The Angels of Our Better Beasts


Book Description

“Populated with vampires, werewolves, gryphons, gods, and cryptozoological inquiry, these tales are ultimately about the nature of humanity” (Speculating Canada). Trust the beasts . . . The lemmings are really researching the Arctic biologists, the werewolves sing sweet Christian praise songs, and the signing gorilla just wants someone back in the cage for a minute or two. The black dog who tells you God loves you may not be believable, no, and those old lions in the canyon are up to something, aren’t they? The shaggy aliens just want to have dinner with the people who pillaged and destroyed their world, honestly, and the vampires just want to cure you of a terrible blood disease. In the forest, the sasquatch has fallen in love with the cryptozoologist who follows him. By the lake, the god of Lake Michigan struggles with the nature of reality while acting in his first buddy cop TV series. While the god of the Brazos River only wants to court the young, pretty Texas college students. These fifteen stories of beasts—and the beasts we sometimes become—ask us how much influence we have over each other, to bring out our beast or best sides . . . and how much control the beasts already have over us. “Throughout the book, I appreciated Stueart’s dry, often dark, situational humor, and his skillful, sympathetic characterizations.” —Kristin Janz, Mysterion “Fabulous ideas and even more fabulous characters . . . Stueart manages to craft an interesting and unique take on a number of common, sometimes overdone themes.” —Black Gate




The Better Angels of Our Nature


Book Description

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think this is the most violent age ever seen. Yet as bestselling author Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true.




Angels and Beasts


Book Description

Angels and Beasts looks into the interplay between the angelic figures in the vision of the seven seals. John creates a relationship between the four living creatures and the four riders in Revelation 6:1-8 that must not be overlooked. This connection works between the two groups as a whole and at the one-to-one level. The blending of symbols and the communication between these symbolic figures reveal exegetical, theological, and spiritual lessons. Both the scenario and the script of John's vision talk about terms and ties in the realm of angelic beings. For John these relations in the world above are a code to unlock relations in the world below.




Managing Monsters


Book Description

In early 1994 Marina Warner delivered the prestigious Reith Lectures for the BBC. In a series of six lectures, she takes areas of contemporary concern and relates them to stories from mythology and fairy tale which continue to grip the modern imagination. She analyses the fury about single mothers and the anxiety about masculinity in the light of ideals about male heroism and control; the current despair about children and the loss of childhood innocence; the changing attitude of myths about wild men and beasts and the undertow of racism which is expressed in myths about savages and cannibals. The last lecture, on home, brings the themes together to examine ideas about who we are and where we belong, with reference to the British nation and its way of telling its own history. Using a range of examples from video games to Turner's paintings, from popular films to Keats, Marina Warner interweaves her critique of fantasy, dream and prejudice.




Daughter of Smoke & Bone


Book Description

The first book in the New York Times bestselling epic fantasy trilogy by award-winning author Laini Taylor Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out. When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?













Mind and Philosophers


Book Description

The essays collected in this volume and written between 1959-1980 clearly belong to professional philosophy in both tone and context. Yet their ultimate aim is to explore larger problems and to set the groundwork for dealing with them. For the focus of attention throughout is human nature, not so much in the details of its structure or its social and moral manifestations as in its most general features and constituents. What sort of beings we are and how mind and body are related is the question at the very core of all inquiries into human nature.




Alfred the West Saxon


Book Description