The winding plot of this occult fiction turns sharply on a generations-old battle between two powerful families in the small Southern town of Whiskey Springs. There the inhabitants are being manipulated by a dark force that's driving its victims to the local funeral parlor.

Li Bo (701-762) has long inspired controversy among readers and critics. Known even during his lifetime as the "Banished Immortal," he continues to spark imaginations and challenge passionately held convictions about poetic values. In this lucid and gracefully written volume, Paula Varsano presents the first full-length study of Li Bo in English in half a century and the first extended look at the poet's critical reception. Persuaded that the essence of his poetry lay well beyond the reach of the usual modes of study and description, readers from the ninth to the twentieth century developed a particularly dynamic critical language. Varsano shows how this language, evolving out of the critical concepts of "emptiness" and "substance," answered the need to conceptualize shifting parameters of poetic creativity over hundreds of years. At the same time, she offers an account of Li Bo's entry into the canon and asks how this in turn transformed both the reception of his work and the transmission of his poetic persona. This story of Li Bo's critical reception and canonization is propelled by the malleable and elusive ideal of the "ancient." And so, Varsano devotes the second part of her study to the poems themselves, investigating those poetic manifestations of ancientness that translated into the enduring figure of the Banished Immortal.

How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context is an introduction to the golden age of Chinese poetry, spanning the earliest times through the Tang dynasty (618–907). It aims to break down barriers—between language and culture, poetry and history—that have stood in the way of teaching and learning Chinese poetry. Not only a primer in early Chinese poetry, the volume demonstrates the unique and central role of poetry in the making of Chinese culture. Each chapter focuses on a specific theme to show the interplay between poetry and the world. Readers discover the key role that poetry played in Chinese diplomacy, court politics, empire building, and institutionalized learning; as well as how poems shed light on gender and women’s status, war and knight-errantry, Daoist and Buddhist traditions, and more. The chapters also show how people of different social classes used poetry as a means of gaining entry into officialdom, creating self-identity, fostering friendship, and airing grievances. The volume includes historical vignettes and anecdotes that contextualize individual poems, investigating how some featured texts subvert and challenge the grand narratives of Chinese history. Presenting poems in Chinese along with English translations and commentary, How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context unites teaching poetry with the social circumstances surrounding its creation, making it a pioneering and versatile text for the study of Chinese language, literature, history, and culture.

“Terry Johnston is an authentic American treasure.”—Loren D. Estleman, author of Edsel As swirling snows fall from a leaden sky and a deadly winter approaches, two bitter enemies meet in a season of savage vengeance. Scout Seasmus Donegan—wondering whether he will ever return to Fort Laramie and the warm embrace of his wife and newborn son—is now under the command of Colonel Nelson A. Miles, who pushes his war-weary troops up the Tongue River into butte country. There, amid the rugged, snow-covered bluffs awaits Crazy Horse with a fighting force of Lakota braves one thousand strong. Gathering in the high, cold canyons, these courageous warriors prepare to engage Colonel Miles and the Fifth U.S. Infantry . . . one last chance for the proud Lakota to shape their own destiny, the last battle Crazy Horse will ever fight against the white man’s army.

With beautiful visuals in the form of info-graphics, 3D illustrations, cutaways and renderings, How the Universe Works offers a tiny glimpse of the massive stretch of the universe.