Search results for ""author dan"

Fury of a Demon is the thrilling conclusion to the Dragons of Terra trilogy by Brian Naslund.‘Part Game of Thrones, part superhero epic . . . a cinematic fantasy whirlwind’ – Sebastien de Castell on Blood of an ExileThe land is in chaos as a hero heads for war.Commanding a devastating army of skyships, Osyrus Ward has conquered most of Terra. And to finish the task, he’s building a machine of unparalleled power. With it, he’d be unstoppable – and dragons would be wiped from the face of the earth.Bershad and Ashlyn are leading a desperate rebellion, but they’ve been trapped within the Dainwood by Ward’s relentless mercenaries. The rebels pray Ashlyn’s dark magic will give them an edge, but her powers are well-known to their enemies as they draw ever nearer. Out of options, Ashlyn must embark on a dangerous mission to save her fledgling army – or be crushed by Ward’s soldiers.Bershad was once invincible in battle, but this very power may prove his undoing. Now, with every new wound, his humanity is slipping further away. Bershad seems to be Terra’s last and best hope against terrifying forces. But to save the world, will he become the nightmare?‘Exciting, epic and wonderfully told, full of subtle humour and laugh-out-loud lines’ – Angus Watson on Blood of an ExileFury of a Demon follows Blood of an Exile and Sorcery of a Queen.

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It is often argued that contemporary media homogenize our thoughts and actions, without us being fully aware of the restrictions they impose. But what if the problem is not that we are all synchronized to the same motions or moments, but rather dispersed into countless different emotional micro-experiences? What if the effect of so-called social media is to calibrate the interactive spectacle so that we never fully feel the same way as other potential allies at the same time? While one person is fuming about economic injustice or climate change denial, another is giggling at a cute cat video. And, two hours late, vice versa. The nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can be redirected safely around the network, avoiding any dangerous surges of radical activity. In this short and provocative book, Dominic Pettman examines the deliberate deployment of what he calls �hypermodulation,� as a key strategy encoded into the contemporary media environment. His account challenges the various narratives that portray social media as a sinister space of synchronized attention, in which we are busily �clicking ourselves to death.� This critical reflection on the unprecedented power of the Internet requires us to rethink the potential for infinite distraction that our latest technologies now allow.

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Completed in 1938, the Trans-Iranian Railway connected Tehran to Iran's two major bodies of water: the Caspian Sea in the north and the Persian Gulf in the south. Iran's first national railway, it produced and disrupted various kinds of movement—voluntary and forced, intended and unintended, on different scales and in different directions—among Iranian diplomats, tribesmen, migrant laborers, technocrats, railway workers, tourists and pilgrims, as well as European imperial officials alike. Iran in Motion tells the hitherto unexplored stories of these individuals as they experienced new levels of mobility. Drawing on newspapers, industry publications, travelogues, and memoirs, as well as American, British, Danish, and Iranian archival materials, Mikiya Koyagi traces contested imaginations and practices of mobility from the conception of a trans-Iranian railway project during the nineteenth-century global transport revolution to its early years of operation on the eve of Iran's oil nationalization movement in the 1950s. Weaving together various individual experiences, this book considers how the infrastructural megaproject reoriented the flows of people and goods. In so doing, the railway project simultaneously brought the provinces closer to Tehran and pulled them away from it, thereby constantly reshaping local, national, and transnational experiences of space among mobile individuals.

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If you love rom-coms you'll love this sassy, funny romance that will make you fall head over heels with the help of twelve classic films and a misbehaving cat named Nigel. Perfect for fans of Zoella, Geek Girl and Holly Bourne.One: I am hopelessly in love with Hanna Bergdahl. Two: for the first time since our recent reunion Hanna Bergdahl appears to be single. And three: I am stuck in that inescapable netherworld of demons and acne - the Friend Zone.Sol and Hanna were best friends at primary school and after reuniting at college, they spend approximately seventy per cent of daylight hours together. When disaster strikes at a New Year's Eve party and Hannah sees new boyfriend Danny Dukas kissing Lizzie Banks, a New Year's Resolution is formed. Sol and Hanna will watch one film a month for twelve months until the next New Year. After all, films hold answers to life's hardest questions. Maybe they'll figure out why they are both members of the dumpee club. Only Sol Adams has a new year's resolution of his own: to kiss Hanna Bergdahl before the year is over. Will Sol ever defeat the Friend Zone?

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This is the story of Dermot's life so far, from growing up in semi rural Colchester with his Irish born parents, to landing one of the biggets jobs in television. Throughout this journey, music has been a constant companion: a best friend, confidant, a really annoying sibling, and at times a tormentor. Here Dermot shows that really it is the songs that choose you., not the other way round. These are the tracks that have a hold on us because they have become inextricably linked to the most important moments of our lives and spark the memories and stories that shape us. With a wonderful gift for storytelling Dermot describes with humour and brilliant detail, what it was like to grow up a second generation Irishman in 70s England. The Pope, rebel songs and Irish dancing were all part of everyday life, along with the usual brand of chlidhood nostalgia, like endless summers, freshly cut grass and the occasional dead animal found in a ditch. Dermot's homelife was filled with music which was to set the scene for the years ahead. From Irish folk singer Brendan Shine's Catch Me If You Can to The Smiths, Elbow and Dermot's hero Bruce Springsteen, in Now Playing Dermot shares with us his musical DNA.

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Many of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) plays Paul Gagliardi analyzes in All Play and No Work feature complex portrayals of labor and work relief at a time when access to work was difficult. Gagliardi asks, what does it mean that many plays produced by the FTP celebrated forms of labor like speculation and swindling? All Play and No Work directly contradicts the promoted ideals of work found in American society, culture, and within the broader New Deal itself. Gagliardi shows how comedies of the Great Depression engaged questions of labor, labor history, and labor ethics. He considers the breadth of the FTP’s production history, staging plays including Ah, Wilderness!, Help Yourself, and Mississippi Rainbow. Gagliardi examines backstage comedies, middle-class comedies, comedies of chance, and con-artist comedies that employed diverse casts and crew and contained radical economic and labor ideas. He contextualizes these plays within the ideologically complicated New Deal, showing how programs like the Social Security Act straddled progressive ideals and conservative, capitalist norms. Addressing topics including the politicization of theatrical labor and the real dangers of unchecked economic con artists, the comic plays of the FTP reveal acts of political resistance and inequality that reflected the concerns of their audiences.

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During World War II, Elaine Black Yoneda, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, spent eight months in a concentration camp—not in Europe, but in California. She did this voluntarily and in solidarity, insisting on accompanying her husband, Karl, and their son, Tommy, when they were incarcerated at the Manzanar Relocation Center. Surprisingly, while in the camp, Elaine and Karl publicly supported the United States’ decision to exclude Japanese Americans from the coast.Elaine Black Yoneda is the first critical biography of this pioneering feminist and activist. Rachel Schreiber deftly traces Yoneda’s life as she became invested in radical politics and interracial and interethnic activism. In her work for the International Labor Defense of the Communist Party, Yoneda rose to the rank of vice president. After their incarceration, Elaine and Karl became active in the campaigns to designate Manzanar a federally recognized memorial site, for redress and reparations to Japanese Americans, and in opposition to nuclear weapons.Schreiber illuminates the ways Yoneda’s work challenged dominant discourses and how she reconciled the contradictory political and social forces that shaped both her life and her family’s. Highlighting the dangers of anti-immigrant and anti-Asian xenophobia, Elaine Black Yoneda recounts an extraordinary life.

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The Confucian doctrine of tianxia (all under heaven) outlines a unitary worldview that cherishes global justice and transcends social, geographic, and political divides. For contemporary scholars, it has held myriad meanings, from the articulation of a cultural imaginary and political strategy to a moralistic commitment and a cosmological vision. The contributors to Chinese Visions of World Order examine the evolution of tianxia's meaning and practice in the Han dynasty and its mutations in modern times. They attend to its varied interpretations, its relation to realpolitik, and its revival in twenty-first-century China. They also investigate tianxia's birth in antiquity and its role in empire building, invoke its cultural universalism as a new global imagination for the contemporary world, analyze its resonance and affinity with cosmopolitanism in East-West cultural relations, discover its persistence in China's socialist internationalism and third world agenda, and critique its deployment as an official state ideology. In so doing, they demonstrate how China draws on its past to further its own alternative vision of the current international system. Contributors. Daniel A. Bell, Chishen Chang, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Prasenjit Duara, Hsieh Mei-yu, Haiyan Lee, Mark Edward Lewis, Lin Chun, Viren Murthy, Lisa Rofel, Ban Wang, Wang Hui, Yiqun Zhou

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Financial crises happen time and again in post-industrial economies—and they are extraordinarily damaging. Building on insights gleaned from many years of work in the banking industry and drawing on a vast trove of data, Richard Vague argues that such crises follow a pattern that makes them both predictable and avoidable. A Brief History of Doom examines a series of major crises over the past 200 years in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and China—including the Great Depression and the economic meltdown of 2008. Vague demonstrates that the over-accumulation of private debt does a better job than any other variable of explaining and predicting financial crises. In a series of clear and gripping chapters, he shows that in each case the rapid growth of loans produced widespread overcapacity, which then led to the spread of bad loans and bank failures. This cycle, according to Vague, is the essence of financial crises and the script they invariably follow. The story of financial crisis is fundamentally the story of private debt and runaway lending. Convinced that we have it within our power to break the cycle, Vague provides the tools to enable politicians, bankers, and private citizens to recognize and respond to the danger signs before it begins again.

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Modern antisemitism and the modern discipline of sociology not only emerged in the same period, but—antagonism and hostility between the two discourses notwithstanding—also overlapped and complemented each other. Sociology emerged in a society where modernization was often perceived as destroying unity and “social cohesion.” Antisemitism was likewise a response to the modern age, offering in its vilifications of “the Jew” an explanation of society’s deficiencies and crises. Antisemitism and the Constitution of Sociology is a collection of essays providing a comparative analysis of modern antisemitism and the rise of sociology. This volume addresses three key areas: the strong influence of writers of Jewish background and the rising tide of antisemitism on the formation of sociology; the role of antisemitism in the historical development of sociology through its treatment by leading figures in the field, such as Emile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Theodor W. Adorno; and the discipline’s development in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust. Together the essays provide a fresh perspective on the history of sociology and the role that antisemitism, Jews, fascism, and the Holocaust played in shaping modern social theory. Contributors: Y. Michal Bodemann, Werner Bonefeld, Detlev Claussen, Robert Fine, Chad Alan Goldberg, Irmela Gorges, Jonathan Judaken, Richard H. King, Daniel Lvovich, Amos Morris-Reich, Roland Robertson, Marcel Stoetzler, and Eva-Maria Ziege.

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The shortage of fresh water is likely to be one of the most pressing issues of the twenty-first century. A UNESCO report predicts that as many as 7 billion people will face shortages of drinking water by 2050. Here, David Lewis Feldman examines river-basin management cases around the world to show how fresh water can be managed to sustain economic development while protecting the environment. He argues that policy makers can employ adaptive management to avoid making decisions that could harm the environment, to recognize and correct mistakes, and to monitor environmental and socioeconomic changes caused by previous policies. To demonstrate how adaptive management can work, Feldman applies it to the Delaware, Susquehanna, Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint, Sacramento-San Joaquin, and Columbia river basins. He assesses the impacts of runoff pollution and climate change, the environmental-justice aspects of water management, and the prospects for sustainable fresh water management. Case studies of the Murray-Darling basin in Australia, the Rhine and Danube in Europe, the Zambezi in Africa, and the Rio de la Plata in South America reveal the impediments to, and opportunities for, adaptive management on a global scale. Feldman's comprehensive investigation and practical analysis bring new insight into the global and political challenges of preserving and managing one of the planet's most important resources.

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Current philosophies of art remain sadly dominated by visions of its end and lamentations of decline. Defining the very notions of art and the aesthetic as special products of Western modernity, they suggest that postmodern challenges to traditional high culture pose a devastating danger to art's future. Richard Shusterman's new book cuts through the seductive confusions of these views by tracing the earthy roots of aesthetic experience and showing how the recent flourishing of aesthetic forms outside modernity's sacralized realm of fine art evince the persistent presence of an artistic impulse far deeper and more durable than the modernist moment. Performing Live defends the abiding power of aesthetic experience by exploring its diverse roles, methods, and meanings, especially in fields marginal to traditional aesthetics but now most vibrantly alive in today's culture and new media. Ranging from rap, techno, and country music to cinema, cyberspace and urban design, Shusterman develops his radical theory of "somaesthetics," charting the complex network of bodily arts so prominent in contemporary life and self-styling. By blending concrete aesthetic analysis with insightful social critique, Shusterman, a well-known pragmatist philosopher, provides a rich menu and critical guide for today's pursuit of the art of living.

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A whistling through teeth. / He shuts his eyes but still sees / the red glow of exit signs. Harold Hoefle's The Night Chorus rises out of forests and country roads, bars and buses, cities and small towns. These locales are the haunts of outsiders ranging from travellers and farmers to a soldier, a drug addict, a refugee, and the murdered. The past clings in these stark, evocative poems, "memory a closet of clothes / that hang from bent wire." In the tradition of songwriters like Gordon Lightfoot and Gord Downie and poets such as Al Purdy, Karen Solie, and David O'Meara, The Night Chorus presents so-called "obscure" lives, where dark and playful humour collides with historic and mythic characters including Ovid and Dante, Odysseus and Desdemona. Using lyric poetry and the ghazal, the prose poem and the elegy, The Night Chorus brims with images as sharp as wild geese scrawling letters against an evening sky and as humble as "pots of plum dumplings and still-warm soup." Bookended by a sequence of lyrics inspired by cross-country road trips, Hoefle references iconic places like Black Dog Road and Seldom Seen and peoples the landscape with imagined characters. Their voices – damaged, rough, intimate – will echo in the reader's mind.

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Her gilded world holds a deeply hidden secret. After years of tragedy, Gwen Kellerman now lives a quiet life as a botanist at an idyllic New York college. She largely ignores her status as heiress to the infamous Blackstone dynasty and hopes to keep her family's heartbreak and scandal behind her. Patrick O'Neill survived a hardscrabble youth to become a lawyer for the downtrodden Irish immigrants in his community. He's proud of his work, even though he struggles to afford his ramshackle law office. All that changes when he accepts a case that is sure to emphasize the Blackstones' legacy of greed and corruption by resurrecting a thirty-year-old mystery. Little does Patrick suspect that the Blackstones will launch their most sympathetic family member to derail him. Gwen is tasked with getting Patrick to drop the case, but the old mystery takes a shocking twist neither of them saw coming. Now, as they navigate a burgeoning attraction and growing danger, Patrick and Gwen will be forced to decide if the risk to the life they've always held dear is worth the reward. Elizabeth Camden's writing is full of . . . "Richly drawn characters and fascinating American history."-- All About Romance "Fabulous love stor[ies] wrapped around compelling historical events."--Booklist "Adventuresome, entertaining romance."--Foreword Reviews

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In this photo-filled viewing guide, Turner Classic Movies presents a festival of sunshine classics -- movies that capture the spirit of the most carefree season of the year through epic beach parties, road trips, baseball diamonds, summer camp, or some intangible mood that brought the heat.Packed with reviews, behind-the-scenes stories, and a trove of images, Turner Classic Movies Summer Movies takes an in-depth look at thirty films from the silent era to the present that reflect the full range of how summer has been depicted on screen, both by Hollywood and by international filmmakers. Featured titles:Lonesome (1928)You're Only Young Once (1937)Moon Over Miami (1941)State Fair (1945)Key Largo (1948)Summer Stock (1950)Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953)Rear Window (1954)Summertime (1955)The Seven Year Itch (1955)Picnic (1955)Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)Gidget (1959)The Parent Trap (1961)The Music Man (1962)The Endless Summer (1964)Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)The Graduate (1967)Jaws (1975)Breaking Away (1979)Caddyshack (1980)On Golden Pond (1981)National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)A Room with a View (1985)Dirty Dancing (1987)Do the Right Thing (1989)A League of Their Own (1992)Before Sunrise (1995)Moonrise Kingdom (2012)Call Me by Your Name (2017)

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As Stuart Laycock’s book All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: and the Few We Never got Round to shows, the British have not been backward in coming forward when it comes to aggressive forays abroad. But it hasn’t all been one way. In 1193 for example, the Danes teamed up serial offenders, the French, for a full-scale invasion. The French Prince Louis the Lion came close to success exactly 150 years after the Battle of Hastings. The 100 Years War saw multiple raids on British towns and ports by the Spanish and French. Following the Armada, there was the bloodless invasion of 1688, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s march south, the remarkable American John Paul Jones’ attack on Whitehaven during the American War of Independence, the German occupation of the Channel Islands and – the great what if of British, perhaps world history – the threat of Operation Sealion. Ian Hernon brings his journalistic flair to bear in this dramatic narrative of the survival of an island race over 900 years – sometimes, surprisingly, against the odds. Whilst such a history (one leaving out the boring bits) is bound to entertain, it also cannot fail to inform: where were shots last exchanged with an enemy on the mainland? At Graveney Marsh in Kent.

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Spanning many historical and literary contexts, Moral Imagination brings together a dozen recent essays by one of America's premier cultural critics. David Bromwich explores the importance of imagination and sympathy to suggest how these faculties may illuminate the motives of human action and the reality of justice. These wide-ranging essays address thinkers and topics from Gandhi and Martin Luther King on nonviolent resistance, to the dangers of identity politics, to the psychology of the heroes of classic American literature. Bromwich demonstrates that moral imagination allows us to judge the right and wrong of actions apart from any benefit to ourselves, and he argues that this ability is an innate individual strength, rather than a socially conditioned habit. Political topics addressed here include Edmund Burke and Richard Price's efforts to define patriotism in the first year of the French Revolution, Abraham Lincoln's principled work of persuasion against slavery in the 1850s, the erosion of privacy in America under the influence of social media, and the use of euphemism to shade and anesthetize reactions to the global war on terror. Throughout, Bromwich considers the relationship between language and power, and the insights language may offer into the corruptions of power. Moral Imagination captures the singular voice of one of the most forceful thinkers working in America today.

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Democratic Governance examines the changing nature of the modern state and reveals the dangers these changes pose to democracy. Mark Bevir shows how new ideas about governance have gradually displaced old-style notions of government in Britain and around the world. Policymakers cling to outdated concepts of representative government while at the same time placing ever more faith in expertise, markets, and networks. Democracy exhibits blurred lines of accountability and declining legitimacy. Bevir explores how new theories of governance undermined traditional government in the twentieth century. Politicians responded by erecting great bureaucracies, increasingly relying on policy expertise and abstract notions of citizenship and, more recently, on networks of quasi-governmental and private organizations to deliver services using market-oriented techniques. Today, the state is an unwieldy edifice of nineteenth-century government buttressed by a sprawling substructure devoted to the very different idea of governance--and democracy has suffered. In Democratic Governance, Bevir takes a comprehensive look at governance and the history and thinking behind it. He provides in-depth case studies of constitutional reform, judicial reform, joined-up government, and police reform. He argues that the best hope for democratic renewal lies in more interpretive styles of expertise, dialogic forms of policymaking, and more diverse avenues for public participation.

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In 1420, after more than one hundred years of the Avignon Exile and the Western Schism, the papal court returned to Rome, which had become depopulated, dangerous, and impoverished in the papacy's absence. Reviving the Eternal City examines the culture of Rome and the papal court during the first half of the fifteenth century, a crucial transitional period before the city's rebirth. As Elizabeth McCahill explains, during these decades Rome and the Curia were caught between conflicting realities--between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, between conciliarism and papalism, between an image of Rome as a restored republic and a dream of the city as a papal capital.Through the testimony of humanists' rhetorical texts and surviving archival materials, McCahill reconstructs the niche that scholars carved for themselves as they penned vivid descriptions of Rome and offered remedies for contemporary social, economic, religious, and political problems. In addition to analyzing the humanists' intellectual and professional program, McCahill investigates the different agendas that popes Martin V (1417-1431) and Eugenius IV (1431-1447) and their cardinals had for the post-Schism pontificate. Reviving the Eternal City illuminates an urban environment in transition and explores the ways in which curialists collaborated and competed to develop Rome's ancient legacy into a potent cultural myth.

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A new history of one of the foremost printers of the Renaissance explores how the Age of Print came to Italy.Lorenz Böninger offers a fresh history of the birth of print in Italy through the story of one of its most important figures, Niccolò di Lorenzo della Magna. After having worked for several years for a judicial court in Florence, Niccolò established his business there and published a number of influential books. Among these were Marsilio Ficino’s De christiana religione, Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria, Cristoforo Landino’s commentaries on Dante’s Commedia, and Francesco Berlinghieri’s Septe giornate della geographia. Many of these books were printed in vernacular Italian.Despite his prominence, Niccolò has remained an enigma. A meticulous historical detective, Böninger pieces together the thorough portrait that scholars have been missing. In doing so, he illuminates not only Niccolò’s life but also the Italian printing revolution generally. Combining Renaissance studies’ traditional attention to bibliographic and textual concerns with a broader social and economic history of printing in Renaissance Italy, Böninger provides an unparalleled view of the business of printing in its earliest years. The story of Niccolò di Lorenzo furnishes a host of new insights into the legal issues that printers confronted, the working conditions in printshops, and the political forces that both encouraged and constrained the publication and dissemination of texts.

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Rob Grant's new novel is a revelation. After INCOMPETENCE we would all have expected a killingly funny satire. And in its satire of our obsession with body image, of how the media makes us what we are FAT is certainly that.But in its depiction of Grenville, a fat man at his wits end with the need to be thin; of Hayleigh, a teenage girl obsessed with her terror of being fat and of Jeremy, the self-absorbed, self-adoring 'conceptualist' employed to promote the government's new 'Fat Farms' Rob Grant has given us, yes a very, very funny book, but also an immensely moving and personal novel about how we all feel about our bodies.As Grenville deals with the humilation and daily indignity of being fat, as Hayleigh struggles to deal with her anorexia and as Jeremy comes to terms with the dangerous lies at the centre of the government's new health regime FAT takes us on a hilarious and thought-provoking journey through our all-consuming obession with fat.This is a hilariously moving, movingly hilarious novel and marks a massive step-change in Rob Grant's growth as a writer. Here is a hugely commerical new voice in mainstream, high concept, high in poly-saturates, commercial fiction. It's also safe to say that with this new novel, he's writing about what he knows ...

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Dakota Territory, 1866. Following the murders of a frontier fort’s politically connected sutler and his wife in their illicit off-post brothel, Lieutenant Martin Molloy and his long-suffering orderly, Corporal Daniel Kohn, are ordered to track down the killers and return with “boots for the gallows” to appease powerful figures in Washington. The men journey west to the distant outpost in a beautiful valley, where the soldiers inside the fort prove to be violently opposed to their investigations. Meanwhile, Irish immigrant brothers Michael and Thomas O’Driscoll have returned from the brutal front lines of the Civil War. Unable to adapt to life as migrant farm laborers in peacetime Ohio, they reenlist in the army and are shipped to Fort Phil Kearny in the heart of the Powder River Valley. Here they are thrown into merciless combat with Red Cloud’s coalition of Native tribes fighting American expansion into their hunting grounds. Amidst the daily carnage, Thomas finds a love that will lead to a moment of violence as brutal as any they have witnessed in battle—a moment that will change their lives forever. Blending intimate historical detail and emotional acuity, Wolves of Eden sets these four men on a deadly collision course in a haunting narrative that explores the cruelty of warfare and the resilience of the human spirit.

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After nearly twenty years of SAS operations, including a never before published role in the infamous Bravo Two Zero patrol, Bob Shepherd retired from the military to work as an advisor on the international commercial security circuit. Certain his most dangerous days were behind him, Bob settled into a sedate life looking after VIPs. Then 9/11 happened . . . Bob found himself back in war zones on assignments far more perilous than anything he had encountered in the SAS: from ferrying journalists across firing lines in The West Bank and Gaza to travelling to the heart of Osama bin Laden’s Afghan lair. As part of a two-man team, Bob searched for ITN Correspondent Terry Lloyd’s missing crew in Basra, Iraq, while in Afghanistan he was forced to spend the night as the only Westerner in Khost – with a $25,000 bounty on his head. As the War on Terror escalated, Bob contended with increasingly sophisticated insurgents. But the most disturbing development he witnessed was much closer to home: The Circuit’s rise from a niche business staffed by top veterans into an unregulated, billion dollar industry that too often places profits above lives. This is a pulse-racing and at times shocking testament to what is really happening, on the ground, in the major trouble spots of the world.

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National Jewish Book Award winner An internationally recognized scholar and theologian shares a Jewish mysticism for our times in this " humane, accessible " book (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review)“Green challenges traditional notions of God, Israel, and Torah, offering a radically new understanding and stimulating the reader to join him in a journey of discovery.”—Daniel Matt, Graduate Theological Union Judaism, one of the world’s great spiritual traditions, is not addressed to Jews alone. In this masterful book, winner of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award in the Con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish Life and Practice category, Arthur Green calls out to seekers of all sorts, offering a universal response to the eternal human questions of who we are, why we exist, where we are going, and how to live. Drawing on over half a century as a Jewish seeker and teacher, he shows us a Judaism that cultivates the life of the spirit, that inspires an inward journey leading precisely toward self-transcendence, to an awareness of the universal Self in whose presence we exist. As a neo-hasidic seeker, he is both devotional and boldly questioning in his understanding of God and tradition. Engaging with the mystical sources, he translates the insights of the Hasidic masters into a new religious language accessible to all those eager to build an inner life and a human society that treasures the divine spark in each person and throughout Creation.

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The extraordinary story of the Popish Plot and how it shaped the political and religious future of Britain “Stater tells a complex and convoluted story with absolute clarity. . . . As a work of historical scholarship, Hoax is terrific.”—Robert G. Ingram, National Review “[Stater’s] accounts have the compulsively fascinating quality of a true-crime podcast.”—Jeffrey Collins, Wall Street Journal In 1678, a handful of perjurers claimed that the Catholics of England planned to assassinate the king. Men like the “Reverend Doctor” Titus Oates and “Captain” William Bedloe parlayed their fantastical tales of Irish ruffians, medical poisoners, and silver bullets into public adulation and government pensions. Their political allies used the fabricated plot as a tool to undermine the ministry of Thomas Lord Danby and replace him themselves. The result was the trial and execution of over a dozen innocent Catholics, and the imprisonment of many more, some of whom died in custody. Victor Stater examines the Popish Plot in full, arguing that it had a profound and lasting significance on British politics. He shows how Charles II emerged from the crisis with credit, moderating the tempers of the time, and how, as the catalyst for the later attempt to deny James II his throne through parliamentary action, it led to the birth of two-party politics in England.

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With essays by Valérie Bajou, Philippe Bordes, Thomas Crow, Michael Fried, Tom Gretton, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Stéphane Guégan, Daniel Harkett, Godehard Janzing, Dorothy Johnson, Mehdi Korchane, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Issa Lampe, Mark Ledbury, Simon Lee, Heather McPherson, David O’Brien, Satish Padiyar, Todd Porterfield, Susan L. Siegfried, and Helen Weston Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), the most celebrated painter of his era, was appointed court painter to Napoleon in 1804 and exiled to Brussels in 1816. This important book––based on the proceedings of an international symposium––explores David’s grand projects of the Empire period and the often mysterious works produced in his last years as a political exile.David after David features twenty-one essays by leading art historians that discuss these later works––which include innovative portraits as well as paintings and drawings that address the opposing themes of the antique and modern––in the aesthetic, political, and social contexts of their production and reception. The book also draws upon recently discovered letters the artist wrote in exile and provides fascinating new perspectives into his life and art.Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

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In Thinking Prayer, Andrew Prevot presents a new, integrated approach to Christian theology and spirituality, focusing on the centrality of prayer to theology in the modern age. Prevot's clear and in-depth analysis of notable philosophical and theological thinkers' responses to modernity through the theme of prayer charts a new spiritual path through the crises of modernity. Prevot offers critical interpretations of Martin Heidegger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Johann Baptist Metz, Ignacio Ellacuría, and James Cone, among others, integrating their insights into a constructive synthesis. He explains how doxological and contemplative forms of prayer help one avoid dangers associated with metaphysics, including nihilism, conceptual idolatry, and the concealment of difference. He considers the powerful impact that the prayers of oppressed peoples have on their efforts to resist socioeconomic and racialized violence. The book upholds modern aspirations to critical freedom, while arguing that such freedom can best be preserved and deepened through prayerful interactions with the infinite freedom of God. Throughout, the book uncovers the contemplative dimensions of postmodern phenomenology and liberation theology and suggests how prayer shapes liberative ways of thinking (theology) and living (spirituality) that are crucial for the future of this crisis-ridden world.

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The poetry in Humanophone, the third volume from award-winning poet Janet Holmes, celebrates composers and creators such as Harry Partch, Raymond Scott, Leon Theremin, and George Ives, who had to invent new instruments to capture the music heard in their “mind’s ear.” Taking its title from a George Ives invention—an instrument made from a group of humans, each of whom sings a single note, arrayed like a xylophone—Humanophone appears on its surface to be about music. But its real subject is the artist’s creative dilemma—how to deliver a new idea, whether it be a song or a poem, through existing media. Holmes works language into a variety of forms both familiar—syllabics, couplets, villanelles, sonnets—and engagingly new. With everything from kumquats to abandoned wedding pictures, Clara Bow to Bill Robinson, Keats’s belle dame to Dante’s Francesca, feng shui to a recipe for octopus, Humanophone celebrates how the body shapes art from the world it is given. In Humanophone, Holmes not only chronicles events such as Harry Partch’s transformation of glass chemical containers from the Berkeley Radiation Lab into the melodious and beautiful Cloud-Chamber Bowls, but also traces a playful path through the familiar, as a trombone’s upwards glissando becomes “a backwards pratfall/in brass.” Engaging a broad array of subjects, Holmes’s poetry is as delightful as it is thoughtful, as simple as it is complex.

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The German lied, or art song, is considered one of the most intimate of all musical genres—often focused on the poetic speaker's inner world and best suited for private and semi-private performance in the home or salon. Yet, problematically, any sense of inwardness in lieder depends on outward expression through performance. With this paradox at its heart, Intimacy, Performance, and the Lied in the Early Nineteenth Century explores the relationships between early nineteenth-century theories of the inward self, the performance practices surrounding inward lyric poetry and song, and the larger conventions determining the place of intimate poetry and song in the public concert hall. Jennifer Ronyak studies the cultural practices surrounding lieder performances in northern and central Germany in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, demonstrating how presentations of lieder during the formative years of the genre put pressure on their sense of interiority. She examines how musicians responded to public concern that outward expression would leave the interiority of the poet, the song, or the performer unguarded and susceptible to danger. Through this rich performative paradox Ronyak reveals how a song maintains its powerful intimacy even during its inherently public performance.

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Images have never been as freely circulated as they are today. They have also never been so tightly controlled. As with the birth of photography, digital reproduction has created new possibilities for the duplication and consumption of images, offering greater dissemination and access. But digital reproduction has also stoked new anxieties concerning authenticity and ownership. From this contemporary vantage point, After Uniqueness traces the ambivalence of reproducibility through the intersecting histories of experimental cinema and the moving image in art, examining how artists, filmmakers, and theorists have found in the copy a utopian promise or a dangerous inauthenticity-or both at once. From the sale of film in limited editions on the art market to the downloading of bootlegs, from the singularity of live cinema to video art broadcast on television, Erika Balsom investigates how the reproducibility of the moving image has been embraced, rejected, and negotiated by major figures including Stan Brakhage, Leo Castelli, and Gregory Markopoulos. Through a comparative analysis of selected distribution models and key case studies, she demonstrates how the question of image circulation is central to the history of film and video art. After Uniqueness shows that distribution channels are more than neutral pathways; they determine how we encounter, interpret, and write the history of the moving image as an art form.

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Pandemics, massive earthquakes, war, and other catastrophes inspire immediate action because their casualties and destruction are immediately visible. Climate change is an unyielding problem because its long-range dangers are hidden, and thus it is a global risk unlike anything in human experience.The federal government recently announced aggressive climate targets for Canada. We have committed to producing net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which will require major changes for our economy and way of life. Canadian citizens need to understand why our most distinguished climate scientists and our senior political leaders think that we must meet this target. Canada and Climate Change explains the importance of policies that will ensure we meet the net-zero emissions target. William Leiss provides a firm grasp on what climate change is and how scientists have described shifts in the earth’s climate as they have occurred over hundreds of millions of years and as they are likely to occur in the near future, especially by the end of this century.Leiss argues that citizens have a right to place their trust in what climate scientists tell us. Canada and Climate Change is an essential primer on where we stand on the issue of climate change in Canada and what will unfold in the years ahead.

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Of the thirty miles of Lake Michigan shoreline within the city limits of Chicago, twenty-four miles is public park land. The crown jewels of its park system, the lakefront parks bewitch natives and visitors alike with their brisk winds, shady trees, sandy beaches, and rolling waves. Like most good things, the protection of the lakefront parks didn't come easy, and this book chronicles the hard-fought and never-ending battles Chicago citizens have waged to keep them "forever open, clear, and free."Illustrated with historic and contemporary photographs, Wille's book tells how Chicago's lakefront has survived a century of development. The story serves as a warning to anyone who thinks the struggle for the lakefront is over, or who takes for granted the beauty of its public beaches and parks. "A thoroughly fascinating and well-documented narrative which draws the reader into the sights, smells and sounds of Chicago's story. . . . Everyone who cares about the development of land and its conservation will benefit from reading Miss Wille's book."—Daniel J. Shannon, Architectural Forum"Not only good reading, it is also a splendid example of how to equip concerned citizens for their necessary participation in the politics of planning and a more livable environment."—Library Journal

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Set four years after the events of Strings, Currents finds the Ables gang about to start their second year at Goodspeed University. Phillip is struggling more than ever with anxiety and PTSD, and he continues to feel tremendous guilt over the loss of a friend. It’s haunting him. He’s having vivid nightmares, passing out frequently, and starting to question his role in the world. On top of all that, he’s taking his first public speaking course, and the learning curve is steep—though he does make a new friend in the class. Phillip also finds himself truly blind once again, with no one to give him even temporary sight. He and his girlfriend, Emmaline, have created a sort of shorthand that allows her to communicate enemy positions so that Phillip can still be an effective crime fighter. Sherpa, his dog, is proving just as helpful during hero work as she is in the day-to-day things Phillip needs help with. There’s more distance between Phillip & Bentley now, and the reasons aren’t entirely understood by either of them. As Phillip tries to keep it together and rebuild an old friendship, the group of college heroes chases a new energy-hoarding villain across the globe, desperate to understand the danger in time to stop it. By the end, few of them will ever be the same.

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Survival. It's a concept these high school students never had to consider--until their plane crashes in a remote rainforest with no adults left alive. With many of them falling prey to threats from both the jungle and man, they soon realize that danger comes in many sinister forms.Tom Calloway didn't want to go on a field trip to Costa Rica, but circumstances had him ending up sitting in the back of the plane--which was the only part that was intact after the crash in the remote South American wilderness. Tom and a small group of his classmates are fortunate to be alive, but their luck quickly runs out when some of them fall prey to the unfamiliar threats of the jungle--animals, reptiles, insects, and even the unforgiving heat. Every decision they make could mean life or death.As the days go by and the survivors' desperation grows, things get even more perilous. Not everyone can cope with the trauma of seeing their friends die, and a struggle for leadership soon pits them against each other. And when they come across evidence of other people in the middle of the rainforest, does that mean they're safe--or has their survival come to an even more vicious end?

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Smell loomed large in cultural discourse in the late nineteenth century, thanks to the midcentury fear of miasma, the drive for sanitation reform, and the rise in artificial perfumery. Meanwhile, the science of olfaction remained largely mysterious, prompting an impulse to “see smell” and inspiring some artists to picture scent in order to better know and control it. This book recovers the substantive role of the olfactory in Pre-Raphaelite art and Aestheticism.Christina Bradstreet examines the iconography and symbolism of scent in nineteenth-century art and visual culture. Fragrant imagery in the work of John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Simeon Solomon, George Frederic Watts, Edward Burne-Jones, and others set the trend for the preoccupation with scent that informed swaths of British, European, and American art and design. Bradstreet’s rich analyses of paintings, perfume posters, and other works of visual culture demonstrate how artworks mirrored the “period nose” and intersected with the most clamorous debates of the day, including evolution, civilization, race, urban morality, mental health, faith, and the “woman question.”Beautifully illustrated and grounded in current practices in sensory history, Scented Visions presents both fresh readings of major works of art and a deeper understanding of the cultural history of nineteenth-century scent.

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If you knew a dark secret about the one you love, something they don’ t even know, would you keep it from them? Or would you tell them?When a young man wakes in the middle of the ocean, he has no memory. His ability to read has been erased. The cryptic words “ Anag. Norisis, Inc.” written on his life jacket are beyond his comprehension.He discovers a raft rigged with hidden cameras and survives to reach an island whose inhabitants have formed two tribes. Determined to learn who he is and who put him on the island, he befriends reclusive Aleah who tells him she’ s lived alone for years. He suspects she’ s withholding some deeper truth from him. But why?Drawn together by desire and danger, he and Aleah overthrow the island’ s brutal leader in order to escape. Only once they discover the mainland, everything he’ s learned about himself is turned upside down. The world they’ d hoped to find has become something unimaginable, and in that world, their love will face its ultimate test.An epic love story of truth and survival, Jordan Version 3.2 challenges us to consider the essence of our passions, the power of language in shaping who we are, and the nature of what it means to be human.

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We are often led to believe that liberty is synonymous with freedom--but is that really so? And what does it entail? In this issue of Critical Muslim, we explore who defines the liberty we are told we enjoy, and how our worldviews impact the ways we assert our liberty. How can we achieve a balance between individual liberty and social responsibility? How do we establish the public good, and which groups among us are asked to curtail their liberty for collective benefit? Just what is the connection between freedom of speech, rights of minorities, and state security? Has the notion of liberty been rendered meaningless? If liberty involves freedom for all to do as they wish, what dangers does it raise for the society as a whole? Should faith communities expect to confine their liberty to the law of the land in which they reside, even if this is contrary to their religious values? Our writers explore these and other questions to understand how we construct our understanding around the idealised notion of liberty. About Critical Muslim: A quarterly publication of ideas and issues showcasing groundbreaking thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. Each edition centres on a discrete theme, and contributions include reportage, academic analysis, cultural commentary, photography, poetry, and book reviews.

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For fans of Julia Quinn, Eloisa James and Sarah MacLean, comes Isabella Bradford's enthralling new trilogy of London's most scandalous rakes, the Breconridge Brothers, who are about to lose their hearts...Though charming and handsome, Lord Rivers Fitzroy, the youngest Breconridge brother, is more inclined to dusty books than brazen women. But when his father insists he marries, he vows to make the most of his last days as a bachelor.And what better way than in the company of a troupe of Italian dancers, where he's challenged to a wager he can't resist: turn the players' meek and mousy cousin into the first lady of the London stage.But he gets more than he bargained for with Lucia di Rossi. She has her own past to overcome and her own starlit aspirations. As the lines between performance and passion become blurred will finding the spotlight mean losing their hearts?Catch the rest of the dazzling series! Don't miss A Wicked Pursuit and A Sinful Decption. Before the Breconridge Brothers, came the Wylder sisters. Don't miss a moment of the romantic and captivating debut trilogy from Isabella Bradford: When You Wish Upon a Duke, When The Duchess Said Yes and When The Duke Found Love.

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The nineteenth Anna Pigeon mystery is a gripping novel that transports you to the wild and dangerous landscape of Acadia National Park and is sure to appeal to fans of Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich.Anna Pigeon, in her career as a National Park Service Ranger, has had to deal with all manner of crimes and misdemeanours, but cyber-bulling and stalking is a new one. The target is Elizabeth, the adopted teenage daughter of her friend Heath Jarrod. Elizabeth is driven to despair by the disgusting rumours spreading online and bullying texts. Until, one day, Heath finds her daughter Elizabeth in the midst of an unsuccessful suicide attempt. And then she calls in the cavalry - her aunt Gwen and her friend Anna Pigeon.The three adults decide the best thing to do is to remove Elizabeth from the situation and, since Anna is about to start her new post as Acting Chief Ranger at Acadia National Park in Maine, they join her and stay at a house on the cliff of a small island near the park, Boar Island. But the move doesn't solve the problem. The stalker has followed them. And Heath (a paraplegic) and Elizabeth aren't alone on the otherwise deserted island. At the same time, Anna has barely arrived at Acadia before a brutal murder is committed by a killer uncomfortably close to her.

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1940. Copenagen, Denmark. The German troops have invaded.A must-read account of immense courage during the Second World War, for children. Based on real-life events experienced by Sandi Toksvig's family during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.Ten-year-old Bamse Skovlund and his best friend Anton have been ordered to stay out of trouble.It soon becomes clear that trouble isn't just going to pass any of them by.Jewish Danes are subject to appalling treatment by the German occupiers, and every day are at risk of being taken away to concentration camps in mainland Europe.The Skovlund family are determined to fight against Nazi occupation. And if this means participating in one of history's most dramatic rescue missions, then it's time to take a stand.A tale of resistance in Nazi-occupied Denmark. The book is inspired by the stories told to Sandi Toksvig by her father, Bamse.Praise for Hitler's Canary:'An extraordinary story... truly life-affirming.' Michael Morpurgo'There are not many classic children's novels about the Second World War but this is one of them.' The Times'Racily written and full of comic incident as well as suspense.' The Independent'Brilliantly told... never loses sight of the child's view of war.' The Guardian

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The word 'tickbox' emerged recently as a cynical angle on official or corporate incompetence. They had 'ticked the box' - people said - but failed to act. It is increasingly used to describe this gap between official spin and reality.Yet, says David Boyle in this powerful expose of tickbox culture, that is just the tip of a vast tickbox iceberg. The only people who remain blind to this gap are those rich or powerful enough to run the world, and behind Tickbox lies an insidious philosophy of automation and the misuse of data that weighs heavily on every one of us. It makes our public services less effective - and makes them soar in costs - it lies behind so many stark injustices and disasters, from Grenfell Tower to the deportation of the Windrush generation. Yet the system carries on, and grows in power and strengths - vacuuming up the resources of the NHS pursuing pointless targets or badgering us to reveal how much we had enjoyed our visit to their bank counter - because those who run the world remain committed to it.It is time we escaped the tentacles of Tickbox. Boyle suggests a series of ways out - starting with recognising the danger and calling it out for what it is - a massive failure, corroding our lives and our ability, as human beings, to act on the world.

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Die Geschichte von der Entführung Europas durch Zeus gehört zu den berühmtesten mythologischen Erzählungen der antiken Literatur. Sie ist in der Neuzeit stets als eines der zahlreichen Liebesabenteuer verstanden worden, mit denen Zeus seine Gattin Hera zu betrügen pflegte, und niemand ist bisher auf den Gedanken gekommen, dass sie in der Antike als ein Brautraub gegolten haben könnte, also um eine Entführung mit dem Ziel einer Eheschließung. Genau das jedoch wird in diesem Buch nachgewiesen. Nach zwei vorbereitenden Kapiteln wird die These mit der Bildsprache der archäologischen Denkmäler (Vasenbilder) und den fragmentarisch erhaltenen Texten der frühen griechischen Dichtung (Hesiod und Aischylos) begründet. Danach wird sie appliziert auf die hellenistische Dichtung (Moschos), auf die Europa-Ode des Horaz, auf Ovids Metamorphosen und auf das spätantike Epos Dionysiaka des Nonnos. Dabei erweist sich, dass die Deutung der Entführung Europas als Brautraub des Zeus, so wie sie für die antiken Autoren noch selbstverständlich war, eine unabdingbare Voraussetzung für das Verständnis ihrer Texte ist. Auch für die Europa-Ode des Horaz, für die sich bislang keine plausible Erklärung gefunden hat, bietet das Buch einen neuen schlüssigen Interpretationsansatz.

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Amy Evans retained all her life the squat nose of her childhood, stubbed on to her face like a plasticine afterthought, a chin too long for any practical purpose, and eyes so close together that it seemed the sole function of the bridge of her nose was too keep them apart. For comfort she would go down to the beach, where the breeze from the sea blew into her face her share of the beauty to which her brother had so liberally helped himself. The gulls would wait for her to leave, no matter how long she stayed, for they were real gentlemen - the only gentlemen she was ever to meet in her life. Now in her late fifties, Amy faces a struggle on two fronts. Loneliness looms the larger as the chance of finding love grows more remote. Survival depends on the outcome of her search for a love object, and "I Sent a Letter to My Love", set in Porthcawl on the coast of South Wales, tells the moving and unsentimental story of Amy's bold play for happiness, and her dangerous success. The richly comic gifts, the wit and inventiveness that distinguished all Bernice Rubens' work are reinforced in this novel by a maturity and depth of compassion for her characters.

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WINNER OF THE 2021 RELIT AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION A sea witch, a bossy Virgin Mary, and a lesbian widow’s wife—in ghost form—walk into a short story collection ... Welcome to Stoop City, where your neighbours include a condo-destroying cat, a teen queen beset by Catholic guilt, and an emergency clinic staffed entirely by lovelorn skeptics. Couples counseling with Marzana, her girlfriend's ghost, might not be enough to resolve past indiscretions; our heroine could need a death goddess ritual or two. Plus, Hoofy’s not sure if his missing scam-artist boyfriend was picked up by the cops, or by that pretty blonde, their last mark. When Jan takes a room at Plague House, her first year of university takes an unexpected turn—into anarcho-politics and direct action, gender studies and late-night shenanigans with Saffy, her captivating yet cagey housemate. From the lovelorn Mary Louise, who struggles with butch bachelorhood, to rural teens finding—and found by—adult sexualities, to Grimm’s “The Golden Goose” rendered as a jazz dance spectacle, Kristyn Dunnion’s freewheeling collection fosters a radical revisioning of community. Dunnion goes wherever there’s a story to tell—and then, out of whispers and shouts, echoes and snippets, gritty realism and speculative fiction, illuminates the delicate strands that hold us all together.

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“Local or visitor, London courses through your body as if its rainbow-coloured system of underground veins is somehow intrinsically linked to your own.” ~ Chris HolmesOften waking before dawn, photographer Chris Holmes captures rare moments of solitude and calm as the city of London yawns, stretches and begins its day. His high-contrast scenes depict the miniature dramas unfolding all around us, obscured by the hectic pace of metropolitan life. Moving to London as an adult, Chris fell in love with the city in tandem with his development as a photographer and shoots his adopted home as both a romantic insider and an impartial admirer.Hidden in Chaos pairs Chris’s cinematic images with the words of 18 poets of various backgrounds, adding more layers of texture and meaning to the complex but devoted relationship that London’s residents and visitors have with the city’s many faces. London’s gray and glow, its daily ebb and flow, are celebrated, questioned and contemplated in this visual and poetic tribute.Includes poems by Elena Ashton, Shez Chung Blake, Troy Cabida, Laura Corns, Paul Cree, Caroline Druitt, George Duggan, Sam El-Bahja, Tom Gill, Bizhan Govindji, Imogen Hudson-Clayton, Danny Martin, Louise McStravick, Aaliyah Orridge, Astra Papachristodoulou, Abdul Patel, Ben See, and Janay Stephenson.

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"A refreshingly menacing take on the mermaid mythos." — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY"An exciting, dramatic, and tender tale of adolescent self-discovery—above and below the ocean." — FOREWORD15-year-old Corinth was just trying to clean up the beach; she never expected to meet a mermaid, let alone be nearly drowned by one. It was the start of a very strange friendship! After Skylla, the deadly fanged mermaid, mysteriously lets Corinth live, they grow closer through a cautious exchange of stories, gifts, jokes, and sign language. Mermaids, it turns out, eat people, but however terrifying Skylla may look, she’s a little younger, a little smaller, and perhaps a little too soft for all that. Bewitched by Corinth and their growing bond, she learns about all the best things in life on land: books, burgers, donuts, and this strange chattering human sound called laughter. But a storm is brewing – both at sea and in Corinth’s increasingly dangerous relationship with her obsessively jealous boyfriend – and a magical bargain may be the only thing that can save her, at a tremendous cost. A whimsical dark fantasy retelling of “The Little Mermaid,” The Sea in You upends everything you thought you knew about magical creatures of the deep, on a whirlwind journey to a whole new world you’ve only dreamed of before!

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'If you want to be more present, more reactive and have more fun - this book is for you' SARA PASCOE'Funny, insightful and inspiring' RACHEL PARRIS'Essential reading for anyone wanting to do life, but better' CARIAD LLOYD'A wonderfully witty, charmingly personal guide to the art of improvisation for the stage & life' DEBORAH FRANCES WHITEAn improviser's guide to embracing whatever life throws at you!PIPPA EVANS is an expert in saying Yes - and No. She's a master of thinking on her feet, but has also had to learn how to go with the flow. In this book she's passing on everything she's learnt from her award winning improv career, as both a performer and teacher, so YOU can take centre stage in your own life.In telling her story, delving into the craft of improvisation, and sharing fun exercises and practice you can do at home, Pippa will help you become fully yourself - realising your potential and ability to adapt to the ever changing world around you. It's dangerous, being yourself, but let's just take it one step at a time. Open the book, take a breath and get ready to say YES. (If it's a NO from you then perhaps consider buying for a friend, family member or enemy who you think needs some improv-ment)

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For fans of Elementary, Ripper Street and Sherlock Holmes - meet Jean Brash, a feisty, self-made woman turned sleuth in murky Victorian Edinburgh where crime and high society meet.Jean Brash is beautiful, intelligent and in her prime. Owner of The Just Land, the best and most successful brothel in Victorian Edinburgh, she's seen the highs and lows of society and been on both sides of the law, much to the frustration of her sparring partner, Inspector James McLevy. And Jean has a mind to do some sleuthing of her own ...It's Spring and Jean Brash is raring to go. A theatre company arrives in Leith to perform King Lear. A ruthless robbery is planned, a gruesome murder committed, both of which set off unwanted events and unearth long buried connections from Jean's past.Even more lethally, her own lost family life explodes in the present, as a wild young actress who trails violence and death behind her, involves Jean in a dangerous complex game that threatens to destroy the very root of her identity and everything Jean has fought to achieve. Jean Brash is my favourite character and David Ashton's writing is as delicious, elegant and compelling as she is' Siobhan Redmond (Jean Brash in BBC Radio 4's McLevy series)

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