When irascible farmer Guy Beardon meets a very dirty death in his own farmyard, at first it seems like an accident - despite the fact that he was widely disliked. Only his daughter Lilah is prepared to defend his memory. And when, slowly, Lilah begins to suspect foul play, no one is eager to help her investigate. Suspicion becomes certainty when two more deaths occur - and both of them are unmistakably murder. The difficulty lies in discovering who, among Guy's many enemies, hated him enough to want him dead - and who went on killing to conceal the truth. There is certainly no shortage of suspects and it falls to local policeman Den Cooper to investigate the mysterious deaths.

The Art of Suicide is a history of the visual representation of suicide from the ancient world to its decriminalization in the 20th century. After looking at instances of voluntary death in ancient Greece, Ron Brown discusses the contrast between the extraordinary absence of such events in early Christianity and the proliferation of images of biblical suicides in the late medieval era. He emphasizes how differing attitudes to suicide in the early modern world slowly merged, and pays particular attention to the one-time chasm between so-called heroic suicide and self-destruction as a "crying crime". Brown tracks the changes surrounding the perception of suicide into the pivotal Romantic era, with its notions of the "man of feeling", ready to hurl himself into the abyss over a woman or an unfinishable poem. After the First World War, the meaning of death and attitudes towards suicide changed radically, and in time this led to its decriminalization. The 20th century in fact witnessed a growing ambivalence towards suicidal acts, which today are widely regarded either as expressions of a death-wish or as cries for help. Brown concludes with Warhol's picture of Marilyn Monroe and the videos taken by the notorious Dr Kevorkian.

The uncertainty of ones life and the inevitability of death is a dilemma that has tormented the human mind in all ages. One way of resolving the conundrum has been to imagine, if not firmly believe, that the individual self is immortal and deathless, notwithstanding the fact that the physical body must perish. If nothing, it weans one away from the fear of death towards an earnest hope in a blissful afterlife. Living in Death is a scholarly critique on the death poetry of Emily Dickinson and T. S. Eliot. By deftly comparing their styles, diction, and motifs, Dr. T. D. Peter unravels the beauty of contemplating and courting the compelling presence of death as an unshakeable ontological reality. The author looks through the mirror of the death poetry of two signature poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesthe former, an inimitable and indwelling poetic genius who defies classification and transcends time and trends; the latter, a trail-blazing and celebrated scion of modern classical poetry who impresses with his erudition and edification, imagism, and symbolism. He finds more by way of contrast than similarity in their strikingly opposite life lines and, no less, to their varying allegiance to faith and reason, religion and spirituality.

A century after Leo Tolstoy's death, the author of War and Peace is widely admired but too often thought of only with reference to his realism and moral sense. The many sides of Tolstoy revealed in these essays speak to readers with astonishing force, relevance, and complexity. In a lively, challenging style, leading scholars range over his long life, from his first work Childhood to the works of his old age like Hadji Murat, and the many genres in which he worked, from the major novels to aphorisms and short stories. The essays present fresh approaches to his central themes: love, death, religious faith and doubt, violence, the animal kingdom, and war. They also assess his reception both in his lifetime and subsequently. Setting new agendas for the study of this classic author, this volume provides a snapshot of more current scholarship on Tolstoy.

Kickass Magical Enforcement Agent Kate Prospero must balance a dangerous Brazilian cartel, her troubled teenage brother, and a complex chemistry with her partner in this gritty fantasy thriller. After the grisly murder of a dirty magic coven leader, Kate and The Magical Enforcement Agency team up with the local police to find the killer. When a tenacious reporter sticks her nose in both the investigation and Prospero's past in the covens, old ghosts resurface. As the infighting between covens turns ugly, an all-out war brews in the slums of Babylon. Deadly Spells is the third novel in the Prospero's War urban fantasy series that started with Dirty Magic and Cursed Moon.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, and freely available to read online. Peter Robinson’s new book provides a practical contribution for anyone considering how to prepare for their end of life, including those from LGBTQ+ communities.

A brand-new collection of twelve short stories, featuring the popular characters from Rebecca Tope's Cotswold mystery novels. A suspicious funeral, a fatal encounter at a garden centre of all places, and a country walk marred by the discovery of a hidden corpse, are just some of the perplexing situations with which Thea Osborne, her friends and a further cast of characters must contend. In this expanded view of the world of her popular books, Tope reminds us that death and crime will visit even the most idyllic country villages.