William Faulkner once called the short story "the most demanding form after poetry." In that form, he achieved splendid success. He wrote over a hundred short stories, published nearly all of them during his lifetime, and became one of the most frequently anthologized writers in the genre. Countless readers of Faulkner have first entered his world through one of the forty-two doors in Collected Stories. Reading Faulkner: Collected Stories attempts to make the process of reading America’s major modern writer less daunting. It is a useful guide to Faulkner’s allusions, distinctly southern phrases, difficult words, and historical contexts, as well as to the intricacies of the prose. Arranged according to the Vintage edition’s table of contents, the annotations provide information about the material, political, and literary cultures that found their way into Faulkner’s greatest short fiction, including commentary on such classics as "A Rose for Emily," and "Barn Burning." Such information ranges from descriptions of 1930s farm implements and Great War airplanes to analyses of real estate deals and racial protocols. The authors offer explications of Faulkner’s allusions to other artists and thinkers from Christopher Marlowe to Voltaire to T.S. Eliot. An excellent companion volume to Collected Stories for beginning and experienced readers of Faulkner, Reading Faulkner: Collected Stories allows a fascinating glimpse of Faulkner’s mind at work on the materials of the world around him.
Attracting nearly 17 million viewers regularly, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is America's number one show. With two spin-off series, the CSI franchise has sparked an unprecedented global television success. Reading CSI brings together for the first time critical discussions of all three shows from a wide range of perspectives, with contributions from journalists, television critics and pathology experts. Including a series by series episode guide for each program, this in-depth, comprehensive study seeks to understand what the CSI phenomenon means to contemporary television culture.
Throughout the world there is a common belief that the dead may return to life. In Europe the most exotic form of this belief is the legend of the vampire. In this engrossing book, Paul Barber surveys centuries of folklore about vampires—from the tale of a sixteenth-century shoemaker from Breslau whose ghost terrorized everyone in the city, to the testimony of a doctor who presided over the exhumation and dissection of a graveyard full of Serbian vampires. Analyzing these reports, Barber offers
for the first time a scientific explanation for the origin of the vampire legends. The accounts compiled here by Barber of exhumations of suspected vampires include descriptions of blood on the lips of the dead body,how the corpse cried out when a stake was driven into its heart, and how the corpse partly rose from the grave. These descriptions led to further assumptions about vampires; that after coming to life again, they would prey on the living, sucking their blood or killing them in other ways. Barber studies the descriptions of exhumed cadavers in light of what is now known about forensic pathology and shows that they are clinically possible. Barber thus argues that the lore about vampires is an elaborate folk-hypothesis that sought to make sense out of a wide variety of natural phenomena, including the events of decomposition.
His book will be fascinating reading for scientists and anthropologists as well as for everyone interested in folklore. Paul Barber, a former teacher of German language and folklore at Princeton University and Occidental College, is a writer.
A fantasy book based on Arthurian stories. Continuation of "The Forest House". Part of a series "Avalon" An epic tale of love, loyality, betrayal, kingship, and magic. It takes place over several decades and generations. It tales the fabled tale of Camelot and the knights of the round table. Taking a different view from the legend, it is told of the perspective of the women of Avalon. These powerful women use their magic to fulfill the will of the Goddess and place a king on the throne of Britain, as well as later take him down from it...
His father dies before David is born, but he is a very happy young boy - until his mother marries cruel Mr Murdstone. This is only the first of many changes, both good and bad, that David faces as he grows up and finally becomes a famous writer.
