Raffi is apprenticed to the Relic Master, Galen, whose task is to keep safe the relics of a bygone age. But his powers are weakening and he and Raffi set off to meet the Makers in the City of the Crows and discover why. The journey is beset with dangers and Raffi's courage is tested at every turn. They are joined by the enigmatic girl Carys and face an uncertain future in the City of Destruction. Will they be able to summon the Crow to help them? Or will the everpresent Watch eventually eliminate them?

"The Relic" is a love story in which Henry Fontal, a young man, writes to his old friend Abbe to help him in a very strange predicament. His engagement to Abbe’s niece has collapsed due to a present he has brought back from his trip. Now he wants Abbe to assist him in any way possible in order for his beloved to fall in love with him once again. A light-hearted, entertaining, and somewhat religious tale, "The Relic" is about ordering one’s priorities and testing man's capabilities to love and understand. Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a famous French writer, best known as a master of the short story. Master of style and dramatic narrative, Maupassant’s stories are mainly interested in the relationships between men and women, often found at the crossroads of life. One of his greatest influences was Gustave Flaubert, who introduced him to some of the central names of the time such as Emile Zola, Henry James, and Ivan Turgenev. Some of his best known works include the novels "Bel Ami" and "Une Vie", more than 300 short stories, travel books, and even an attempt at poetry.

A collection of essays, reviews, etc., contributed to London journals. Most are centered around religion and Christianity, specifically the Holy Grail mythos, though others deal with literary criticism. Also included is "The Iron Maid," a fictional short story previously published in the author's "The Three Imposters," yet retracted from subsequent printings. cf. Foreword.

Studies of how the physical manifests itself in medieval romance - and medieval romances as objects themselves. Medieval romance narratives glitter with the material objects that were valued and exchanged in late-medieval society: lovers' rings and warriors' swords, holy relics and desirable or corrupted bodies. Romance, however, is also agenre in which such objects make meaning on numerous levels, and not always in predictable ways. These new essays examine from diverse perspectives how romances respond to material culture, but also show how romance as a genre helps to constitute and transmit that culture. Focusing on romances circulating in Britain and Ireland between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, individual chapters address such questions as the relationship between objects and protagonists in romance narrative; the materiality of male and female bodies; the interaction between visual and verbal representations of romance; poetic form and manuscript textuality; and how a nineteenth-century edition of medieval romances provoked artists to homage and satire. NICHOLAS PERKINS is Associate Professor and Tutor in English at St Hugh's College, University of Oxford. Contributors: Siobhain Bly Calkin, Nancy Mason Bradbury, Aisling Byrne, Anna Caughey, Neil Cartlidge, Mark Cruse, Morgan Dickson, Rosalind Field, Elliot Kendall, Megan G. Leitch, Henrike Manuwald, Nicholas Perkins, Ad Putter, Raluca L. Radulescu, Robert Allen Rouse,