Knives and Scabbards - Medieval Finds from Excavations in London
Knives were vital to medieval man for a whole range of uses, from the domestic to the wider social context: Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian burials bear silent witness to this dependence in the many cases where knives are found among the grave-goods. Forged and hafted with great skill, sometimes with elaborately decorated scabbards, knives are of intrinsic fascination, besides being indicators of the popular artistic tastes of the time.
Boyd (Any Human Heart, etc.) is difficult to pigeonhole. The 14 stories in this book include the supernaturally inflected ("A Haunting," "Visions Fugitives"), the Chekhovian bittersweet ("The Woman on the Beach with a Dog"), the PoMo urban spiel ("Beulah Berlin, an A-Z") and the comedy of dogged lechery. The last is represented by "Adult Video," which, in journal form, records the infidelity of one Edward, a cynical graduate student, and "Fascination," in which the same Edward, married to the girlfriend he cheated on, bungles a brief foray as a freelance journalist by making a pass at a young interviewee.
A prison break in South Florida brings together two different people--federal marshal Karen Sisco and bank robber Jack Foley--as their mutual fascination leads them to the heist of the year in Detroit and a confrontation with vici and brutal criminalsspecializing in home invasion.
Two young boys--one withdrawn and shy, and the other popular and confident--participate in a game for those with a dangerous fascination with death, an irresistible game with deadly implications.
Albert Einstein did not impress his first teachers. They found him a dreamy child without an especially promising future. But some time in his early years he developed what he called "wonder" about the world. Later in life, he remembered two instances from his childhood--his fascination at age five with a compass and his introduction to the lucidity and certainty of geometry--that may have been the first signs of what was to come.
