Our so-called 'hero' Oily Gasbag is a large, clumsy, rather daft goblin with a firm belief that he is handsome and that all the young pretty faeries and elves are in awe of him. They ain’t! Very few females like him, apart from one: a youngish witch who hails from Vienna whose name is Frieda Hasbug. Her sniffy older sister, Hattie has little time for Oily; she has little time for anyone. Nevertheless, she agrees to help her sister conjure up a dark magic potion that will turn Oily’s dancing skills from that of a deranged hippopotamus into a champion ballroom performer. It all begins at the local fair in Smelly Welly, Nonsenseshire. He barges into a group of dancing faeries and elves and tries to dance with the beautiful elf, Su Fa Su Gut who pushes him away. When he is thrown out of the fair, he decides to learn to dance but unfortunately for him, the schools he tries do not want him! Luckily Frieda has a plan, a dancing contest where they will enter as a couple. Will they prove everyone wrong and win? Or is Oily destined to have two left feet forever?

As mesmerizing as a tale from the lips of Sheherazade, Gazelle traces the story of Elizabeth, a thirteen-year-old American girl whose adolescent passion is awakened in the exotic climate of 1950s Cairo. While her mother–whose beauty and sexual prowess both frighten and fascinate Elizabeth–moves into a hotel to pursue a string of lovers, her father, a historian, loses himself in a world of chess and toy soldiers. Elizabeth’s imagination, primed by an explicit edition of The Arabian Nights, leads her to fantasies about her father’s friend, a gentle, older man named Ramses Ragab, a perfume maker who visits their house regularly to play games of war and who opens her up to the mystery of hieroglyphics and the art of exotic scents.

The summer of 1799 saw a new fad take root in a certain circle of British society: the inhalation of nitrous oxide, also known as "laughing gas." The pioneer of these experiments was a young Humphry Davy, future President of the Royal Society, whose descriptions of being under the influence, as well as those penned by his clique, are among the most remarkable in the history of science. From its subsequent use in "laughing gas shows" through to its eventual employment in anaesthetics, the "delectable air" would go on to inspire more than a century of extraordinary writings that combined the scientific, the poetic, and the philosophical in a wholly new way. This volume collects the most striking examples of both these first-hand accounts and the secondary literature they spawned, including writings by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, William James, and Theodore Dreiser. Far from the images of balloon-huffing festival-goers and post-dental nonsense that nitrous oxide tends to conjure today, this unique anthology reveals the fascinating pedigree of the gas - a history at the very heart of the Romantic movement and one of the great early blooms of psychedelic literature. In addition to the historical texts, the volume boasts a new introductory essay by Mike Jay and an extensive selection of images, including instructional material from early anaesthetic handbooks, and satirical prints from the likes of James Gilray and George Cruikshank.

From New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke comes his definitive, must-read first title in his famous Dectective David Robicheaux series. New Orleans Detective Dave Robicheaux has fought too many battles: in Vietnam, with police brass, with killers and hustlers, and the bottle. Lost without his wife's love, Robicheaux haunts the intense and heady French Quarter—the place he calls home, and the place that nearly destroys him when he beomes involved in the case of a young prostitute whose body is found in a bayou. Thrust into the seedy world of drug lords and arms smugglers, Robicheaux must face down the criminal underworld and come to terms with his own bruised heart and demons to survive.

A Midwestern physician is forced to give up his profession due to the ignorance, corruption, and greed of society.

The further adventures of David Innes and Abner Perry at the Earth's core. We learn of new developments occuring in Pellucidar, including the capture of Tanar the Fleet One by the piratical Korsars, together with picturesque details about the lovely Stellara of the Island of Amiocap, Bohar the Bloody, and others, as well as reptilian monsters.