Plague is a terrifying mystery. In the Middle Ages, it wiped out 40 million people -- 40 percent of the total population in Europe. Seven hundred years earlier, the Justinian Plague destroyed the Byzantine Empire and ushered in the Middle Ages. The plague of London in the seventeenth century killed more than 1,000 people a day. In the early twentieth century, plague again swept Asia, taking the lives of 12 million in India alone. Even more frightening is what it could do to us in the near future. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian scientists created genetically altered, antibiotic-resistant and vaccine-resistant strains of plague that can bypass the human immune system and spread directly from person to person. These weaponized strains still exist, and they could be replicated in almost any laboratory. Wendy Orent's Plague pieces together a fascinating and terrifying historical whodunit. Drawing on the latest research in labs around the world, along with extensive interviews with American and Soviet plague experts, Orent offers nothing less than a biography of a disease. Plague helped bring down the Roman Empire and close the Middle Ages; it has had a dramatic impact on our history, yet we still do not fully understand its own evolution. Orent's retelling of the four great pandemics makes for gripping reading and solves many puzzles. Why did some pandemics jump from person to person, while others relied on insects as carriers? Why are some strains more virulent than others? Orent reveals the key differences among rat-based, prairie dog-based, and marmot-based plague. The marmots of Central Asia, in particular, have long been hosts to the most virulent and frightening form of the disease, a form that can travel around the world in the blink of an eye. From its ability to hide out in the wild, only to spring back into humanity with a terrifying vengeance, to its elusive capacity to develop suddenly greater virulence and transmissibility, plague is a protean nightmare. To make matters worse, Orent's disturbing revelations about the former Soviet bioweapon programs suggest that the nightmare may not be over. Plague is chilling reading at the dawn of a new age of bioterrorism.

Fourteen-year-old Beth Johnson is a talented and beautiful young actress. She is also a spy. It's the summer of 1665, and the horrific Plague is overwhelming London. With so many dead and dying, the King's Master of Secrets, Alan Strange, must entrust Beth with her most important mission yet. With pestilence all around her, will Beth survive long enough to discover who is behind the latest conspiracy to kill the King?

PLAGUEBORNE contains the first two books in the epic Plagueborne Trilogy. THE RITUALA devastating plague is sweeping the continent of Greater Virren...Its origin is unknown, its dominance of the land near complete. In times of grim desperation, pestilence has given way to superstition, and the citizenry are now more divided than ever.Yet the city of Rothenberg remains inexplicably untouched...The Council has grown convinced of their immunity, even as their neighbours are consumed before them. As the world teeters on the brink of collapse, a zealous religious order has re-emerged. They claim to have discovered the source of the plague... but can they be trusted?The plague will never reach Rothenberg... Katarina Lorenz, a noble of the city and veteran of the civil war that shook the continent, remains unconvinced. She conspires to leave the city with her companion Tannhauser, to find out what's really going on beyond its walls.THE RITUAL is the first in a trilogy of gripping high-fantasy novelettes. The debut possesses all the beloved hallmarks fans of the genre will recognise, but is distinguished by its gritty atmosphere and confrontation with some of the most unsettling chapters of human history.THE ZEALOT Greater Virren teeters on the brink of collapse...The continent writhes in the throes of a deadly plague. Great cities have fallen into ruin, and bands of godless marauders stalk the lands unopposed. As the survivors emerge, it seems the whole world has taken one final breath before the plunge into darkness absolute.The Whispered Words of a Witch...Far afield from the fires of Lunburrow, its intended victim vanished, Katarina and Tannhauser bear west in search of "the source." With the stakes higher than ever, they must contend with cunning members of the provinces' crumbling upper crust, the threat of infection, and forces altogether more ancient and powerful than they can as yet conceive.The Wolf at Their Heels...Wrenched from the jaws of death, Ezekiel lives. With renewed vigour, and an unlikely companion, he dogs their every step in relentless pursuit of vindication-and vengeance.The sequel to The Ritual, the gripping inauguration of Mitchell Lüthi's Plagueborne Trilogy, The Zealot builds upon the intrigue, suspense, and gritty realism that made the debut so enjoyable. The latest addition to an exhilarating fantasy series, The Zealot is a must-read for fans of character-driven stories and heart-racing action sequences.

The colonial administration passed a Factory Act in 1881, producing the first official definition of ‘factory’ in modern Indian history—as a workplace using steam power and regularly employing over 100 workers. In 1891, the Act was amended: factories were redefined as workplaces employing over 50 workers; the upper age limit of legal ‘protection’ was raised; weekly holidays were established; and women mill-workers were brought within its ambit. Sarkar analyses the two versions of the Act and reveals the tensions inherent within the project of protective labour regulation. Combining legal and social history, he identifies an emergent ‘factory question’. The cotton mill industry of Bombay, long considered as one of the birthplaces of modern Indian capitalism, is the principal focal point of his investigation. Factory law, though experienced as a minor official initiative, connected with some of the most potent ideological debates of the age. Trouble at the Mill explores a shifting set of themes and raises questions rarely thematized by labour historians—the ideologies of factory reform, the politics of factory commissions, the routines of factory inspection, and the earliest waves of strike action in the cotton textile industry in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Medical Entomology has in course of time undergone a transformation from a mere traditional knowledge of the discipline to the one that stresses emphatically on harvesting a plethora of insects' infinite 'biomedical' properties. Our familiarity with the medically important insects and other arthropods has, therefore, been expanded in this book to explore unlimited biomedical significance of these tiny yet most successful creatures on earth with about four million species. In addition to having a first-hand information on the pestilent/ vectorial importance of arthropods, particularly various vector-borne infections, an ingenious attempt has been made to unveil their medicinal value in different contexts. Having au fait with the fact that environment plays a key role in regulating disease epidemiology of a given vector-borne infection, adequate emphasis is laid to trace the various pathways governing the linkages amongst the vector-pathogen-host triad. The book offers a detailed account of various poisonous and injurious arthropods, along with the venoms' action on the human being. The book should hopefully serve a good purpose to both the students of zoology and medicine as well as professional researchers.

Erehmiehr—the ageless, soulless warlock of the infinite multiverse—must kill to stay sane. He must keep supplying souls to his matron deity, the Goddess of Death, or succumb to madness. Fed up with his matron’s demands, Erehmiehr sets out to reclaim his soul. Passing through a desolate town on his journey, Erehmiehr learns that some mysterious creature is luring the town’s children to its domain and killing them. The old warrior steps up, only to find his match—a young necromancer. As the two monsters clash, a child’s life hangs in the balance.

In this richly illustrated volume, Paul Binski provides an absorbing account of the social, theological, and cultural issues involved in death and dying in Europe from the end of the Roman Empire to the early sixteenth century. He draws on textual, archaeological, and art historical sources to examine pagan and Christian attitudes toward the dead, the aesthetics of death and the body, burial ritual, and mortuary practice. Illustrated throughout with fascinating and sometimes disturbing images, Binski's account weaves together close readings of a variety of medieval thinkers. He discusses the impact of the Black Death on late medieval art and examines the development of the medieval tomb, showing the changing attitudes toward the commemoration of the dead between late antiquity and the late Middle Ages. In one chapter, Binski analyzes macabre themes in art and literature, including the Dance of Death, which reflect the medieval obsession with notions of humility, penitence, and the dangers of bodily corruption. In another, he studies the progress of the soul after death through the powerful descriptions of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory in Dante and other writers and through portrayals of the Last Judgment and the Apocalypse in sculpture and large-scale painting.