Fantasy is a creation of the Enlightenment and the recognition that excitement and wonder can be found in imagining impossible things. From the ghost stories of the Gothic to the zombies and vampires of twenty-first-century popular literature, from Mrs Radcliffe to Ms Rowling, the fantastic has been popular with readers. Since Tolkien and his many imitators, however, it has become a major publishing phenomenon.

From pharohs to hierogylphics, readers will learn all about the Egyptian dynasty in this fascinating book! The appealing photos and engaging text invite readers to learn about the Ancient Egyptian civilization, the construction of the great pyramids, mummies, Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra.

Michael D. Hurley and Michael O'Neill offer a perceptive and illuminating look into poetic form, a topic that has come back into prominence in recent years. Building on this renewed interest in form, Hurley and O'Neill provide an accessible and comprehensive introduction that will be of help to undergraduates and more advanced readers of poetry alike. The book sees form as neither ornamenting nor mimicking content, but as shaping and animating it, encouraging readers to cultivate techniques to read poems as poems.

Understanding Lebanon Today is an accurate and contemporary presentation that explores the Middle Eastern nation of Lebanon with a focus on the country as it is today: current issues, culture, and lifestyle. The book is written in an easy-to-read enjoyable narrative form for elementary readers grades 3-6. The Lebanon title includes a native recipe and craft for students to create

All fiction is character-driven, according to William Bernhardt, despite what you might have heard elsewhere. If your characters don’t interest readers, even the most exciting plots will fail. “Action is character,” Aristotle wrote, but what does that mean, and how can you use that fundamental principle to create dynamic fiction that will captivate readers? This book explains the relationship between character and plot, and how the perfect melding of the two produces a mesmerizing story. Using examples spanning from The Odyssey to The Da Vinci Code, Bernhardt discusses the art of character creation in a direct and easily comprehended manner.