Short Story

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a French Gothic novel by Victor Hugo published in January 14, 1831. The title refers to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on which the story is centered. Set in medieval Paris, it tells the story of the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda, condemned as a witch by the tormented archdeacon Claude Frollo, who lusts after her. Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer of Notre-Dame Cathedral, having fallen in love with the kindhearted Esmeralda, tries to save her by hiding her in the cathedral's tower.

At the turn of the 16th century, Christopher Columbus has just returned from the New World with gold in his pockets and blood on his hands. Maxima Terriblé Segunda, the brilliant adopted sister of dying Her Royal Highness Queen Isabella, is living out her life locked away in a tower…until it is decided that the future of the country is in her nerdy, reclusive hands. In a bitingly funny and madcap take on Spanish history and colonialism, Maxima weaves her way through mountains of prejudice, politics, religion, and the horrors of history.

In The Problem Body, editors Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotic bring together the work of eleven of the best disability scholars from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and South Korea to explore a new approach to the study of film by concentrating on cinematic representations of what they term "the problem body." The book is a much-needed exploration of the projection of disability on film combined with a much-needed rethinking of hierarchies of difference. The editors turned to the existing corpus of disability theory with its impressive insights about the social and cultural mediation of disabled bodies. They then sought, from scholars at every stage of their careers, new ideas about how disabled bodies coexist with a range of other bodies (gendered, queered, racialized, classed, etc.). To call into question why certain bodies invite the label "problem" more frequently than other bodies, the contributors draw on scholarship from feminist, race, queer, cultural studies, disability, and film studies arenas. In Chivers and Markotic's introduction, they draw on disability theory and a range of cinematic examples to explain the term "problem body" in relation to its projection. In explorations of film noir, illness narratives, classical Hollywood film, and French film, the essays reveal the "problem body" as a multiplication of lived circumstances constructed both physically and socially.

A story about a hunchback bellringer in the Cathedral of Notre Dame during the reign of Louis XI who falls in love with a beautiful gypsy girl.

“Entertaining. . . . practical, ghostly, and often very funny tales . . . including those by saints like Rumi as well as lay storytellers from Turkey and Persia.” —Publishers Weekly The stories in this book are drawn from the dozens of Sufi tales that Douglas-Klotz has enjoyed telling in his seminars over the past 20 years. Most of them appear in works of the classical Sufis, such as Rumi, Attar, or S’adi. To preserve some of the in-person feeling and bring the language up to date, he has given them his own improvised turns. “If you want to hear a good story but prefer to read it instead, then read Douglas-Klotz! He writes as if he’s sitting in your living room, invited over for afternoon tea to entertain you with some heart-pleasing, often humorous, yet soul-searching Sufi stories. His modernization of these old texts is gentle and mindful, yet unapologetic.” —Maryam Mafi, from the foreword

In The Life And Death of Adolf Hitler, biographer Robert Payne unravels the tangled threads of Hitler’s public and private life and looks behind the caricature with the Charlie Chaplin mustache and the unruly shock of hair to reveal a Hitler possessed of immense personal charm that impressed both men and women and brought followers and contributions to the burgeoning Nazi Party. Although he misread his strength and organized an ill-fated putsch, Hitler spent his months in prison writing Mein Kampf, which increased his following. Once in undisputed command of the Party, Hitler renounced the chastity of his youth and began a sordid affair with his niece, whose suicide prompted him to reject forever all conventional morality. He promised anything to prospective supporters, then cold-bloodedly murdered them before they could claim a share of the power he reserved for himself. Once he became Chancellor, Hitler step by step bent the powers of the state to his own purposes to satisfy his private fantasies, rearming Germany, slaughtering his real or imaginary enemies, blackmailing one by one the leaders of Europe, and plunging the world into the holocaust of World War II. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER is the story of not so much a man corrupted by power as a corrupt man who achieved absolute power and used it to an unprecedented degree, knowing at every moment exactly what he was doing and calculating his enemies’ weaknesses to a hair’s breadth. It is the story of a living man.