The Legend of Achnor


Book Description

A world filled with strange creatures, people, and which has been corrupted with Sorna for centuries is lost as their king has taken most of the power, and is still filled with greed. Then he finds it, a power unlike any other. He needs it to become all-powerful, but it is not in his world. After She is in their world, she must find a way to defeat the ultimate evil and find a way home




Magical Realism


Book Description

On magical realism in literature




Unbearable Magic


Book Description

A grizzly discovery. A false accusation. Can the most powerful witch on earth make the truth appear




Fictitious Biographies


Book Description




Embracing the Magic


Book Description

Their hero is a fraud and only he knows it. When the truth comes knocking, can one boy conjure a way to save the day? Young Samual longs to perform magic of his own. What's worse, he can't seem to convince anyone that their beloved Town Magician is a trickster without an enchanted bone in his body. When a wicked wizard challenges the pretender to a duel, Samual vows to keep his village safe by forcing the fraudster to rise to the challenge. Determined to prevent disaster, he secretly shadows the phony protector during his training with the Grand Wizard. And when they barely escape an vicious attack, Samual realizes he must partner with his bitter rival. But keeping the truth hidden any longer may not help them outwit a powerful sorcerer. With his town in grave danger, can Samual protect the ones he loves from the forces of evil? Embracing the Magic is the enchanting first story in the Town Magician middle grade fantasy series. If you enjoy unlikely heroes, coming-of-age adventures, and spellbinding creatures, then you'll love S.A. Schneider's fantastical tale. In the book, you also get: - background information on Town Magicians - Words to Know to learn new words - Create your own adventure stories - suggestions to help kids create their own stories Teachers and Parents: visit sa-schneider.com for educational resources and free short stories set within the Town Magician world. You can also get a copy of the study guide for teaching use.




Unshuttered


Book Description

An award-winning author presents a portrait of Black America in the nineteenth century Over the course of two decades, award-winning poet Patricia Smith has amassed a collection of rare nineteenth-century photographs of Black men, women, and children who, in these pages, regard us from the staggering distance of time. Unshuttered is a vessel for the voices of their incendiary and critical era. Smith’s searing stanzas and revelatory language imbue the subjects of the photos with dynamism and revived urgency while she explores how her own past of triumphs and losses is linked inextricably to their long-ago lives: We ache for fiction etched in black and white. Our eyes never touch. These tragic grays and bustles, mourners’ hats plopped high upon our tamed but tangled crowns, strain to disguise what yearning does with us. The poet’s unrivaled dexterity with dramatic monologue and poetic form reanimates these countenances, staring back from such yesterdays, and the stories they may have told. This is one of American literature’s finest wordsmiths doing what she does best—unreeling history to find its fierce and formidable lyric.




Legitimising Magic


Book Description

As magic is a powerful means to influence the natural world and human beings, and is deeply connected to the divine sphere, persons using it are in constant need to justify its use. The ambivalence of magic to serve both well-wishing and ill-wishing aims puts the practitioners ever at risk. This volume illuminates the strategies adopted to legitimise the practice of magic and analyses how these justifications are phrased and formulated in cuneiform texts, thereby revealing the underlying principles and unexplained axioms of using magic in the Ancient Near East.




The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls


Book Description

When four very different small-town Delaware high school girls are forced to join a mother-daughter book club over summer vacation, they end up learning about more than just the books they read.




The Story of Your Life


Book Description

And so the time has come for you to tell the story of your life. How will you do it? A straightforward, linear narrative? Perhaps you will adopt an experimental approach. Do you aim to produce something of great artistic merit? Will you tell the story simply, or do you want to convey something complex and beguiling? Will you be scrupulously truthful, or do you intend to embroider the facts and events? Perhaps you want to present a fantasy version of your life rather than the real thing. Perhaps you want others to admire you and respect you, so you will censor all the unsavory and disreputable things you did. You definitely won't be presenting a "warts and all" account. Or maybe you want people to know exactly who you are, so you will tell it exactly as it is. You will show the world your true self and they can take it or leave it. What kind of audience do you want? Do you seek people of refinement and the highest taste, or are you eager for the masses to crowd in to hear your tale? Are you an elitist or a populist? Do you want to have as large an audience as possible or as select an audience as you can find? Is quality better than quantity? Will you produce a crowd-pleasing thriller, or a high-minded meditation? Perhaps a horror story captures the essence of your life, or a sci-fi, or a western, or a rom-com. It is more tragedy than comedy, or did the laughs and fun times flow thick and fast? There are so many factors to consider. A life is not an easy thing, and its telling is even harder. Come inside and learn how to tell the story of your life.




Stranger Magic


Book Description

Our foremost theorist of myth, fairytale, and folktale explores the magical realm of the imagination where carpets fly and genies grant prophetic wishes. Stranger Magic examines the profound impact of the Arabian Nights on the West, the progressive exoticization of magic, and the growing acceptance of myth and magic in contemporary experience.