This is a book about the early life of a child who was delivered into the care of nuns and stayed with them up to the age of sixteen. It is a true story that attempts to highlight the kind of issues that caused that time with the nuns to perhaps be more uncomfortable than it should have been. It explains, in the writers own words, the conditions and the abuse that made life inside in that institution less harmonious than it should otherwise have been. It is not presented in any way as a hate mag nor does it attempt to knowingly disparage the work of the nuns in that place or the intentions of their mission in life as a whole. It is certainly designed to present an unvarnished statement of conditions at the time that the writer lived there and it may be a reminder to all previous residents who were forced to live and suffer under the same conditions.

This is a book that began life as the vaguest thread of a simple idea without much of any real or intentioned substance that might have given it any real purpose or any perceivable direction. It is a book about the author’s own perceptions and ideas about how existence might still maintain of this life when material existence no longer has any immediate relevance for its continuing perpetuation. It has, however, evolved since that time into a serious exercise in expressive writing but with the primary emphasis directed always toward literary coloration and an attempt at imaginative dexterity. We exist today within a maelstrom of questionable misconceptions that remain convenient to our particular life moments and to which we all religiously adhere as the necessary requirement of our accustomed conditioning, with the basic tenet of que sera enabling us all to more comfortably maintain our daily lives in the manner that is most fitting to our purpose. This little effort began as a project based on an entirely hypothetical concept—the merest product of a rampant imagination. It is in no way intended as a statement of any of the popular convictions or beliefs that prevail today but is offered instead simply as a work of fiction and as little else. It does, however, express the sympathies and inclinations of the writer in the direction of his own thoughts and of his own suspicions. We all appear to be comfortable with our own philosophical concepts regarding the perpetuity of our own existences, and why should that not be the case? It might be helpful, however, particularly for those seekers of life questions to take a long look into the eyes of a new born child and explore some of the solutions to those mysteries that are lying there waiting to be discovered.

Behind the bucolic plantation estates of Northern Virginia lies a history of scandal. The region has a rotating cast of greedy supervisors, vain senators, bullying occupiers and party bosses. The Aryan Nations once flooded the streets of Arlington. Infamous floating brothels once sailed the Potomac. Even George Washington's death at his historic estate outside the capital is shrouded in mystery. Join journalist and author Michael Lee Pope as he serves a cookie full of arsenic on a cold platter of revenge.

Like a number of Netherlanders in the post-World War II era, Inez Hollander only gradually became aware of her family's connections with its Dutch colonial past, including a Creole great-grandmother. For the most part, such personal stories have been, if not entirely silenced, at least only whispered about in Holland, where society has remained uncomfortable with many aspects of the country's relationship with its colonial empire. Unlike the majority of memoirs that are soaked in nostalgia for tempo dulu, Hollander's story sets out to come to grips with her family's past by weaving together personal records with historical and literary accounts of the period. She seeks not merely to locate and preserve family memories, but also to test them against a more disinterested historical record. Hers is a complicated and sometimes painful personal journey of realization, unusually mindful of the ways in which past memories and present considerations can be intermingled when we seek to understand a difficult past. Silenced Voices is an important contribution to the literature on how Dutch society has dealt with its recent colonial history.

This set reissues important selected works by Eric Partridge, covering the period from 1933 to 1968. Together, the books look at many and diverse aspects of language, focusing in particular on English. Included in the collection are a variety of insightful dictionaries and reference works that showcase some of Partridge’s best work. The books are creative, as well as practical, and will provide enjoyable reading for both scholars and the more general reader, who has an interest in language and linguistics.

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.