The name’s John Taylor. I work the garish streets of the Nightside—the hidden heart of London where it’s always three A.M., where in human creatures and otherworldly gods walk side by side in the endless darkness of the soul. I have a talent for finding things. People…property…no problem. But now I’m after something different. A local diva called the Nightingale has cut herself off from her family and friends, and I’ve been hired to find out the reason. I’m also wondering why her suicide—prone fans think she has a voice to die for. Literally. To get the truth, I’ll have to lend an ear to the most enticingly beautiful and deadly voice in all of the Nightside—and survive.

In the Nightside, that nightmarish realm hidden deep beneath London, it is forever 3 a.m. Here inhuman creatures walk beside mythic gods. And John Taylor, private detective with a difference, is back, working this secret supernatural heart of London to find an item of inestimable value. The Unholy Grail is missing . . . and everyone wants its corrosive power. This time he must use his unique gifts to locate the cup from which Judas drank at the Last Supper; before it falls into the wrong hands. Anyone who touches the cup will gain tremendous power - but they will also be corrupted. Angels, demons, sinners and saints are all determined to find the Unholy Grail, no matter what the cost. And it isn't long before they realise exactly who can lead them to it . . . Agents of Light and Darkness is the sequel to Something From the Nightside and the second title in Simon R. Green's New York Times bestselling Nightside series.

Now in one volume-the first three novels of the Nightside from the New York Times bestselling author. John Taylor was born in the Nightside-a city within the city of London where it's always three A.M. and where inhuman creatures and otherworldly gods walk side-by-side. It's the stomping grounds for the lost and missing-and John Taylor is an expert at finding people and things in the shadows.

The only generic and diachronic study of learned and popular lament and its socio-cultural contexts throughout Greek tradition in which a great diversity of sources are integrated to offer a comprehensive and penetrating synthesis.

Where does music come from? What kind of agency does a song have? What is at the root of musical pleasure? Can music die? These are some of the questions the Greeks and the Romans asked about music, song, and the soundscape within which they lived, and that this book examines. Focusing on mythical narratives of metamorphosis, it investigates the aesthetic and ontological questions raised by fantastic stories of musical origins. Each chapter opens with an ancient text devoted to a musical metamorphosis (of a girl into a bird, a nymph into an echo, men into cicadas, etc.) and reads that text as a meditation on an aesthetic and ontological question, in dialogue with 'contemporary' debates – contemporary with debates in the Greco-Roman culture that gave rise to the story, and with modern debates in the posthumanities about what it means to be a human animal enmeshed in a musicking environment.

Birds pervaded the ancient world. They impressed their physical presence on the daily experience and imaginations of ordinary people in town and country alike, and figured prominently in literature and art. They also provided a fertile source of symbols and stories in their myths and folklore, and were central to the ancient rituals of augury and divination. Jeremy Mynott's Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words brings together all this rich and fascinating material for the modern reader. Using quotations from well over a hundred classical Greek and Roman authors, all of them translated freshly into English, and nearly a hundred illustrations from ancient wall-paintings, pottery, and mosaics, Birds in the Ancient World illustrates the many different roles birds played in popular culture: as indicators of time, weather, and the seasons; as a resource for hunting, eating, medicine, and farming; as domestic pets and entertainments; and as omens and intermediaries between the gods and humankind. There are also selections from early scientific writings about birds, as well as many anecdotes and descriptions from works of history, geography, and travel. Jeremy Mynott acts as a stimulating guide to this varied material, using birds as a prism through which to explore both the similarities and the often surprising differences between ancient conceptions of the natural world and our own. His book is an original contribution to the flourishing interest in the cultural history of birds and to our understanding of the ancient cultures in which birds played such a prominent part.