and Maxim Gorky. Each section also includes a concise introduction that places the genre of spectacle into its historical and cultural context and suggests major interpretive themes. The book closes with a bibliographic essay that identifies relevant scholarly works. Many of the pieces collected here have not been published since their first appearance, making From Traveling Show to Vaudeville an indispensable resource for historians of popular culture, theater, and nineteenth-century American society.

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Midway through the journey of his life, Dan Beachy-Quick found himself without a path, unsure how to live well. Of Silence and Song follows him through the forest of his experience, on a classical search for meaning in the world and in his particular, quiet life.In essays, fragments, marginalia, images, travel writing, and poetry, Beachy-Quick traces relationships and the identities through which he sees the world. As father and husband. As teacher and student. As citizen and scholar. And as poet and reader, wondering at the potential and limits of literature, and guided by his studies in ancient Greek.Of Silence and Song finds its inferno—and its paradise—in moments both historically vast and nakedly intimate. Our world’s disappearing bees, James Eagan Holmes, Columbine, and the persistent, unforgivable crime of slavery—these are the circles of hell Beachy-Quick wanders, but cannot escape. And yet he encounters redemption in the art of Marcel Duchamp, the pressed flowers in Emily Dickinson’s Bible, and long walks with his youngest daughter, Iris. “The litany in hell is weeping, weeping,” he writes, “but there are other litanies.”Curious, earnest, and masterful, Of Silence and Song is an unforgettable exploration of the human soul.

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“1789 April: Just before sun-rising, Mr. Christian, with the master at arms, gunner’s mate, and Thomas Burket, seaman, came into my cabin while I was asleep, and seizing me, tied my hands with a cord behind my back and threatened me with instant death if I spoke or made the least noise.” So began William Bligh’s explanation of the infamous mutiny aboard the Bounty. His account of his capture and his phenomenal navigation of a small boat filled with men desperate to survive is one of the greatest sailing stories ever told. It is just one account readers will find in Astounding Sea Stories—many that have been sitting unread for decades. Some are from master writers whose deserved fame rests on works and characters who lived far from the sea. Here are sea stories from Jack London, his first published work, written miles from the frozen north that he loved and wrote about often—and from Charles Dickens without Scrooge, Victor Hugo far from Paris, and Arthur Conan Doyle on the deck of a ship without Sherlock or Watson. All are hidden gems that make you wish they had written and the sea and ships. Here also are marquee names like Melville and Richard Henry Dana, the official report of the sinking of the Titanic, a first-person account of the wreck of the Medusa, and a story by an unknown captain written after his ship was sunk by a whale. Imagine that. This eclectic collection will not disappoint any armchair seafarer.

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Alice Fulton reimagines the great lyric subjects—time, death, love—and imbues them with fresh urgency and depth. Barely Composed unveils the emotional devastations that follow trauma or grief—extreme states that threaten psyche and language with disintegration. With rare originality, the poems illuminate the deepest suffering and its aftermath of hypervigilance and numbness, the "formal feeling" described by Emily Dickinson. Elegies contemplate temporal mysteries—the brief span of human/animal life, the nearly eternal existence of stars and nuclear fuel, the enduring presence of the arts—and offer unsparing glimpses of personal loss and cultural suppressions of truth. Under the duress of silencing, whether chosen or imposed, language warps into something uncanny, rich, and profoundly moving. Various forms of inscription—coloring book to redacted document—enact the combustible power of the unsaid. Though "anguish is the universal language," there also is joy in the reciprocity of gifts and creativity, intellect and intimacy. Gorgeous vintage rhetorics merge with incandescent contemporary registers, and this recombinant linguistic mix gives rise to poems of disarming power. Visionaries—truth tellers, revelators, beholders—offer testimony as beautiful as it is unsettling. Shimmering with the "good strangeness of poetry," Barely Composed bears witness to love’s complexities and the fragility of existence. In the midst of cruelty, a world in which “the pound is by the petting zoo,” Fulton’s poems embrace the inextinguishable search for goodness, compassion, and "the principles of tranquility."

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On the night of April 15, 1990, Jill Bialosky's twenty-one-year-old sister Kim came home from a bar in downtown Cleveland. She argued with her boyfriend on the phone. Then she took her mother's car keys, went into the garage, and closed the garage door. Her body was found the next morning. Those are the simple facts, but the act of suicide is far from simple. For twenty years, Bialosky has lived with the grief, guilt, questions, and confusion unleashed by Kim's suicide. Now, in a remarkable work of literary non-fiction, she recreates with unsparing honesty her sister's inner life, and the events and emotions that led her to take her life on this particular night. In doing so, she opens a window on the nature of suicide itself, our own reactions and responses to it - especially the impact a suicide has on those who remain behind. Drawing on the works of doctors and psychologists as well as a range of writers from Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson to Sylvia Plath and Wallace Stevens, Bialosky gives us a haunting exploration of human fragility and strength. She juxtaposes the story of Kim's death with the challenge of becoming a mother and her own experience of raising a son. This is a book that explores the families we are born into, the families circumstances give us, and the tender and enduring bonds that keep us connected to the people we love, even after they have left us.

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When Jack the Ripper first prowled the streets of London, an evening newspaper commented that his crimes were as ghastly as those committed by Eliza Grimwood’s murderer fifty years earlier. Hers is arguably the most infamous and brutal of all nineteenth-century London killings. Eliza was a high-class prostitute, and on 26 May 1838, following an evening at the theatre, she brought a ‘client’ back to her home in Waterloo Road. The morning after, she was found with her throat cut and her abdomen viciously ‘ripped’. The client was nowhere to be seen. The ensuing murder investigation was convoluted, with suspects ranging from an alcoholic bricklayer to a royal duke. Londoners from all walks of life followed the story with a horror and fascination – among them Charles Dickens, who took inspiration from Eliza’s death when he wrote the murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist. Despite this feverish interest, the case was left unsolved, becoming the subject of ‘penny dreadfuls’ and urban legend. Unusually for a crime of this early period, the diary of the police officer leading the investigation has been preserved for posterity, and Jan Bondeson takes full advantage of this unique access to a Victorian murder inquiry. Skilfully dissecting what evidence remains, he links this murder with a series of other opportunist early Victorian slayings, and, in putting forward a credible new suspect, concludes that the Ripper of Waterloo Road was, in fact, a serial killer claiming as many as four victims.

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How do we understand Christmas? What does it mean? This book is a lively introduction to the study of popular culture through one central case study. It explores the cultural, social and historical contexts of Christmas in the UK, USA and Australia, covering such topics as fiction, film, television, art, newspapers and magazines, war, popular music and carols. Chapters explore the ways in which the production of meaning is mediated by the social and cultural activities surrounding Christmas (watching Christmas films, television, listening or engaging with popular music and carols), its relationship to a set of basic values (the idealised construct of the family), social relationships (community), and the ways in which ideological discourses are used and mobilised, not least in times of conflict, terrorism and war. Packed with examples ranging from Charles Dickens' seminal text, A Christmas Carol, Coca-colonisation and Santa Claus, Victorian cartoons and Christmas cards, to Dr Who, The Office, 'A Fairy Tale of New York', 'Happy Christmas (War is Over)', and such dystopian films as Jingle All the Way and All I Want For Christmas, the case studies offer an incisive account of the ways in which Christmas relates to social change, and how such recent events as 9/11 and the continuing conflict in Iraq focus attention on traditional themes of community and family. Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture offers students and scholars alike an opportunity to explore the hidden agendas of the world's most popular festival and what it means to the outsider looking in.

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In the winter of 1939 in the cold snow of no-man's-land, two loners met and began an extraordinary journey together, one that would bind them for the rest of their lives. One was an orphaned puppy, abandoned by his owners as they fled the approaching Nazi forces. The other, a lost soul of a different sort - a Czech airman, flying for the French Air Force but soon to be bound for the RAF and the country that he would call home.Airman Robert Bozdech stumbled across the tiny German Shepherd after being shot down during a daring mission over enemy lines. Unable to desert his charge, he hid the dog inside his flying jacket as he made his escape. In the months that followed the pair would save each other's lives countless times as they fled France and flew together with Bomber Command; the puppy - which Robert named Ant - becoming the Squadron mascot along the way. Wounded repeatedly in action, shot, facing crash-landings and parachute bailouts, Ant was eventually grounded due to injury. Even then he refused to abandon his duty, waiting patiently beside the runway for his master's return from every sortie.By the end of the war Robert and Ant had become very British war heroes, and Ant was justly awarded the Dickin Medal, the 'Animal VC'. Thrilling and deeply moving, their story will touch the heart of anyone who understands the bond that exists between one man and his dog.

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