Merlin, the wizard of Arthurian legend, has been a source of enduring fascination for centuries. In this authoritative, entertaining, and generously illustrated book, Stephen Knight traces the myth of Merlin back to its earliest roots in the early Welsh figure of Myrddin. He then follows Merlin as he is imagined and reimagined through centuries of literature and art, beginning with Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose immensely popular History of the Kings of Britain (1138...

A fast paced novel about a Los Angeles Times crime reporter who takes on a local criminal kingpin billionaire Martin Nelson. Harry Walsh has been reporting on the murders of young women since the beginning of the year. Things really begin to heat up once he gets on the trail of those doing the killing. He tries to expose Nelson as being responsible for numerous criminal activities in Los Angeles, including murder. Walsh becomes a target himself and gets entangled in the United States crimi...

English Industrial Fiction of the Mid-Nineteenth Century discusses the valuable fiction written in mid-nineteenth-century Britain which represents the situations of the new breed of industrial workers, both the mostly male factory workers who operated in the oppressive mills of the midlands and north and, in other stories, the oppressed seamstresses who worked mostly in London in very poor and low-paid conditions. Beginning with a general introduction to workers’ fiction at the st...

Medieval Literature and Social Politics brings together seventeen articles by literary historian Stephen Knight.The book primarily focuses on the social and political meaning of medieval literature, in the past and the present. It provides an account of how early heroic texts relate to the issues surrounding leadership and conflict in Wales, France and England, and how the myth of the Grail and the French reworking of Celtic stories relate to contemporary society and its c...

It Was the End of Days.The world had less than seven hours to prepare. When it hit, the coronal mass ejection from the sun rolled back hundreds of years of technological innovation. Airplanes fell from the skies. Power grids crashed. Even electrical cabling was turned to slag. No internet. No cable TV. No electricity. No modern day conveniences of any kind, from fancy European sedans to smart phones to clean, running water. The entire world is plunged back into the Dark Ages in les...

London, 1902. A string of murders committed by a killer dubbed 'The Deptford Strangler' has the police mystified. The victims seem to have nothing in common, and the crimes appear random and motiveless. Meanwhile, retired Inspector Brough and his nephew, Nicholas Calvin, researching a book on the history of murder, unearth a series of killings committed in Rogano, Italy in 1454 identical in pattern to the present-day crimes. What possible connection could there be between these horrific ev...

George Reynolds is arguably the most prolific of all nineteenth-century English novelists, reaching an enormous audience through his thirty-six novels. Often selling in very large numbers in weekly one-penny installments, his works were known as by the most popular English novelist ever. Yet today, he remains almost unknown in the canon of English Literature.A serious radical, strongly pro-woman, and a leading Chartist seeking the vote for all men, Reynolds’ vigorous heroines diffe...

A fast paced, action packed international thriller and ultimate espionage adventure, involving a daring mission to begin to rid the world of nuclear weapons.From the time of their coincidental arrival in Moscow, until their final confrontation with cold blooded Soviet killers on the other side of the world, Americans, Gerry Williams and Peter Shelby are carrying out a mission involving the most potent weapons of mass destruction ever invented by mankind.The action moves fro...

Australian crime fiction has grown from the country's origins as an 18th-century English prison colony. Early stories focused on escaped convicts becoming heroic bush rangers, or how the system mistreated those who were wrongfully convicted. Later came thrillers about wealthy free settlers and lawless gold-seekers, and urban crime fiction, including Fergus Hume's 1887 international best-seller The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in Melbourne.The 1980s saw a surge of private-e...

Starting with William Godwin's Caleb Williams and Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly, this book covers in detail the great works of detective fiction--Poe's Dupin stories, Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Sayers' Strong Poison, Chandler's The Big Sleep, and Simenon's The Yellow Dog. Lesser-known but important early works are also discussed, including Wilkie Collins'

Crime fiction--a product of the burgeoning metropolis of the 19th century--features specialists who identify criminals to protect an anxious citizenry. Before detectives came to play the central role, the protagonists tended to be lawyers or other professionals. Major English writers like Gaskell, Dickens and Collins contributed to the genre--Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was a best-seller in 1887--and American and French authors created new forms. This book explores t...

THE MISSION CONTINUES...After surviving a massive earthquake and completing a desperate race halfway across the continental United States, Captain Mike Andrews and the crew of the newly-rebuilt Self-Contained Exploration Vehicle Four have a new mission: continue the search for life in the Pacific Northwest.After weeks of searching, they find what they were looking for: the small town of Sherwood, north of the ruins of Bend, Oregon. The tiny community populated by forward th...