In this unusual version of a folktale favorite, Jude Daly introduces readers to a beautiful young woman named Trembling, her selfish sisters Fair and Brown, and the old henwife who changes everything.

“I will give you a finer dress than either of your sisters has ever seen.” More beautiful than her two elder sisters, Trembling is not allowed to go out of the house for fear that she might marry before them. Even after the Prince of Omanya falls in love with the eldest, she fears their wrath if she should attend church. However, with the magical assistance of an unassuming henwife, Trembling is able to wear such finery and arrive in such style that not even her sisters recognise her. As word of the mysterious beautiful lady spreads throughout the world, princes and great men come to see her and gain her hand. When one suitor gains the means to identify her by way of a lost shoe, the search is on, but who will succeed in discovering her true identity and what will it mean for Trembling and her sisters? More than a Cinderella story, this Irish fairytale continues beyond the shoe test, beyond the wedding vows. To discover whether Trembling prevails against all that lies in store for her, look no further than this latest adaption. [Folklore Type: ATU-510A (The Persecuted Heroine)]

And so it was that when he met Aoife, a stranger to those parts, he was struck by her beauty and blind to her evil.

Combining theology, politics and historical analysis, “theorizes what might be at stake—ethically—for America’s current political life” (Andrew Taylor, Journal of American History). Conventional wisdom holds that attempts to combine religion and politics will produce unlimited violence. Concepts such as jihad, crusade, and sacrifice need to be rooted out, the story goes, for the sake of more bounded and secular understandings of violence. Ted Smith upends this dominant view, drawing on Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, and others to trace the ways that seemingly secular politics produce their own forms of violence without limit. He brings this argument to life—and digs deep into the American political imagination—through a string of surprising reflections on John Brown, the nineteenth-century abolitionist who took up arms against the state in the name of a higher law. Smith argues that the key to limiting violence is not its separation from religion, but its connection to richer and more critical modes of religious reflection. Weird John Brown develops a negative political theology that challenges both the ways we remember American history and the ways we think about the nature, meaning, and exercise of violence. “Powerfully combines theology and political theory. . . . Recommended.” —R. J. Meagher, Choice “Smith illustrates how an ethical and philosophical reading of history can help us to better understand the world we live in.” —Franklin Rausch, New Books in Christian Studies “A brilliantly original and compelling book.” —John Stauffer, Harvard University “A very sophisticated philosophical and theological reflection on John Brown and the question of divine violence.” —Willie James Jennings, Duke University

This is a retelling of "Cinderella," the fairy tale of a girl mistreated by her stepsisters and stepmother but helped by her fairy godmother to meet a handsome prince.

Sivu, an African stonecarver, is not paid well for his work, but through his wishes to become more powerful and live as different people, like the mayor, and things, like the wind, he discovers where real power lies.