For Joan L. Marshall, there are powerful metaphors buried in the word “mud.” Not just the natural material that squelches under a child’s bare feet when playing at the beach, but complex memories of coming of age in her native Barbados. Sun, Sky, Sea, and Sometimes Mud is a collection of sixty-two poems that celebrate and honour the author’s Barbadian upbringing and Caribbean culture. The words are at once heavy with meaning and transcendent as they add a sensory appeal to the quotidian. Blue sky, warming sun, and a sea rich in fish are all sustenance and memory of Marshall’s unpretentious life and her enduring sense of feeling love and belonging. Like many Barbadians, Marshall’s parents immigrated to England in the 1960s to financially support their children, who were commonly cared for by their grandparents. She shares beautifully written snapshots of a life that wasn’t always carefree or uncomplicated, while providing clarity and correcting some of the inaccuracies that have been written about Caribbean life. Marshall’s prose cuts to the core in this beautiful tribute to her history and culture, from childhood songs to favourite family dishes. Sun, Sea, Sky, and Sometimes Mud is an authentic take of growing up in Barbados in the 1960s and ’70s, one that’s sure to resonate with readers.

At stake in this book is a struggle with language in a time when our old faith in the redeeming of the word-and the word's power to redeem-has almost been destroyed. Drawing on Benjamin's political theology, his interpretation of the German Baroque mourning play, and Adorno's critical aesthetic theory, but also on the thought of poets and many other philosophers, especially Hegel's phenomenology of spirit, Nietzsche's analysis of nihilism, and Derrida's writings on language, Kleinberg-Levin shows how, because of its communicative and revelatory powers, language bears the utopian "promise of happiness," the idea of a secular redemption of humanity, at the very heart of which must be the achievement of universal justice. In an original reading of Beckett's plays, novels and short stories, Kleinberg-Levin shows how, despite inheriting a language damaged, corrupted and commodified, Beckett redeems dead or dying words and wrests from this language new possibilities for the expression of meaning. Without denying Beckett's nihilism, his picture of a radically disenchanted world, Kleinberg-Levin calls attention to moments when his words suddenly ignite and break free of their despair and pain, taking shape in the beauty of an austere yet joyous lyricism, suggesting that, after all, meaning is still possible.

“Harrison's conclusion to his alternate prehistory of Earth excels in its detailed depiction of an alien civilization that might have been.” —Library Journal Harry Harrison's Return to Eden, the third book in the West of Eden trilogy, is an adventerous sci-fi tale set in an alternative prehistoric universe, from the bestselling and award-winning author of innumerable novels and stories. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Editors: May 1749-Sept. 1803, Ralph Griffiths; Oct. 1803-Apr. 1825, G. E. Griffiths.