A new story collection from “one of Europe’s most exciting writers” (New York Times Book Review) deftly evokes and explores the shifts that occur when the world grows dark. Snowed in at a remote artists’ residency in Vermont, Peter recalls another Christmas some thirty years earlier, when he met Marcia by chance on a trip to New York City. Only now, in this eerie, isolated place, does he begin to see the consequences of their brief affair through a series of connections. When Hubert asks Sabrina to model for a sculpture, she’s flattered and happy to help. But facing the finished product, looking at herself from previously hidden angles, disturbs her, and she becomes determined to follow her double after it’s sold to a collector. Uneasy in his own skin and with the humdrum life set out for him, David decides to rob a bank. He already has a mask for the purpose, but won’t be using it today. He’s heard that bank robbers often study the scene for weeks before they strike. So he’s started to lurk. We think we know our world, but then the familiar suddenly turns strange, and even frightening. In these powerfully affecting, minutely constructed stories, Peter Stamm illustrates how fragile our reality really is, how susceptible to tricks of the heart and mind.

A military attack drone turned shepherd. A train on the London Underground evolving into something new and wondrous. A troupe of robotic actors struggling to find meaning when the audience has disappeared. Explore the myriad ideas of what happens when out-of-date and abandoned technologies are given a second life—one that takes them in a new direction, far outside their intended programming and beyond their original purpose. MY BATTERY IS LOW AND IT IS GETTING DARK features fourteen stories of quiet hope, heartbreak, creation, and death from fantasy and science fiction authors Dana Berube, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor, Jacey Bedford, Anthony Lowe, Chris Kocher, Brian Hugenbruch, William Leisner, José Pablo Iriarte, Alethea Kontis, Kari Sperring, Edward Willett, John G. Hartness, Alexander Gideon, and Stephen Leigh. You may never look at your smart speaker the same way again.

You feel wide awake and don't want to sleep. You're supposed to be quiet without making a peep. While you lay in your bed staring at the ceiling, wide eyed, Mom comes to your room and sits by your side. My sweet little one, you say that you're bored, But your dreams are the things that will open your world. Get ready to see just how much you can do, When you drift off to sleep, and it's all up to you!

Our journey begins in a mystical realm called Mjornia. It lies in the darkest, farthest, most forgotten corner of existence just between the imagination and reality. Yet it violently flourishes with life. It is a plane of existence where thoughts, emotions, and even consciousness can affect the physical world and manifest around you whether you are aware of its presence or not. It is overflowing with magic, enchantment, and sheer fantasy around every turn and where, in some areas, nothing imaginable is impossible. While lush green forests and hills are the dominant nature for the most part, there are several places in Mjornia that are not so fortunateplaces that are beyond the reaches of what is considered safe and habitable lands like the swamps and marshes of Morvoria. Anyone that foolishly wandered in or around that place is neither seen nor heard from again. Then there is the far northeastern Kjolferdorn mountains. Beaten weekly with snowstorms, it is also home to some of the deepest ravines and crevices in all Mjornia. It has openings that stretched deep beneath the surface where numerous large caverns lie. Some stretched on for miles where none dare tread. Others led to ruined underground fortresses made entirely from clear quartz crystals along with other precious gems and minerals. Relics were formed by the most skilled enchanters and crafters in Mjornias ancient past. No matter where you find yourself in Mjornia, magic is inescapable, and the allure of such a place mesmerizes you with beauty and wonder. But for now, our story starts simple. It begins with the most innocent form in all Mjorniaa child. However, in this case, its actually several children who must discover their purpose and how it affects everything that exists in this realm, before all is lost.

First published in 1980, this book provides a clear and practical introduction to a wide variety of English structures. It concentrates on a large and crucial area of English grammar, which covers units of higher rank than words, and structures that have verbs rather than nouns as their nuclear elements. Throughout the book, David Young focuses on the English language as it is actually spoken. At every point his discussion of syntax is closely integrated with meaning, and he pays particular attention to the ways in which speakers of English signal their intensions. The author points out how verbal patterning is meaningful, and outlines the criteria used by grammarians to distinguish one structure from another. The result is an analytical framework that can be applied to any real-life text in order to understand its structure. This is a book that will encourage a realistic, exploratory and investigative attitude towards the English language.

William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century is the definitive book on Burroughs’ overarching cut-up project and its relevance to the American twentieth century. Burroughs’s Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, Nova Express, and The Ticket That Exploded) remains the best-known of his textual cut-up creations, but he committed more than a decade of his life to searching out multimedia for use in works of collage. By cutting up, folding in, and splicing together newspapers, magazines, letters, book reviews, classical literature, audio recordings, photographs, and films, Burroughs created an eclectic and wide-ranging countercultural archive. This collection includes previously unpublished work by Burroughs such as cut-ups of work written by his son, cut-ups of critical responses to his own work, collages on the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, excerpts from his dream journals, and some of the few diary entries that Burroughs wrote about his wife, Joan. William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century also features original essays, interviews, and discussions by established Burroughs scholars, respected artists, and people who encountered Burroughs. The essays consider Burroughs from a range of starting points—literary studies, media studies, popular culture, gender studies, post-colonialism, history, and geography. Ultimately, the collection situates Burroughs as a central artist and thinker of his time and considers his insights on political and social problems that have become even more dire in ours.

Life Writing in the Posthuman Anthropocene is a timely collection of insightful contributions that negotiate how the genre of life writing, traditionally tied to the human perspective and thus anthropocentric qua definition, can provide adequate perspectives for an age of ecological disasters and global climate change. The volume’s eight chapters illustrate the aptness of life writing and life writing studies to critically reevaluate the role of “the human” vis-à-vis non-human others while remaining mindful of persisting inequalities between humans regarding who causes and who suffers damage in the Anthropocene age. The authors in this collection not only expand the toolbox of life writing studies by engaging with critical insights from the fields of posthumanism and ecocriticism, but, in turn, also enrich those fields by offering unique approaches to contemplate the responsibility of humans for as well as their relational existence in the posthuman Anthropocene.