In May 1940, as Hitler's armies tear through France, two battalions of Guards are rushed to Boulogne in a desperate attempt to hold back the German advance.Lieutenant Jimmy Gale never expected to join them. Yet within hours he is leading a hastily assembled force of young sailors into a city already descending into chaos. Poorly trained for land warfare and armed with little more than rifles, they must face tanks, machine guns, mortar fire and relentless attacks from the air. Their...

Sentimental aesthetics have come to vex contemporary literature. The relation between feeling and acting is increasingly contested, and emotional entanglements in the lives of others often seem suspect. Literary criticism, meanwhile, wrestles with its own purpose when confronting representations of vulnerability, inequity, and injustice.David James explores what happens when writers’ affective ambitions coincide with criticism’s hunger for social consequence. He considers caregivin...

From Evil Dead to The Ring , there's just something trapped in dead media that keeps drawing us back: a combination of horror and nostalgia that's irresistible. In The Black Tapes , Libby Cudmore and Nick Mamatas bring you haunting tales of lost media, real and imagined, from the best writers working today.It's a promise and a threat—...

Friday, 12th February, 1993. Two outwardly unremarkable ten-year-old boys began the day by playing truant and ended it running an errand for the local video shop. In between they abducted and killed a two-year-old boy, James Bulger. In search of an explanation, award-winning journalist David James Smith looks behind the misinformation, misunderstanding and sensational reporting to an exact account of the events of that day. A sensitive and definitive account, The Sleep of Reason a...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKOnce in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer. And in The Brothers K he tells a story both striking and in its originality and poignant in its universality.This touching, uplifting novel spans decades of loyalty, anger, re...

'Luminous' The Times'Beautiful’ Caught by the RiverBringing together contemporary Scottish writing on nature and landscape, this inspiring collection takes us from walking to wild swimming, from red deer to pigeons and wasps, from remote islands to back gardens, through prose, poetry and photography.Edited and introduced by Kathleen Jamie, and with contributions from Amy Liptrot, Jim Crumley, Chitra Ramaswamy, Malac...

"Not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, the 19 stories in this new best-of annual anthology feature episodes of graphic gore and violence--including torture, dismemberment, self-mutilation, and home abortion--that are designed to push buttons as well as boundaries...strictly for hardcore horror fans." --Publishers WeeklyExcerpt from the Introduction:Editors Randy Chandler and Cheryl Mullenax put the call out to horror writers and editors of...

Edwardian London in 1910, the notorious tale of Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve re-investigated by a prizewinning journalist.At a time when Edwardian Britain seemed a golden place, basking in its imperial glory, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife Belle lived among the suburban villas of North London, renting a house at 39 Hilldrop Crescent. After supper on 31 January 1910, their friends went home and Crippen killed Belle with poison, dismembered her body and buried...

Reaching back hundreds of years, this volume is the first major English edition to include all the prayers needed to read the Slavic Psalter at home in the Orthodox tradition. The contents include many texts traditionally printed in Orthodox Psalters and not easily found in English. With psalms and biblical canticles adapted from the classic Coverdale translation of the Book of Psalms and the King James Version of the Bible, this record has been carefully edited to agree with the original ...

**An epic comedy about the quest for transcendence in an anything-but-transcendent America, set amid the gorgeous landscapes of the American west: A “spiritual journey” full of “fun, joy, love, courage and compassion” (**Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers) from the author of the perennial cult bestsellers The River Why and The Brothers K.A random bolt from a DC-8 falls from the sky, killing a child and throwing the faith...

In this hugely original blend of thriller, sci-fi and horror, a trio of Blockbuster employees discover they may be able to change the endings of popular films and, thus, the world around them.The last Blockbuster video store in the United States is hanging on by a thread. And after a crazy night attempting to track down a lost VCR rental to collect the record-setting and internet-famous late fee, three employees, idealistic Eva, cinephile Jerry, and their tyrannica...

From the award-winning author of the acclaimed story collection The Heaven of Animals, called “a wise debut…beautiful [stories] with a rogue touch” (The New York Times Book Review), comes a sweeping, domestic novel about a family that reunites at their North Carolina lake house for one last vacation before the home is sold—and the long-buried secrets that are finally revealed.The Starling family is scattered across the country. Parents Richard and...