This book is a history of love and the challenge love offers to the laws and customs of its times and places, as told through poetry from the Song of Songs to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It is also an account of the critical reception afforded to such literature, and the ways in which criticism has attempted to stifle this challenge.Bryson and Movsesian argue that the poetry they explore celebrates and reinvents the love the troubadour poets of the eleventh and twelfth cen...

The Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature provides readers with a comprehensive reassessment of the value of humanism in an intellectual landscape. Offering contributions by leading international scholars, this volume seeks to define literature as a core expressive form and an essential constitutive element of newly reformulated understandings of humanism.While the value of humanism has recently been dominated by anti-humanist and post-humanist perspectives which ...

The exciting new book argues for a renewed emphasis on humanism--contrary to the trend of post-humanism, or what Neema Parvini calls "the anti-humanism" of the last several decades of literary and theoretical scholarship. In this trail-blazing study, Michael Bryson argues for this renewal of perspective by covering literature written in different languages, times, and places, calling for a return to a humanism, which focuses on literary characters and their psychological and existential st...

In Michael Bryson's Survival, a couple sit in a lakeside Toronto condo, trapped by a crazed, mysterious sniper. The Lesson presents a self-absorbed wedding DJ as the newest addition to Jessica Westheads trademark cast of offbeat protagonists. In Laure Baudot's In the Afternoon, a babysitter's envy and its fallout come to the fore when a former client is accused of a crime, and she must decide whether to help exonerate him. In Mui'n by Nancy Branch, a Mig...

Toronto in the twenty-first century: At night, a beacon on a lonely ancient lake, a drainage pond from the last ice age. In the daytime, a bulwark of glass, glinting in the radiant sun. Joe, Mary, and her cat, Sam, sit in a lakeside condo, trapped by a crazed, mysterious sniper. What has become of their lives? What has become of their city? What has become of their century? As the situation begins to unravel, Mary finds herself wondering, “What would Margaret Atwood do?”

The Lesson presents a self-absorbed wedding DJ as the newest addition to Jessica Westhead’s trademark cast of offbeat protagonists. This posturing narrator is showing a new recruit the ropes, but what begins as a monologue full of blue-collar bravado grows more menacing over the course of the night. He becomes fixated on a female wedding guest—you know the type, spiky hair and feathers on her dress. As he dwells on the woman he feels is using dance-floor requests ...

In the rugged Nepisiguit River region of northern New Brunswick, two hunters face off. One is local sports lodge employee Danny Knockwood, a Mi’gmaw guide with a withered hand. The other is Mui’n, a one-eared black bear battling his inexorable hunger. When Danny is charged by the lodge owner to hunt down the bear that is frightening guests at the salmon pools, his personal values come into sharp conflict with his commitment to the task. The resulting confrontation tests both his physical s...

The inspiration for the film Total Recall, starring Colin Farrell and Kate Beckinsale, and directed by Len Wiseman. This ebook-only edition of Philip K. Dick’s classic short story tells the story of Douglas Quail, an unfulfilled bureaucrat who dreams of visiting Mars, but can't afford the trip. Luckily, there is Rekal Incorporated, a company that lets everyday stiffs believe they’ve been on incredible adventures. The only problem is that when technicians attempt a memory implant o...

When Daniel Miller wakes up one morning, something has gone terribly wrong. The power is out. The phones are dead. The house is silent. The street is shrouded in fog. Both his partner and their adopted daughter are missing. So are their neighbors. And so is everyone else in the world. Daniel Miller is the last person left on Earth… or is he?From award-winning, best-selling horror author Brian Keene comes an all-new, short novella of quiet, supernatural horror.

From Dustin Thomason, co-author of bestselling phenomenon The Rule of Four, 12-21 is an edge-of-your-seat novel charting a heroic race to save the world. And as the fateful date approaches, 12-21 is the novel all readers will be talking about.An ancient prophecy foretells that the world will end on 21 December 2012 . . .In Central America, a treasure hunter discovers a Maya relic - a mysterious and ornate codex - but when he smugg...

Julie Kagawa’s bestselling series The Iron Fey captivated the imagination—and hearts—of readers of all ages with its mix of magic, fantasy and romance. Discover what happened to Meghan and Ash following The Iron Knight in this novella…Meghan Chase is finally getting used to being the Iron Queen, ruler of the Iron Fey. Her life may be strange, but with former Winter prince Ash by her side at last, she wouldn’t have it any other way.But when they travel to th...

The writing team that delivered the bestselling Faithful, about the 2004 Red Sox championship season, takes readers to the ballpark again, and to a world beyond in this baseball tale with a twist from master storyteller Stephen King.Dean Evers, an elderly widower, sits in front of the television with nothing better to do than waste his leftover evenings watching baseball. It’s Rays/Mariners, and David Price is breezing through the line-up. Suddenly, in a s...