Stories about mortals travelling into hell have been omnipresent in our literary canon for almost as long as weve had one, but young writer Su-Yee Lin has still managed to find modern resonance and new territory to explore in this lyrical and evocative vision of a trip to a place that is never quite what we expect it to be. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A guide to worldwide shamanism and shamanistic practices, emphasizing historical and current cultural adaptations. This two-volume reference is the first international survey of shamanistic beliefs from prehistory to the present day. In nearly 200 detailed, readable entries, leading ethnographers, psychologists, archaeologists, historians, and scholars of religion and folk literature explain the general principles of shamanism as well as the details of widely varied practices. What is it like to be a shaman? Entries describe, region by region, the traits, such as sicknesses and dreams, that mark a person as a shaman, as well as the training undertaken by initiates. They detail the costumes, music, rituals, artifacts, and drugs that shamans use to achieve altered states of consciousness, communicate with spirits, travel in the spirit world, and retrieve souls. Unlike most Western books on shamanism, which focus narrowly on the individual's experience of healing and trance, Shamanism also examines the function of shamanism in society from social, political, and historical perspectives and identifies the ancient, continuous thread that connects shamanistic beliefs and rituals across cultures and millennia.

This omnibus and retrospective collects the best of 23 years of cartoonist Kaz’s alt-weekly comic strip. Underworld: From Hoboken to Hollywood is the first-ever omnibus of the very best of the alternative weekly strip’s 23-year run, with annotations, photos, and other surprises from the author (along with a foreword by Mutts creator Patrick McDonnell). Kaz's strip hilariously depicts sordid doings in a surreal city, stuffed with almost-parodies of famous comic strip characters, a healthy dose of cigarette smoking cats, cute little saccharin-cuddly creatures, media-damaged kids, and much more ― all destined for a sardonic smashing.

First published in 1949 (this edition in 1968), this book is a dictionary of the past, exploring the language of the criminal and near-criminal worlds. It includes entries from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, as well as from Britain and America and offers a fascinating and unique study of language. The book provides an invaluable insight into social history, with the British vocabulary dating back to the 16th century and the American to the late 18th century. Each entry comes complete with the approximate date of origin, the etymology for each word, and a note of the milieu in which the expression arose.

I am a true northeastern man, once determined by the Great Deity to be dead, no more than nineteen years old. Being forced into a corner, he could only follow "Uncle" and learn Tao techniques. However, I never expected that an accident at the age of eleven would turn me into a monster that was half human, half ghost. From then on, I stepped into the Underworld to catch ghosts ...