Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film

The endangered and dangerous female figures of Rebecca, of Jagged Edge and What Lies Beneath have a deserved and enduring fascination. Helen Hanson re-examines these gothic heroines of Hollywood and their meanings, in two of Hollywood's key generic cycles, film noir and the female gothic film. Starting at the beginning, with the origin of these cycles and the ways in which they represented women in the American film industry and culture of the 1940s, she traces their revival in neo-noir and neo-gothic films from the 1980s to the present.

The Sorcerer's Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England

When he came across a foolish young 16th-century aristocrat's confession of attempting to murder his wife and father by sorcery, Ryrie (church history, Durham Univ.; Britain Reformed: Religion, Politics and Society in Britain 1485–1603) discovered a fascinating way to introduce readers to the deeply entangled worlds of Tudor-era magic, medicine, and religion. The young man had himself been conned, and it is the story of the con man, a would-be physician and magician named Gregory Wisdom, that's at the heart of this book.

Gothic-postmodernism: Voicing the Terrors of Postmodernity

Being the first to outline the literary genre, Gothic-postmodernism, this book articulates the psychological and philosophical implications of terror in postmodernist literature, analogous to the terror of the Gothic novel, uncovering the significance of postmodern recurrences of the Gothic, and identifying new historical and philosophical aspects of the genre. While many critics propose that the Gothic has been exhausted, and that its significance is depleted by consumer society's obsession with instantaneous horror, analyses of a number of terror-based postmodernist novels here suggest that the Gothic is still very much animated in Gothic-postmodernism.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Making Natural Soaps

Soapmaking has always been a popular craft with a dedicated group of followers, but with the explosion of urban homesteading and people looking to go green, noncrafters are now joining in on the fun. Whether it's making natural soap to live greener, give as gifts, save money, or make money, The Complete Idiot's Guide(r) to Making Natural Soaps has everything the new soap maker will need to create organic, natural soaps of all kinds.

The History of Gothic Publishing, 1800-1835: Exhuming the Trade

To better understand and contextualise the twilight of the Gothic genre during the 1920s and 1830s, The History of Gothic Publishing, 1800-1835: Exhuming the Trade examines the disreputable aspects of the Gothic trade from its horrid bluebooks to the desperate hack writers who created the short tales of terror.