Praise for Jalsaghar My hands memorize your hourglass waist. /Slow winds pass through distant sands, sifting grains. Imagine that beauty rethought in stanza after stanza. The ghazal is the Satie of poetry, sustained by the whirling dervish, its couplets braiding into the brain. Steffen Horstmanns Jalsaghar is a stunning homage to the late Agha Shahid Ali (Terese Svoboda, author of Professor Harrimans Steam Air-Ship). A rapproachment with a formal tradition demands incisive cultural evaluat...

Praise for Ujjain Steffen Horstmanns book Ujjain is a remarkable collection of Ghazals in Eng-lish. Steffen uses an ancient form of poetry to express the sensibility of a modern day poet, and by doing so, he crosses the boundaries of languages, cultures, and traditions. Agha Shahid Ali couldnt have been more proud of his Shagird Steffen Horstmann, who has kept the torch burning, that he passed on to him after writing Call Me Ishmael Tonight. Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, author of Bare Soul The me...

From unicorns and trolls to werewolves and griffins, this comprehensive guide is the key to discovering every magical creature from myth, folklore and legend around the world.This compendium of magical creatures explores the history, folklore and mythology of fascinating beasts throughout all the magical worlds. Including stories, celebrations, traditions, and amazing facts, the book spans every major culture across the globe.Many of the fantastic creatures described in the...

“Lavers keeps his intellectual detective story passionate and suspenseful.”— Washington Post Book WorldFrom Biblical stories about virgins to adventures with Harry Potter, unicorns have enchanted people for millennia. In the endlessly fascinating The Natural History of Unicorns, author Chris Lavers ingeniously traces the legend of this mysterious creature to the real people, places, and animals that have influenced its story.

Did you know that a Hippogriff is supposedly the offspring of a horse and a griffin? Or that a Greek Sphinx generally has a male face, whereas an Egyptian one has a female visage? Where does the Skunk Ape roam, and how can you spot a Kitsune in human form? Is Slenderman the most frightening mythical creature, or is that honour bestowed on the fearsome Gashadokuro? This fantastic book contains details of over one hundred mythical beasts and legendary creatures, organised into categories for...

Many ancient legends in circulation, either through verbal story-telling, ancient script or paintings, have assisted the human race in understanding the complex world we live in, even if they have been embellished over the years. They have helped us form societies and have given people reason to live, they are the blocks that when linked together can help us find the answers we as a human race have been searching for. Myths and Legends gathers together the principal mythologies, legends an...

This is the first in a collection of seven SHORT stories.The oldest secret known to man. Four ancient stories. Three recent discoveries.The first four stories cover the original discoveries from four of the seven pods by the ancient civilizations in Egypt, Mexico, Cambodia, and Canada, and how our ancestors dealt with these mysterious objects. Empires were changed forever – worship, fear, wonder, love, upheaval, and mighty wars ripped continents apart, steering the course o...

The Egyptian Book of the Dead is one of the oldest and greatest classics of Western spirituality. Until now, the available translations have treated these writings as historical curiosities with little relevance to our contemporary situation. This new version, made from the hieroglyphs, approaches the Book of the Dead as a profound spiritual text capable of speaking to us today. These writings suggest that the divine realm and the human realm are not altogether separate--they remind us tha...

Giorgos Seferis was born in Smyrna, Asia Minor, in 1900. He attended school in Smyrna and finished his studies at the Gymnasium in Athens. When his family moved to Paris in 1918, Seferis studied law at the University of Paris and became interested in literature. He returned to Athens in 1925 and was admitted to the Royal Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the following year. This was the beginning of a long and successful diplomatic career, during which he held posts in England (1931-193...

The first authorized English translation of Nobel laureate Miguel Ángel Asturias' poetic cycle. The Nobel Committee took special note of Clarivigilia Primaveral, calling it an "impressive" work that "deals with the very genesis of the arts and of poetic creation, in a language which seems to have assumed the bright splendor of the magical queztal's feathers and the glimmering of phosphorescent insects."Professor Gerald M. Martin of the University of Pittsburgh, one of the world's to...

In 1244, the brilliant poet Rumi and the wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz met and immediately fell into a deep spiritual connection. The Glance taps a major, yet little explored theme in Rumi's poetry-the mystical experience that occurs in the meeting of the eyes of the lover and the beloved, parent and child, friend and soul mate.Coleman Barks's new translations of these powerful and complex poems capture Rumi's range from the ethereal to the everyday. They revea...

Tiger has lost almost everything. Her village. Her community. Her father. But her brother Tarren, who has been kidnapped by the deadheads that razed her village, still lives. With only the loyal but enigmatic old man Sai to guide her into the nightmare-jungle that was once North America, Tiger must face her greatest fears in a race to save her brother before he is lobotomized, even while the world around her is bled dry by Those That Watch.The Watchers are in the end-stages of stri...