Chess is the ultimate fun strategy game – and this is the perfect introduction to chess, whether you're a budding master or you've never played before.In simple, fun stages, readers will learn what every piece can do, and how to use them on the board. Clear, original board diagrams make the action easy to understand. Readers will also discover the best tactics to use against their opponent, from how to counter the Queen's Gambit to how to avoid the Fool's Mate. There's plenty to di...

Basketball is Jackson O’Connell’s life. Much more than a game, it allows him to cross barriers of class and race, and make new friends from the rival high school. Driven by his passion for hoops, he can almost forget his alcoholic father and a night of violence that tore his family apart. Jackson’s senior year is plagued by volcanic zits, girl shyness, and rumors that isolate him from most of the school. And when team politics keep him off the starting lineup of the basketball team, his ho...

In recent decades, the evidence for an oral epic tradition in ancient Greece has grown enormously along with our ever-increasing awareness of worldwide oral traditions. John Foley here examines the artistic implications that oral tradition holds for the understanding of the Iliad and Odyssey in order to establish a context for their original performance and modern-day reception.In Homer's Traditional Art, Foley addresses three crucially interlocking areas...

This book is about humanity and the realization that instead of a right to life, rather we receive the gift of life. Every gift involves a giver and a recipient. Who or what is the giver? As recipient, I can either accept or reject the gift. What does that mean? Am I a blip in the evolutionary process, or am I a creature burdened or blessed with a purpose in life? And what does that mean?

In The Heart of Our Music, master practitioners of the art of liturgical music come together to offer enriching insights, a stirring vision, and practical new ideas that will change the way you think about liturgy and liturgical ministry. These reflections are written with the needs of parish liturgists and liturgical musicians in mind.This volume includes reflections on who sings, the kind of music they sing, the acoustic qualities of our worship spaces, the act of singin...

In The Heart of Our Music, master practitioners of the art of liturgical music come together to offer enriching insights, a stirring vision, and practical new ideas that will change the way you think about liturgy and liturgical ministry. These reflections are written with the needs of parish liturgists and liturgical musicians in mind.This volume includes reflections on the role of composition, the role of music, the kind of language we use, the missionary dimension of ou...

In The Heart of Our Music, master practitioners of the art of liturgical music come together to offer enriching insights, a stirring vision, and practical new ideas that will change the way you think about liturgy and liturgical ministry. These reflections are written with the needs of parish liturgists and liturgical musicians in mind.This volume includes reflections on how the music we sing and play comes across to the people, processes for bringing different cultures to...

The Beetle is a horror novel that was published in 1897 and significantly outsold Dracula, which appeared in the same year. A polymorphous Egyptian creature the Beetle seeks revenge on the eminent British politician Paul Lessingham for crimes committed against the disciples of an ancient cult. Although it is less well-known than Dracula to modern readers, The Beetle remains a leading example of the Gothic novel.

For a century Bram Stoker’s Dracula has reigned supreme as the undisputed masterpiece of horror writing. We have all grown up beneath the shadow of the elegant Count, at once an attractive, brutal and erotic creature of the night. In 1897 Bram Stoker wrote a story expressing the most persistent nightmare of the human condition. Take this opportunity to dream again…

Upon inheriting the Moonstone, a huge and priceless diamond, Rachel Verinder’s delight turns to dismay when the gem suddenly disappears. But this is no ordinary theft. Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard is called in and immediately suspects an intricate plot. However, not even his powers of detection can penetrate fully the mysteries surrounding the diamond. And as we listen to each character’s version of the events, layer upon layer of drama and suspense build to the final and astonishing den...

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma. Terrifying and enlightening, Clarissa weaves a tapestry of n...

First appearing in 1782, Dangerous Liaisons is one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The plot unfolds through a series of letters as the two main protagonists, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, attempt to bring about the seduction of a young woman.The epistolary nature of the novel gives a multi-faceted perspective of the action, which places the book firmly in the tradition of libertine literature. The notoriety that the novel achie...