Bethany Blake, author of the nationally bestselling Lucky Paws Petsitting Mysteries, launches a charming new spinoff mystery series featuring an artist and art teacher with a magical gift for solving murders. Near the creek that runs behind her Pennsylvania house, Willow Bellamy has converted an old barn into an art school--though the place does still have some animal inhabitants, including Rembrandt, the owl who lives up in the rafters. And while it's important for any artist to have a vision, Willow can sometimes see things others can't, just like her mother and grandmother before her. Not that she would exactly call herself a witch... When some local merchants gather in the studio for a painting party, they focus their attention on a still life with flowers and an assortment of garden tools, including antique pruning shears that disappear--at the same time despised restaurant owner Evangeline Fletcher is murdered. Willow must use all her gifts to find the killer, although it means teaming up with a handsome, mysterious detective whom Willow fears she may have accidentally conjured from a canvas. This investigation is sure to be a hoot...

It’s time for Sylvan Creek’s annual “Chili for Dogs” charity event—and when Daphne Templeton-Black’s father, Ben, rolls into town with his food truck and his faithful mutt, it’s sure to spice up the Memorial Day weekend. But another kind of memorial is in the cards when Ben’s business partner downs some poisoned chili. As if Daphne didn’t have enough family commitments helping her pregnant sister, now she has to figure out who had a beef with the victim and clear her father of murder. And as she peppers witnesses and suspects with questions, she’s worried that if she can’t get someone to spill the beans, her efforts won’t amount to a hill of beans . . . Includes recipes for homemade pet treats! “Doggone charming from start to finish!” —Cleo Coyle, New York Times bestselling author on Death by Chocolate Lab

“I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply, for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs.” —Flannery O’Connor When she was young, the writer Flannery O’Connor was captivated by the chickens in her yard. She’d watch their wings flap, their beaks peck, and their eyes glint. At age six, her life was forever changed when she and a chicken she had been training to walk forwards and backwards were featured in the Pathé News, and she realized that people want to see what is odd and strange in life. But while she loved birds of all varieties and kept several species around the house, it was the peacocks that came to dominate her life. Written by Amy Alznauer with devotional attention to all things odd and illustrated in radiant paint by Ping Zhu, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor explores the beginnings of one author’s lifelong obsession. Amy Alznauer lives in Chicago with her husband, two children, a dog, a parakeet, sometimes chicks, and a part-time fish, but, as of today, no elephants or peacocks. Ping Zhu is a freelance illustrator who has worked with clients big and small, won some awards based on the work she did for aforementioned clients, attracted new clients with shiny awards, and is hoping to maintain her livelihood in Brooklyn by repeating that cycle.

"The story traces the lives and techniques of Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon, RipKirby), Stan Drake (Juliet Jones), Hal Foster (Prince Valiant), and more, dissecting their techniques through recreations of their artwork,and highlighting the metatextual resonances that bind them together"--Page 4 of cove

For centuries Italy has been the destination of a lifetime for an endless stream of travellers. This book – focussing on the experience of contemporary Australian intellectuals – explores an aspect as of yet scarcely studied within the global phenomenon of travel to Italy, and discovers an image of the country starkly different from the one that prevailed in previous writings. From the beginning of the 1990s onwards there has been a sizeable output of books by Australian writers set in or about Italy. After a meticulous examination of these works, Roberta Trapè has selected and analysed those that she considers the most interesting examples of Australians’ continuing fascination with Italy – works of Jeffrey Smart and Shirley Hazzard, and of Robert Dessaix and Peter Robb. Examining the ways the four authors describe Italian places, Imaging Italy looks into what it is that continues to attract Australian writers and artists to the country, and tries to detect new trends in their attitude towards it. The image of Italy that emerges from the most recent works is, no doubt, a superb picture – not flattering but certainly not false – of its contemporary times.

The industry-standard manual for aspiring inkers and working professionals returns in a new expanded edition. Gain insights into the techniques, tools, and approaches of some of the finest ink artists in comics, including Terry Austin, Mark Farmer, Scott Williams, Alex Garner, and many more. This expanded edition features new art and text by author Gary Martin and a bonus chapter on digital inking by artist Leo Vitalis. Also included are eight full-sized blue-lined art boards featuring pencil art by top comics illustrators, present and past, to use for practice or as samples to show editors and publishers. Along with pen, brush, and stylus, no inking tool is more useful than The Art of Comic-Book Inking.

In the beginning was the night. All light, shapes, language, and subjective consciousness, as well as the world and art depicting them, emerged from this formless chaos. In fantasy, we seek to return to this original darkness. Particularly in literature, visual representations, and film, the night resiliently resurfaces from the margins of the knowable, acting as a stage and state of mind in which exceptional perceptions, discoveries, and decisions play out. Elisabeth Bronfen investigates the nocturnal spaces in which extraordinary events unfold, and casts a critical eye into the darkness that enables the irrational exploration of desire, transformation, ecstasy, transgression, spiritual illumination, and moral choice. She begins with an analysis of classical myths depicting the creation of the world and then moves through night scenes in Shakespeare and Milton, Gothic novels and novellas, Hegel's romantic philosophy, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Bronfen also demonstrates how modern works of literature and film, particularly film noir, can convey that piece of night the modern subject carries within. From Mozart's "Queen of the Night" to Virginia Woolf 's oscillation between day and night, life and death, and chaos and aesthetic form, Bronfen renders something visible, conceivable, and comprehensible from the dark realms of the unknown.