Raking Light is Eric Langley's début collection of poems. Characterised by his rigorous fascination with language's latent etymologies and semantic layers, Langley's poems take their cue from the artconservation technique of 'raking light', in which an oblique beam is thrown across the surface of a picture to expose its textures and overlays. Under raked light, paint reveals its damage and deterioration, its craquelure and canvas-warp, and discloses a backstory of abandoned intentions. With his attentiveness to resonance and echo, Langley picks up on lost meanings and buried contradictions in language, probing its abandoned significances. Finding traces of obscured sense or inarticulacy, his verse picks at words to test their efficacy and authenticity, feeling out their substance, proving their worth. These are poems – elegies, love lyri – concerned with miscommunication, with intentions gone astray, with loss and the uncertainties inherent in interaction. They are excited and exciting, defusing and detonating by turns the 'hectic honeyed hand-grenades / in amongst your alphabets'. // 'Eric Langley's poems energise the mind by means of virtuoso orchestration and exhilarating rhythmic daring and control. You feel that if you look away from the line for even a second you might end up driving into a ditch.' Peter Hughes

Find light in the darkest hour Lala, a young Jewish girl, loses her entire family during the dark days of the Holocaust in the Warsaw Ghetto. Thanks to the kindness of a Polish family, Lala manages to survive the war, taking on an assumed identity. By a twist of good fortune and unbelievable coincidence, she is found after the war and eventually immigrates to Israel in 1950 to live with her Israeli relatives. A child's struggle to comprehend a world gone mad Relli Robinson's true story of survival offers a fascinating panoramic human drama that extends from the dark days of the Second World War to the independent State of Israel. A gripping and inspiringly optimistic narrative based on real life experiences, you'll enjoy every page of this fascinating journey of hope. Get your copy of Raking Light from Ashes Now!

A little girl is smuggled out of a Ghetto. Two courageous women. And an inspirational story of survival It is 1941, the height of World War II, and in a Polish ghetto, a baby girl named Rachel is born. Her parents, Jacob and Zippa, are willing to do anything to keep her alive. They nickname her Lalechka. Just before Lalechka's first birthday, the Nazis begin to murder everyone in the ghetto. Her mother discovers a hideaway in the attic where other Jews are hiding. The father, serving as Jewish policeman in the ghetto, understands that staying in the attic will mean a certain death for his wife and child. In a desperate but hope-filled move, Lalechka's parents decide to save their daughter no matter what the price. Jacob smuggle them outside the boundaries of the ghetto where Zippa meets Polish friends, Irena and Sophia. She gives her beloved Lalechka to them and returns to the ghetto to be with her husband and parents - unaware of the fate that awaits her. Irena and Sophia take on the burden of caring for Lalechka during the war, pretending that she is part of their family despite the danger of being discovered and executed. Lalechka is based on the unique journal written by the young mother during the annihilation of the ghetto, as well as on interviews with key figures in the story, rare documents and authentic letters.

Before Evelina's even unpacked her gowns for a country house party, an indiscretion puts her in the power of the ruthless Gold King, who recruits her as his spy. He knows her disreputable past and exiles her to the rank alleyways of Whitechapel with orders to unmask his foe. As danger mounts, Evelina struggles between hiding her illegal magic and succumbing to the darker aspects of her power. One path keeps her secure; the other keeps her alive. For rebellion is brewing, a sorcerer wants her soul, and no one can protect her in the hunting grounds of Jack the Ripper.

4th ser., v. 1-4 includes the Proceedings of the 1st-11th annual meetings (1848-58) of the Maryland State Agricultural Society.

Series numbering from publisher's Web site.