Resonance of Ancient Myth or as it is more commonly called ROAM, is the most popular multiplayer online role-playing game in the world. It is a game that brings the heroes and gods of the ancient world to life. Sage Monroe is a quiet, anti-social, gamer girl. She spends more time online in the world of ROAM than she did in the real world. She even met her boyfriend Morgan in ROAM. She is a simple and practical girl. She likes ROAM, she likes her cat, she likes her online boyfriend--until he came to visit. It was the first time they had met in the real world. Then she learned ROAM wasn't all it seemed and neither was her boyfriend, or even her cat. And then she died. She was surprised to learn that some people don't go to heaven or hell, they go to MMORPGs. Now the fate of her friends, boyfriend, and even her cat are all depending on her.

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

For Bataille, the absence of myth had itself become the myth of the modern age. In a world that had lost the secret of its cohesion, Bataille saw surrealism as both a symptom and a beginning of an attempt to address this loss. His writings on this theme are the result of a profound reflection in the wake of World War Two. The Absence of Myth is the most incisive study yet made of surrealism, insisting on its importance as a cultural and social phenomenon with far-reaching consequences. Clarifying Bataille's links with the surrealist movement, and throwing revealing light on his complex and greatly misunderstood relationship with Andre Breton, The Absence of Myth shows Bataille to be a much more radical figure than his postmodernist devotees would have us believe: a man who continually tried to extend Marxist social theory; a pessimistic thinker, but one as far removed from nihilism as can be.

Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the Dutch architect and architectural philosopher, created a series of buildings and a body of writings from 1886 to 1909 that were among the first efforts to probe the problems and possibilities of modernism. Although his Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with its rational mastery of materials and space, has long been celebrated for its seminal influence on the architecture of the 20th century, Berlage's writings are highlighted here. Bringing together Berlage's most important texts, among them "Thoughts on Style in Architecture", "Architecture's Place in Modern Aesthetics", and "Art and Society", this volume presents a chapter in the history of European modernism. In his introduction, Iain Boyd Whyte demonstrates that the substantial contribution of Berlage's designs to modern architecture cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the aesthetic principles first laid out in his writings.

A beautifully packaged edition of one of García Márquez's most beloved novels, with never-before-seen color illustrations by the Chilean artist Luisa Rivera and an interior design created by the author's son, Gonzalo García Barcha. In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs—yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

One afternoon, in an old house in an abandoned village on the outskirts of Perimeter, in the place they call Pacifica, Bramah and the beggar boy find fragments of an ancient text in an oak box. Hunched over scraps of parchment and broken computer disks, they blow the dust off a cover, and so our story begins. Steeped in the tradition of fairy tales, The Heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns (THOT J BAP) features a world in which a small band of resisters and survivors meet heartbreak and destruction with rhymes and resourceful skills such as soap and glass making, and a belief in the supernatural. Many things happen—some good, but most bad—including five eco-catastrophes and a viral bio-contagion. Shapeshifting in and out of it all is the nimble Bramah, a female locksmith, part human, part goddess—brown, brave and beautiful. Ten years in the making and described as “truly ambitious” by Stephen Collis, this work by award-winning poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar spans continents and centuries. Bramah and the Beggar Boy is the first instalment of the multi-part series.