What was the real nature of medieval lordship in southern Italy? What can this region and its history bring to the great European debates on feudalism and aristocratic powers, their structures and evolution, and their social and economic impact? What contribution can the Kingdom of Sicily make to studies of the relationships between sovereigns, nobilities and peasant societies? And can the study of seigneurial powers and rural societies reshape the old arguments regarding the economic backwardness of the Mezzogiorno (the South of Italy) and the central role of its monarchy? This book offers the first systematic analysis of lordship in southern Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under the Norman, Staufen and early Angevin kings. It offers new interpretations of the powers of the nobility, and of rural societies and royal policy. It reveals the complexity of interactions between the king, nobles and peasants, and how they occurred and were expressed through laws and violence, feudal relations and economic investments, debates on freedom and serfdom, and the exploitation of people and natural resources. In these interactions a leading role is played by peasant societies - with previously unsuspected levels of dynamism - to set against that of the kings, who were determined to curb aristocratic powers, and of the nobles who were obliged to adapt their lordship in response to powerful rural societies and crown policies. What emerges is a hitherto unseen Mezzogiorno, vital and complex, whose study allows a deeper understanding not only of the affairs of the South but of many other regions of Europe.

Hot Stone Massage: A Three-Dimensional Approach, by Leslie Bruder, is a user-friendly, easy-to-follow manual designed to teach professional massage therapists how to give a safe, effective, and artful hot stone massage. The book covers every aspect of administering a hot stone massage including the many types of stones along with their geological origin, equipment and accessories needed, room set up, benefits and precautions, diseases and conditions to avoid, physiological effects of heat and cold, effective stone temperatures, diagrams for stone placement, creative massage techniques, and a novel system for optimal stone management and flow. The book's centerpiece is a unique three-dimensional approach to hot stone massage, which involves working on both sides of the body at once, removing stones from beneath clients without their involvement, and transitioning seamlessly from one body part to another.

After the harrowing experience of losing his mother while solving a brutal murder in London’s East End, young Sherlock Holmes commits himself to fighting crime … and is soon involved in another case. While visiting his father at the magnificent Crystal Palace, Sherlock stops to watch a remarkable and dangerous trapeze performance high above, framed by the stunning glass ceiling of the legendary building. Suddenly, the troupe’s star is dropping, screaming and flailing, toward the floor. He lands with a sickening thud just a few feet away, and rolls up almost onto the boy’s boots. Unconscious and bleeding profusely, his body is grotesquely twisted. In the mayhem that follows, Sherlock notices something that no one else sees — something is amiss with the trapeze bar! He knows that foul play is afoot. What he doesn’t know is that his discovery will put him on a frightening, twisted trail that leads to an entire gang of notorious criminals. Wrapped in the fascinating world of Victorian entertainment, its dangerous performances, and London’s dark underworld, Death in the Air raises The Boy Sherlock Holmes to a whole new level. Be sure not to miss Eye of the Crow, The Boy Sherlock Holmes, His First Case.

This work is the winner of the American Historical Association Marraro Prize, 1988. "The Mountains and the City" is a rare discussion in English of the history of a region of Europe, a genre common in other countries but undeveloped in Britain. The book deals with two mountain valleys in Tuscany from the eight to the twelfth century, with some examination of their future progress into the sixteenth. It charts their internal social and economic development and their links with the emerging world of the Italian city states. The importance of the book is in its stress on the small-scale society of the mountains; on the relation of local society to its geographical environment; and, above all, in its concern to see society from below, through the activities of local people, rather than through the interests of their masters. In its focus on local interaction, this is one of the few anthropological studies of medieval history that has yet been written