The Vanishment


Book Description

The VANISHMENT describes a fictional account of a modern day visitation by the late great Jesus Christ. The appearance of the spirit in the personage of the son of God or God himself, with all his miraculous powers, in the back yard of a middle class white guy, begins an astounding series of happenings that change mankind and the world forever. The book relates the authors rather wry and at times hilarious and wishful account of the "second coming" as has been predicted for two thousand years. Why Jesus decides to visit humanity in 2011 and why he returns to a poolside patio in Boca Raton Florida is left to the imagination of the writer and the reader. Equally, it remains for the reader to comprehend Jesus' actions as he goes about his business. Most certainly there are echoes of the day of Judgment, so colorfully described in the Book of Revelations, the last chapter in the Christian Bible, dealing with the prophetic visions John, a servant of Jesus, received from God. The author, in imagining the reasoning and actions of JC as he goes about "cleaning up" the mess mankind has made of his lovely world, delivers to the reader a vision of God's vision of a perfect world, with all its poisonous influences surgically removed by a miraculous intervention.' Nothing, but nothing, can top God when it comes to removing "stains" from the carpet of history. From one problem to the other, God, who knows the hearts of all men, makes decisions to improve his world and preserve his chosen people, which, as it turns out, aren't entirety and solely the Jews. In the end, a perfect world remains, cleansed of all a evil' influences...... The question for the reader is this: Is the world "fixed" by Jesus Christ a better one?




The Vanishment


Book Description

Peter and Sarah’s marriage has reached an impasse; their holiday in beautiful Cornwall is chosen to mend old wounds and bandage past pain. The house they go to has space – space for their writing, their painting, and their reconciliation. It has space too for its own memories and its own unforgettable horrors... but they are not to know that. When the locals are less than friendly than they might be and when the house sighs with its secrets, the sands of their marriage shift... and then Sarah vanishes and Peter is left alone. Or is he? Praise for Jonathan Aycliffe: ‘Aycliffe has a fine touch’ Independent ‘Aycliffe conjures up a feeling of dread that deepens with each unsettling incident’ Time Out ‘Naomi’s Room must rank among the finest of English ghost stories... They certainly don’t come more dark or fearsome.’ Newcastle Evening Chronicle




Mouse Woman and the Vanished Princesses


Book Description

These legends of the Haida people of British Columbia feature the wise and enterprising Mouse Woman, a narnauk -- a supernatural human/animal shape-shifter. Taking the form of both a mouse and a grandmother, Mouse Woman's role is to keep order between other narnauks and humans. Both a teacher and a nurturer, the ever-watchful Mouse Woman keeps a particularly close eye on the princesses of the great clans of the Northwest Coast, who carry the royal blood line. From them all future chiefs would descend. Though well protected, these princesses are sometimes lured away and spirited off by such diverse things as a bear, a magic plume, and gigantic snails. Mouse Woman must use tact and her own forms of trickery to set things right. This reissue of the original 1976 text features the striking black-and-white line drawings of Douglas Tait. With a new and more contemporary look, these compelling stories appeal to both longtime Christie Harris fans and new readers, young and old.







The Disappearance


Book Description

?The female of the species vanished on the afternoon of the second Tuesday of Februaryøat four minutes and fifty-two seconds past four o'clock, Eastern Standard Time. The event occurred universally at the same instant, without regard to time belts, and was followed by such phenomena as might be expected after happenings of that nature.? ø On a lazy, quiet afternoon, in the blink of an eye, our world shatters into two parallel universes as men vanish from women and women from men. After families and loved ones separate from one another, life continues in very different ways for men and women, boys and girls. An explosion of violence sweeps one world that still operates technologically; social stability and peace in the other are offset by famine and a widespread breakdown in machinery and science. And as we learn from the fascinating parallel stories of a brilliant couple, Bill and Paula Gaunt, the foundations of relationships, love, and sex are scrutinized, tested, and sometimes redefined in both worlds. The radically divergent trajectories of the gendered histories reveal stark truths about the rigidly defined expectations placed on men and women and their sexual relationships and make clear how much society depends on interconnection between the sexes. ø Written over a half century ago yet brimming with insight and unsettling in its relevance today, The Disappearance is a masterpiece of modern speculative fiction.




Phenomenal World


Book Description

For centuries mankind has been exploring the nature of reality. The materialistic scientific worldview would have us believe that physically measurable phenomena are all that exist. Yet the answers to the key of reality go far beyond this mindset. This book explores the clues we have about the nature of reality, especially those aspects that cannot yet be proven. If we can understand the most baffling aspects of reality, then we will move closer toward understanding its ultimate cause and nature.




After Extinction


Book Description

A multidisciplinary exploration of extinction and what comes next What comes after extinction? Including both prominent and unusual voices in current debates around the Anthropocene, this collection asks authors from diverse backgrounds to address this question. After Extinction looks at the future of humans and nonhumans, exploring how the scale of risk posed by extinction has changed in light of the accelerated networks of the twenty-first century. The collection considers extinction as a cultural, artistic, and media event as well as a biological one. The authors treat extinction in relation to a variety of topics, including disability, human exceptionalism, science-fiction understandings of time and posthistory, photography, the contemporary ecological crisis, the California Condor, systemic racism, Native American traditions, and capitalism. From discussions of the anticipated sixth extinction to the status of writing, theory, and philosophy after extinction, the contributions of this volume are insightful and innovative, timely and thought provoking. Contributors: Daryl Baldwin, Miami U; Claire Colebrook, Pennsylvania State U; William E. Connolly, Johns Hopkins U; Ashley Dawson, CUNY Graduate Center; Joseph Masco, U of Chicago; Nicholas Mirzoeff, New York U; Margaret Noodin, U of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Jussi Parikka, U of Southampton; Bernard C. Perley, U of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Cary Wolfe, Rice U; Joanna Zylinska, Goldsmiths, U of London.




The Art of Vanishing


Book Description

A young woman chafing at the confines of marriage confronts the high cost of craving freedom and adventure in a memoir that "pushes literary boundaries" (The Atlantic) At twenty-five, as her wedding date approached, Laura Smith began to feel trapped. Not by her fiancé, who shared her appetite for adventure, but by the unsettling idea that it was hard to be at once married and free. Laura wanted her life to be different. She wanted her marriage to be different. And she found in the strangely captivating story of another restless young woman determined to live without constraints both an enticement and a challenge. Barbara Newhall Follett was a free-spirited trailblazer who published her first novel at 11, enlisted as a deck hand on a boat bound for the south China seas at 15 and was one of the first women to hike the Appalachian trail. Then in December 1939, when she was not much older than Laura, she walked out of her apartment on a quiet tree-lined street in Brookline, leaving behind a fraying marriage, and vanished without a trace. Obsessed by her story, Laura set off to find out what had happened. The Art of Vanishing is a riveting mystery and a piercing exploration of marriage and convention that asks deep and uncomfortable questions: Why do we give up on our childhood dreams? Is marriage a golden noose? Must we find ourselves in the same row houses with Pottery Barn lamps telling our kids to behave? Searingly honest and written with a raw intensity, it will challenge you to rethink your most intimate decisions and may just upend your life.




The Key & the Flame


Book Description

A gutsy girl unlocks a magical universe—and the danger that lies within—in this “sprightly” and “exciting” middle grade fantasy adventure (Publishers Weekly). Eleven-year-old Holly Shepard longs for adventure, some escape from her humdrum life. That is precisely what she gets when she is given an old iron key that unlocks a door—in a tree. Holly crosses the threshold into a stunning and magical medieval world, Anglielle. And as she does so, something unlocks within Holly: a primal, powerful magic. Holly is joined on her journey by two tagalongs—her younger brother Ben, and Everett, an English boy who hungers after Holly’s newfound magic and carries a few secrets of his own. When Ben and Everett are sentenced to death by the royals, whose fear of magic has fueled a violent, systemic slaughter of all enchanted creatures, Holly must save them and find a way back home. But will she be able to muster the courage and rise above her ordinary past to become an extraordinary hero?




Invisible Natives


Book Description

This incisive, provocative, and wide-ranging book casts a critical eye on the representation of Native Americans in the Western film since the genre's beginnings. Armando José Prats shows the ways in which film reflects cultural transformations in the course of America's historical encounter with "the Indian." He also explores the relation between the myth of conquest and American history. Among the films he discusses at length are Northwest Passage, Stagecoach, The Searchers, Hombre, Hondo, Ulzana's Raid, The Last of the Mohicans, and Dances With Wolves.Throughout, Prats emphasizes the irony that the Western seems to be able to represent Native Americans only by rendering them absent. In addition, he points out that Native Americans who appear in Westerns are almost always male; Native women rarely figure into the plot, and are often portrayed by white women rendered "Indian" by narrative necessity. Invisible Natives offers an intriguing view of the possibilities and consequences—as well as the historical sources and cultural origins—of the Western's strategies for evading the actual portrayal of Native Americans.