Sirens: Collected Papers on Women in Fantasy 2012-2015


Book Description

Sirens: Collected Papers on Women in Fantasy 2012-2015 combines written versions of presentations from four years of Sirens, a conference on women in fantasy literature. During those years, presenters were encouraged to analyze tales retold, hauntings, and rebels and revolutionaries, among other topics. Presentations for Sirens were chosen by vetting boards made up of scholars, professionals, and readers. Following each year's conference, presenters were invited to submit text versions of their presentations for the Sirens compendium, and a sample of each year's programming is represented.




Sirens: Collected Papers 2009-2011


Book Description

Sirens: Collected Papers 2009-2011 combines written versions of presentations from three years of Sirens, a conference on women in fantasy literature. During those years, presenters were encouraged to analyze women warriors, fairies, and monsters. Presentations for Sirens were chosen by vetting boards made up of scholars, professionals, and readers. Following each year’s conference, presenters were invited to submit text versions of their presentations for the Sirens compendium; twenty-five of the nearly ninety presentations from 2009–2011 are represented in these collected papers.




Women in Game of Thrones


Book Description

Game of Thrones, one of the hottest series on television, leaves hundreds of critics divided on how "feminist" the show really is. Certainly the female characters, strong and weak, embody a variety of archetypes--widow queens, warrior women, damsels in distress, career women, priestesses, crones, mothers and maidens. However, the problem is that most of them play a single role without nuance--even the "strong women" have little to do besides strut about as one-note characters. This book analyzes the women and their portrayals one by one, along with their historical inspirations. Accompanying issues in television studies also appear, from the male gaze to depiction of race. How these characters are treated in the series and how they treat themselves becomes central, as many strip for the pleasure of men or are sacrificed as pawns. Some nude scenes or moments of male violence are fetishized and filmed to tantalize, while others show the women's trauma and attempt to identify with the scene's female perspective. The key is whether the characters break out of their traditional roles and become multidimensional.




Into the Heartless Wood


Book Description

The forest is a dangerous place, where siren song lures men and women to their deaths. For centuries, a witch has harvested souls to feed the heartless tree, using its power to grow her domain. When Owen Merrick is lured into the witch’s wood, one of her tree-siren daughters, Seren, saves his life instead of ending it. Every night, he climbs over the garden wall to see her, and every night her longing to become human deepens. But a shift in the stars foretells a dangerous curse, and Seren’s quest to become human will lead them into an ancient war raging between the witch and the king who is trying to stop her.




The Lure of Dangerous Women


Book Description

Dangerous women aren’t always the ones who carry guns and take down the bad guys. Sometimes, the most dangerous women are the ones we don’t even notice -- the sultry siren crooning in a smoky bar, the innocent young girl twirling in her summer dress, the soft-shoed nurse who helps the comatose. In this collection, award-winning author Shanna Germain gathers seven of her darkest, lushest fantasy and horror stories about strong, smart women who know that danger is a matter of scale -- and of which side you happen to be standing on.




The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Video Analysis


Book Description

Music videos promote popular artists in cultural forms that circulate widely across social media networks. With the advent of YouTube in 2005 and the proliferation of handheld technologies and social networking sites, the music video has become available to millions worldwide, and continues to serve as a fertile platform for the debate of issues and themes in popular culture. This volume of essays serves as a foundational handbook for the study and interpretation of the popular music video, with the specific aim of examining the industry contexts, cultural concepts, and aesthetic materials that videos rely upon in order to be both intelligible and meaningful. Easily accessible to viewers in everyday life, music videos offer profound cultural interventions and negotiations while traversing a range of media forms. From a variety of unique perspectives, the contributors to this volume undertake discussions that open up new avenues for exploring the creative changes and developments in music video production. With chapters that address music video authorship, distribution, cultural representations, mediations, aesthetics, and discourses, this study signals a major initiative to provide a deeper understanding of the intersecting and interdisciplinary approaches that are invoked in the analysis of this popular and influential musical form.




Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers


Book Description

DIVA dangerously seductive collection of tales that—like the sirens themselves—are impossible to resist/divDIV Sensuality mingles with fantasy in this sultry anthology starring fairies, sphinxes, werewolves, and other beings by masterful storytellers including Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Ellen Kushner, and more. Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers features a vampire who falls in love with her human prey, an updated Red Riding Hood fantasy, an unsuspecting young man who innocently joins in seductive faerie revelry, and a cat goddess made human. Alluring and charismatic, this collection from master editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling will stimulate more than just your imagination./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features illustrated biographies of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, including rare photos from the editors’ personal collections./div




In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories


Book Description

Creak... Crash... BOO! Shivering skeletons, ghostly pirates, chattering corpses, and haunted graveyards...all to chill your bones! Share these seven spine-tingling stories in a dark, dark room.




The Siren and the Sword


Book Description

Kyle Wadsworth arrives at Harvard eager to start his new life as a college student away from the cold and distant great-aunt who has raised him. But he walks into a building that only magical people can see, confusing both himself and the administrators of Veritas, the secret magical university hidden inside Harvard. There he first sees a beautiful girl who seems magical to him in every way. Soon Jess Torralva is tutoring Kyle in the ways of magic, sex, and love. But trouble is afoot at Veritas. Rumors abound that a siren is haunting the library, and when Kyle's best friend is attacked, Kyle is determined to use his newly learned skills in erotic magic to catch the culprit. But which is more important, his quest for justice or his search for true love?




The Sense of an Ending


Book Description

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.