Once upon a time, one had to read Japanese in order to enjoy manga. Today manga has become a global phenomenon, attracting audiences in North America, Europe, Africa, and Australia. The style has become so popular, in fact, that in the US and UK publishers are appropriating the manga style in a variety of print material, resulting in the birth of harlequin mangas which combine popular romance fiction titles with manga aesthetics. Comic publishers such as Dark Horse and DC Comics are transl...

From E.B. White's motherly Charlotte to J.R.R. Tolkien's monstrous Shelob, spiders both lovable and loathsome have crept their way into human literature. Here is a collection of tales about these fearsome, yet fascinating creatures. A golden spider learns how to spin webs of dreams and visions…A modern London barrister is chosen to be the vessel for an ancient African god…A scientist discovers some legends are all too true…An outlawed demigod passes judgment on a prince's fitness to rule. ...

When we open our closet doors each morning, we seldom consider what our sartorial choices say, whether we tend toward jeans and a well-worn concert t-shirt or wingtips and a three-piece suit. Yet, how we dress divulges more than whether we crave comfort or couture; our clothing communicates who we are and how we relate to our culture. But how does a Balenciaga bag or a tough leather jacket topped by liberty spikes signify these things?Fashion in Popular Culture considers this quest...

How the First World War influenced the author of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy: "Very much the best book about J.R.R. Tolkien that has yet been written." —A. N. WilsonAs Europe plunged into World War I, J. R. R. Tolkien was a student at Oxford and part of a cohort of literary-minded friends who had wide-ranging conversations in their Tea Club and Barrovian Society. After finishing his degree, Tolkien experienced the horrors of the Great War as a sig...

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of The Handmaid's Tale tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Margaret Atwood's book.Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.This short summary and analysis of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood includes:Historical contextPart-by-part summaries

This group of new critical essays offers multidisciplinary analysis of director Peter Jackson's spectacularly successful adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003). Part One of the collection, "Techniques of Structure and Story," compares and contrasts the organizational principles of the books and films. Part Two, "Techniques of Character and Culture," focuses on the methods used to ...

Dragged from the deepest, darkest depths of the 'Very Peculiar History' vaults, this book collects tales of terror, morbid myths and frightening facts that will chill you witless. Introduced by everyone's favourite bloodsucker, Count Dracula, 'Vampires: A Very Peculiar History' features the origin of vampire-like creatures and a biological and mythological look at human blood (including the best places to bite if you were a vampire!) alongside tales of the real-life vampires that may have ...

“It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed ..."The summer of 1816 was by all accounts a cold and wet one. After the April 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, global temperatures dropped and a rainy, monsoon-like drizzle settled in over Northern Europe. In a holiday villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, a young English poet and his lover, the guests of another poet, discouraged from outdoor pursuits, sat discussing the callousness of nature ...

This analysis of cyberpunk science fiction written between 1981 and 2003 positions women's cyberpunk in the larger cultural discussion of feminist issues. It traces the origins of the genre, reviews the critical reactions and outlines the ways in which women's cyberpunk advances points of view that are specifically feminist. Novels are examined within their cultural contexts; their content is compared to broader controversies within contemporary feminism, and their themes are revealed as r...

A time travel epic featuring history and romance, Outlander--unlike most adventure series--is aimed at women audiences. The kilted male characters, the female narrator, the fantastic period costumes are atypical of male-gendered television. Both the show and the novels on which it is based address issues most series shy away from, like breast feeding, abortion and birth control. Role reversals are common--the powerful Claire rescues her virginal husband Jamie from sexual abuse. Wh...

J.R.R. Tolkien claimed that he based the land of Middle Earth on a real place. The Real Middle Earth brings alive, for the first time, the very real civilization in which those who lived had a vision of life animated by beings beyond the material world.Magic was real to these people and they believed their universe was held together by an interlaced web of golden threads visible only to wizards. At its center was Middle Earth, a place peopled by humans, but...

Few twentieth-century authors can compete with J.R.R. Tolkien. More than three-quarters of a century after the publication of The Hobbit in 1937, his works continue to captivate millions of readers across the world. As a collection of papers delivered in 2012 at the Tolkien Society’s international conference of the same name, The Return of the Ring is representative of the wide and varied responses Tolkien’s works have generated over the decades. The first volume focuses ...