This travel/mystery book starts as an e-journal of the six month stay in Paris of the mid-career, well-traveled Judith and Amy. Amy, a rocket scientist from Pasadena, California, is a visiting researcher at the French National Laboratories in Paris. Judith, her girlfriend and a professor of English at a Los Angeles area community college is on unpaid leave accompanying her. Judith, with the promise of many visitors and no special projects in mind aside from learning to speak French, has decided to write an e-journal to friends and family. Thus, the book is in an epistolary form, written pretty much in the present tense as it describes events shortly after they have happened, and includes photos Judith or friends have taken to illustrate various points. In addition to Judiths narratives and photos, edited versions of replies from her correspondents, which Judith was surprised to receive but felt needed to be shared in view of her commitment to community, are included at the beginning of each installment after the first. Overall, Judith appears only a semi-aware narrator, coming across a bit as an innocent abroad, yet, at the same time, is highly self-reflective about language and fills the narrative with word play, parenthetical references, popular culture references, high and low culture jokes, and philosophy. Overall, the tone is one of bemused innocence (or slight paranoia), and benign irony. Judiths task of having her journal be something besides the ordinary becomes simplified when, in time for the first installment, she and Amy happen to be at the sight of the discovery of a dead body in a canal near the Bastille. The same evening as the discovery of the body, Judith and Amy are asked by their temporary landlady to assist her in securing the contents of a safe deposit box in Zurich to help her ailing aunt. As Judith and Amy are heading to Zurich that week to attend the opening of a sculpture exhibit by one of their friends, it seems the least they could do to help this older woman. The body and the visit to the bank sets off a series of events that embroil Judith and Amy, Judiths French tutor and fellow students, Amys French bosses, their French friends, and American and other visitors in an apparent drug war. Since Judith is in France illegally and subject to possible deportation, Amy and Judith are forced to rely only on friends and their own ingenuity and interpretive powers to connect the clues and extricate themselves from what increasingly seems to be some sort of misunderstanding on the part of gangsters about their involvement in drug smuggling. The solving of the mystery makes up the narrative line of the text. But, at the same time as Judith and Amy become increasingly enmeshed in mystery, Judith has not forgotten that essentially her correspondence is a travel journal. So she continues to interweave descriptions and ponderings on the relationships among and meanings of popular culture and customs, politics, critical theory, science, religion, language, class, race, art, architecture, as well as adventures and anecdotes from previous travels with Amy, into the narrative. Even though Judiths paranoia colors her perception and interpretation of events and thus confuses her readers about what is real and what fiction, there do seem to be people following Judith and Amy and the clues Judith and Amy discover, all having to do with fire, water, earth, and air are undoubtedly real. Judith and Amys efforts to follow the clues, or to flee the implications of the clues, lead them and their friends to a variety of spectacles in Paris as well as the Parisian canals, fireworks at La Defense and la Villette, a night of fountains and fireworks Versailles, opera at Vaux le Viscomte, the beach at La Baule, in France, medieval Bruges in Belgium, and London, England before they solve the mystery and help justice be done.

In 'Girl Scouts in Arizona and New Mexico' by Lillian Elizabeth Roy, readers are immersed in a tale of adventure and camaraderie as a group of Girl Scouts explore the beautiful landscapes of the American Southwest. Written in a descriptive and engaging style, the book captures the essence of the early 20th-century Girl Scout movement and the spirit of exploration that defined it. Roy's attention to detail and vivid storytelling transport readers to a time when the natural world was a playground for young scouts seeking exciting experiences and valuable life lessons. Lillian Elizabeth Roy, a dedicated supporter of the Girl Scouts and passionate advocate for youth development, drew inspiration from her own experiences to write 'Girl Scouts in Arizona and New Mexico'. As a prolific author of children's books, Roy understood the importance of literature in shaping young minds and fostering a love of adventure and nature. Her commitment to empowering young girls shines through in this timeless adventure story. I highly recommend 'Girl Scouts in Arizona and New Mexico' to readers of all ages who enjoy tales of exploration, friendship, and the great outdoors. Roy's classic work continues to inspire and entertain, making it a must-read for anyone interested in the history of scouting or simply looking for a captivating story.

Inside the Westminster Menswear Archive is a unique guide to the role of garment archives as an industry resource for designers to research and examine both historical garments and the work of their peers. With exclusive access to over 120 key garments from the Westminster Menswear Archive, spanning the last 275 years, each piece is brilliantly photographed in close-up detail and annotated with curator commentary, to inspire new generations of designers. Highlights include garments from: A-COLD-WALL*, Ahluwalia, Aitor Throup Studio, Alexander McQueen, Belstaff, Bernhard Willhelm, Burberry, Casely-Hayford, C.P. Company, Carol Christian Poell, Comme des Garçons, Craig Green, Dior Men, Fred Perry, Helmut Lang, Hussein Chalayan, Jean Paul Gaultier, Junya Watanabe, Louis Vuitton, Martine Rose, Meadham Kirchhoff, Nigel Cabourn, Paul Smith, Prada, Stone Island, Umbro, Undercover, Vexed Generation, and Vollebak.

Given Christianity's valuation of celibacy and its persistent association of sexuality with the Fall and of women with sin, Western medieval attitudes toward the erotic could not help but be vexed. In contrast, eroticism is explicitly celebrated in a large number of theological, scientific, and literary texts of the medieval Arab Islamicate tradition, where sexuality was positioned at the very heart of religious piety. In Crossing Borders, Sahar Amer turns to the rich body of Arabic sexological writings to focus, in particular, on their open attitude toward erotic love between women. By juxtaposing these Arabic texts with French works, she reveals a medieval French literary discourse on same-sex desire and sexual practices that has gone all but unnoticed. The Arabic tradition on eroticism breaks through into French literary writings on gender and sexuality in often surprising ways, she argues, and she demonstrates how strategies of gender representation deployed in Arabic texts came to be models to imitate, contest, subvert, and at times censor in the West. Amer's analysis reveals Western literary representations of gender in the Middle Ages as cross-cultural, hybrid discourses as she reexamines borders—cultural, linguistic, historical, geographic—not as elements of separation and division but as fluid spaces of cultural exchange, adaptation, and collaboration. Crossing these borders, she salvages key Arabic and French writings on alternative sexual practices from oblivion to give voice to a group that has long been silenced.

Thirty-five years in the making, and destined to be the last word in fanta-film references! This incredible 1,017-page resource provides vital credits on over 9,000 films (1896-1999) of horror, fantasy, mystery, science fiction, heavy melodrama, and film noir. Comprehensive cast lists include: directors, writers, cinematographers, and composers. Also includes plot synopses, critiques, re-title/translation information, running times, photographs, and several cross-referenced indexes (by artist, year, song, etc.). Paperback.