Incubus

Niclas is a Nazi, and he's good at what he does - in fact, rumor has it he's in line to be promoted soon. His superior and inferior officers alike both admire him, and his record is entirely unblemished...of course, that could all change if he can't get rid of the voice in his head and his attraction to a Jew. Incubus is seventh story in the Bestiary Tales.The PA is a humourous short story about the world post-apocalypse (PA). It is 1182 words.
Views: 846

The Burning Bride

When Silas returns to visit his wife's grave, he finds she's still alive, pretending to be someone else. But has he re-found his old love… or discovered a new? A gentle romantic comedy about love, loss and hope.A year and a day after losing his wife, Silas still can't cope with her death - but he couldn't cope with her alive either. Was Bianca just too good for him - or was he just too bad for her? When he returns to visit her grave, the past comes back to haunt him: Bianca is still alive, pretending to be someone else! But is this beguiling, flirtatious woman really his saintly wife? Has he re-found his old love… or discovered a new? This gentle romantic comedy about love, loss and hope is based on the old English folktale 'Mossycoat'.
Views: 845

A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder

A room of one's own: is there anybody who hasn't at one time or another wished for such a place, hasn't turned those soft words over until they'd assumed a habitable shape? When writer Michael Pollan decided to plant a garden, the result was an award-winning treatise on the borders between nature and contemporary life, the acclaimed bestseller Second Nature. Now Pollan turns his sharp insight to the craft of building, as he recounts the process of designing and constructing a small one-room structure on his rural Connecticut property--a place in which he hoped to read, write and daydream, built with his two own unhandy hands. Invoking the titans of architecture, literature and philosophy, from Vitrivius to Thoreau, from the Chinese masters of feng shui to the revolutionary Frank Lloyd Wright, Pollan brilliantly chronicles a realm of blueprints, joints and trusses as he peers into the ephemeral nature of "houseness" itself. From the spark of an idea to the search for a perfect site to the raising of a ridgepole, Pollan revels in the infinitely detailed, complex process of creating a finished structure. At once superbly written, informative and enormously entertaining, A Place of My Own is for anyone who has ever wondered how the walls around us take shape--and how we might shape them ourselves. A Place of My Own recounts his two-and-a-half-year journey of discovery in an absorbing narrative that deftly weaves the day-to-day work of design and building--from siting to blueprint, from the pouring of foundations to finish carpentry--with reflections on everything form the power of place to shape our lives to the question of what constitutes "real work" in a technological society. A book about craft that is itself beautifully crafted, linking the world of the body and material things with the realm of mind, heart, and spirit, A Place of My Own has received extraordinary praise.
Views: 839

The Devil Finds Work

James Baldwin At The Movies...  Provocative, timeless, brilliant. Bette Davis's eyes, Joan Crawford's bitchy elegance, Stepin Fetchit's stereotype, Sidney Poitier's superhuman black man...  These are the movie stars and the qualities that influenced James Baldwin...  and now become part of his incisive look at racism in American movies. Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist, offering us a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions.  Here are our loves and hates, biases and cruelties, fears and ignorance reflected by the films that have entertained us and shaped our consciousness.  And here, too, is the stunning prose of a writer whose passion never diminished his struggle for equality, justice, and social change. From The Birth of a Nation to The Exorcist--one of America's most important writers turns his critical eye to American film.
Views: 838

Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Milton

1st 14 pages are the introduction written by Brooks, Professor of English, Yale University. Poems cover 451 pages and prose consists of 256 pages. **
Views: 835

Everybody's Business Is Nobody's Business

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
Views: 832

The Wedding of Zein

“The Wedding of Zein” unfolds in the same village on the upper Nile where Tayeb Salih’s tragic masterpiece Season of Migration to the North is set. Here, however, the story that emerges through the overlapping, sometimes contradictory voices of the villagers is comic. Zein is the village idiot, and everyone in the village is dumbfounded when the news goes around that he will be getting married—Zein the freak, Zein who burst into laughter the moment he was born and has kept women and children laughing ever since, Zein who lost all his teeth at six and whose face is completely hairless, Zein married at last? Zein’s particular role in the life of the village has been the peculiar one of falling in love again and again with girls who promptly marry another man. It would be unheard of for him to get married himself. In Tayeb Salih’s wonderfully agile telling, the story of how this miracle came to be is one that engages the tensions that exist in the village, or indeed in any community: tensions between the devout and the profane, the poor and the propertied, the modern and the traditional. In the end, however, Zein’s ridiculous good luck augurs an ultimate reconciliation, opening a prospect of a world made whole. Salih’s classic novella appears here with two of his finest short stories, “The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid” and “A Handful of Dates.”
Views: 831

Our Lady of the Flowers

Jean Genet's seminal Our Lady Of The Flowers (1943) is generally considered to be his finest fictional work. The first draft was written while Genet was incarcerated in a French prison; when the manuscript was discovered and destroyed by officials, Genet, still a prisoner, immediately set about writing it again. It isn't difficult to understand how and why Genet was able to reproduce the novel under such circumstances, because Our Lady Of The Flowers is nothing less than a mythic recreation of Genet's past and then - present history. Combining memories with facts, fantasies, speculations, irrational dreams, tender emotion, empathy, and philosophical insights, Genet probably made his isolation bearable by retreating into a world not only of his own making, but one over which he had total control.
Views: 829

Nobody Knows My Name

Told with Baldwin's characteristically unflinching honesty, this collection of illuminating, deeply felt essays examines topics ranging from race relations in the United States to the role of the writer in society, and offers personal accounts of Richard Wright, Norman Mailer and other writers.
Views: 822

The Widower's New Bridegroom: A Modern Folktale

A melancholy young gay man marries a widower, and becomes intrigued by the idea of his dead predecessor: the man he would love to be, and even love to love...When shy, reticent Elias gets married to a dynamic older man, he hopes to say goodbye to his melancholy former life and make the most of their modern civil partnership. But soon he finds himself haunted by the beguiling idea of his dead predecessor: the man Elias would love to be, and even love to love.Inspired by Chaucer's medieval dream romances, this modern day folktale uses gothic themes to explore the differences between civil partnerships and traditional notions of love and marriage.
Views: 819

The Beauty Myth

The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity. In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."
Views: 806

Rival Brothers: A Mimetic View of East West Relations

A personal view of East-West relationship built from real life experience and filtered via the interpretation tools of Mimetic theory of Rene GirardYasmin Naylor should be happy. She had a wonderful summer. She is joining the Varsity cheerleaders this year, and her boyfriend, David, is a true gem. Unfortunately, Yasmin is anxious about this year and about life. She's trying to control her fears, but she can't help but think things are going to fall apart.Nicole Lawson is pretty unhappy. Though she is a parent's dream, she feels alone. She enjoys spending time with her best friend, Yasmin, but sometimes that isn't enough. Nicole wants to be known, liked, and befriended by her peers. She wants a boyfriend and the teen life she sees on TV. Now that she's officially sixteen, Nicole is allowed to date. She has her sights set on Kenneth, but she's much to shy to approach him. Can Nicole be the person she wants to be?Anya Dorn is bored. Her family moved to Virginia from Florida. Though her stepfather is alright and her new stepsister is adorable, Anya is nervous about being in a new school and a new place. When Anya meets David, the attraction is instant. Unfortunately, David has a girlfriend. Anya, never one to back down from what she wants, decides to go after David. Will she be able to break Yasmin and David up?
Views: 805

Emails from the Underground Lab

Scientific research can be hard enough without the added danger of zombies overrunning your lab, or someone tearing a hole in the fabric of space/time. Not to mention inconsiderate people throwing garbage down the bottomless pit. Luckily your new Occupational Health and Safety Officer is here to keep the risks to a minimum, so you can focus on the science, and not on the impending death.Scientific research can be hard enough without the added danger of zombies overrunning your lab, or someone tearing a hole in the fabric of space/time. Not to mention inconsiderate people throwing garbage down the bottomless pit. Luckily your new Occupational Health and Safety Officer is here to keep the risks to a minimum, so you can focus on the science, and not on the impending death.Presented here are the internal emails from the Henry Bishop Institute of Science, where OHS Officer Sarah Tanner does her best to ensure that when the question “What’s the worst that can happen?” is asked, the answer doesn’t have to be “Doom upon us all”.
Views: 804

History of the Plague in London

In 1701 Defoe published his "True-born Englishman," a satire upon the English people for their stupid opposition to the continental policy of the King. This is the only metrical composition of prolific Daniel that has any pretensions to be called a poem. It contains some lines not unworthy to rank with those of Dryden at his second-best. For instance, the opening:— "Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And \'twill be found upon examination The latter has the largest congregation.
Views: 802

The Immortal Nicholas

A thrilling new holiday novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Glenn Beck. BEFORE HE WAS FATHER CHRISTMAS…HE WAS SIMPLY A FATHER. Thirteen-time #1 national bestselling author Glenn Beck realized years ago that somewhere along the way, his four children had become more focused on Santa than the meaning of Christmas. No matter how he tried, he could not redirect their attention away from presents and elves to the manger instead. Glenn didn't want to be the Grinch who spoiled the magic of Kris Kringle, so he had to find a unique way to turn his kids back toward the true meaning of Christmas. He decided the best place to start was by first turning Santa himself back toward Christ. That was when one of America’s best storytellers began to craft a tale that would change everything his kids thought they knew about Santa—the incredible story he went on to tell them that Christmas Eve spans over a thousand years and explains the meaning behind the immortality and generosity of the man named Claus. The Immortal Nicholas has now been expanded and reimagined into this novel for adults; a novel full of drama, history, legend, and heart. From the snowy mountains of Western Asia, to the deserts of Egypt, to Yemen’s elusive frankincense-bearing boswellia trees, this is an epic tale that gives the legend of Santa a long overdue Christ-centered mission. In this novel, Glenn Beck fundamentally transforms the figure that the world now mainly associates with shopping, all while staying true to the real story of the baby who brought redemption and salvation to the entire world.
Views: 801