Romancing Death sheds the light of God on the popularity of vampirism in today’s pop culture. This fascinating exposé of the dark realities behind romanticizing the occult in our current culture reveals the naked truth about how the church has not addressed the needs of people young and old who fill the holes in their souls and spirits with evil rather than good. Weaving his personal history—including involvement in Wicca, Freemasonry, and vampirism—the author lays out the literary and cultural history of vampirism and closely analyzes the romanticized presentation of the occult in the Twilight saga. Romancing Death is a clarion call for the Church to take responsibility to be true salt and light in the world.

Love and Death move through this world of ours like things apart—underrunning it truly, and everywhere present, yet seeming to belong to some other mode of existence. When Death comes, breaking into the circle of our friends, words fail us, our mental machinery ceases to operate, all our little stores of wit and wisdom, our maxims, our mottoes, accumulated from daily experience, evaporate and are of no avail. These things do not seem to touch or illuminate in any effective way the strange vast Presence whose wings darken the world for us. And with Love, though in an opposite sense, it is the same. Words are of no use, all our philosophy fails—whether to account for the pain, or to fortify against the glamour, or to describe the glory of the experience. These figures, Love and Death, move through the world, like closest friends indeed, never far separate, and together dominating it in a kind of triumphant superiority; and yet like bitterest enemies, dogging each other’s footsteps, undoing each other’s work, fighting for the bodies and souls of mankind. Is it possible that at length and after ages we may attain to liberate ourselves from their overlordship—to dominate them and make them our ministers and attendants? Can we wrest them from their seeming tyranny over the human race, and from their hostility to each other? Can we persuade them to lay aside their disguise and appear to us for what they no doubt are—even the angels and messengers of a new order of existence? It is a great and difficult enterprise. Yet it is one, I think, which we of this generation cannot avoid. We can no longer turn our faces away from Death, and make as if we did not perceive his presence or hear his challenge. This age, which is learning to look the facts of Nature steadily in the face, and seethrough them, must also learn to face this ultimate fact and look through it. And it will surely—and perhaps only—be by allying ourselves to Love that we shall be able to do so—that we shall succeed in our endeavor.

The zombie--popular culture's undead darling--shows no signs of stopping. But as it develops to suit changing audience tastes, its characteristics transform. This collection of new essays examines the latest incarnation, the romantic zombie, a re-humanized monster we want to help, heal and connect with rather than destroy. The authors discuss our increasingly sympathetic view of the reanimated dead as more than physical bodies devoid of life and personality. Their essays cover a range of topics, including audience obsession with Apocalyptic love; the problem of a kinder, gentler undead; the millennial reinvention of the "sexy zombie"; and "uncanny valley romance."

With the help of her new companions, the path Kansas follows leads to more knowledge of the ever adapting famished. The team finds help in unlikely places, meeting more survivors, and discovers the possibility of a new beginning. When the team experiences a devastating loss, Kansas struggles to keep her humanity from fading and distorting like that of the surviving society around her. It begins with knowing who to trust and who to leave behind. First, she must trust herself – she won't make the same mistakes twice. As the answers to her questions are revealed, Kansas begins to understand the knowledge comes with a heavy price and great responsibility of controlling the dead. In a trilogy plot thick with twists and turns, this adult dark fantasy is as emotional as it is horrifyingly gripping. For Mature Audience

Romancing the Novel examines the ways in which romance forms characteristic of boys' books - as exemplified in the novels of Scott, Dumas, Verne, and Stevenson - influence narratives not generally put in the same category - both psychoanalytical accounts of the psyche and novels by authors as diverse as George Eliot, Ursual Le Guin, Joseph Conrad, and W. G. Sebald. Adventure has been most recently studied largely as a symptom of imperialism's ideological apparatus. But as an intensely familiar story available from the earliest reading, adventure conditions the narratable - its influence is felt from the nursery bed to the analyst's couch. By reading Maurice Sendak with Melanie Klein and Peter Rabbit with Daniel Deronda, Romancing the Novel argues that the power and depth of the generic constraints of the adventure form have not been recognized simply because they are so ubiquitous. Adventure fiction is not merely summer reading whose ephemeral effects dissipate, but rather a pervasive code that exerts powerful effects on the imaginable.

Challenging misconceptions about the biblical message on marriage, a spirited guide for women encourages wives to revolutionize their unions, from praying with their partners to arranging romantic times despite busy schedules. Original.

The ultimate Vampire Diaries fan bible returns! With a foreword by co-creator Kevin Williamson, the fan-favorite Love You to Death series returns with an essential guide to the fifth season of The CW's hit show The Vampire Diaries. As the series hits its 100th-episode milestone, this companion delves headlong into the twists and turns of each episode, exploring the layers of rich history, supernatural mythology, historical and pop culture references, and the complexities of the show's memorable cast of characters. Add chapters on the making of the show, interviews with the people who bring Mystic Falls to life, and the intensely loyal audience that keeps it thriving, and you have a guide as compelling and addictive as the show itself.