Black Glass

An early work from PEN/Faulkner Award winner and Man Booker finalist Karen Joy Fowler, reissued and beautifully repackaged for new fans and old. First published in 1998 to high praise, and now reissued with the addition of a prefatory essay, Black Glass showcases the extraordinary talents of this prizewinning author. In fifteen gemlike tales, Fowler lets her wit and vision roam freely, turning accepted norms inside out and fairy tales upside down—pushing us to reconsider our unquestioned verities and proving once again that she is among our most subversive writers. So, then: Here is Carry Nation loose again, breaking up discos, smashing topless bars, radicalizing women as she preaches clean living to men more intent on babes and booze. And here is Mrs. Gulliver, her patience with her long-voyaging Lemuel worn thin: Money is short and the kids can’t even remember what their dad looks like. And what of Tonto, the ever-faithful companion, turning forty without so much as a birthday phone call from that masked man? It is a book full of great themes and terrific stories—but it is the way in which Fowler tells the tale, develops plot and character, plays with time, chance, and reality that makes these pieces so original.

Howl’s Moving Castle meets Neil Gaiman in this “dark and flinty” (Booklist) middle grade fantasy, set in a world as mesmerizing as it is menacing, following children on a quest to save their father who get embroiled in the sinister agendas of rival sorcerers. In an unkind alternate past, somewhere between the Stone Age and a Metal Age, Tell and his sister Wren live in a small mountain village that makes its living off black glass mines and runs on brutal laws. When their father is blinded in a mining accident, the law dictates he has thirty days to regain his sight and be capable of working at the same level as before or be put to death. Faced with this dire future, Tell and Wren make the forbidden treacherous journey to the legendary city of Halfway, halfway down the mountain, to trade their father’s haul of the valuable black glass for the medicine to cure him. The city, ruled by five powerful female sorcerers, at first dazzles the siblings. But beneath Halfway’s glittery surface seethes ambition, violence, prejudice, blackmail, and impending chaos. Without knowing it, Tell and Wren have walked straight into a sorcerers’ coup. Over the next twelve days, they must scramble first to save themselves, then their new friends, as allegiances shift and prejudices crack open to show who has true power.

A study of a largely forgotten optical device and its relation to notions of opacity, transparency, and imagination.

After her Uncle's suicide, Terese Svoboda investigates his stunning claim that MPs may have executed their own men during the occupation of Japan after World War II [Our captain] commended us for being good soldiers and doing our job well and having a minimum of problems. Then he dropped a bomb. He said the prison was getting overcrowded, terribly overcrowded. As a child Terese Svoboda thought of her uncle as Superman, with "Black Clark Kent glasses, grapefruit-sized biceps." At eighty, he could still boast a washboard stomach, but in March 2004, he became seriously depressed. Svoboda investigates his terrifying story of what happened during his time as an MP, interviewing dozens of elderly ex-GIs and visiting Japan to try to discover the truth. In Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, winner of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, Svoboda offers a striking and carefully wrought personal account of an often painful search for information. She intersperses excerpts of her uncle's recordings and letters to his wife with her own research, and shows how the vagaries of military justice can allow the worst to happen and then be buried by time and protocol

A cryptic message from an oddly familiar winged visitor is all Paul Jones has to help him survive in the conplex virtual reality world known as "Otherland."

Wine is one of the most celebrated and appreciated commodities around the world. Wine writers and scientists tell us much about varieties of wines, winegrowing estates, the commercial value and the biochemistry of wine, but seldom address the cultural, social, and historical conditions through which wine is produced and represented. This path-breaking collection of essays by leading anthropologists looks not only at the product but also beyond this to disclose important social and cultural issues that inform the production and consumption of wine. The authors show that wine offers a window onto a variety of cultural, social, political and economic issues throughout the world. The global scope of these essays demonstrates the ways in which wine changes as an object of study, commodity and symbol in different geographical and cultural contexts. This book is unique in covering the latest ethnography, theoretical and ethnohistorical research on wine throughout the globe. Four central themes emerge in this collection: terroir; power and place; commodification and politics; and technology and nature. The essays in each section offer broad frameworks for looking at current research with wine at the core.

From the acclaimed author of the Morgan Kingsley, Exorcist books comes the gripping first novel in a new series about a private eye who discovers, to her surprise, that she’s an immortal huntress. Nikki Glass can track down any man. But when her latest client turns out to be a true descendant of Hades, Nikki now discovers she can’t die. . . . Crazy as it sounds, Nikki’s manhunting skills are literally god-given. She’s a living, breathing descendant of Artemis who has stepped right into a trap set by the children of the gods. Nikki’s new “friends” include a descendant of Eros, who uses sex as a weapon; a descendant of Loki, whose tricks are no laughing matter; and a half-mad descendant of Kali who thinks she’s a spy. But most powerful of all are the Olympians, a rival clan of immortals seeking to destroy all Descendants who refuse to bow down to them. In the eternal battle of good god/bad god, Nikki would make a divine weapon. But if they think she’ll surrender without a fight, the gods must be crazy. . . .

Cinderella - The story is always the same: a girl - hated and abused by her step-family - meets her prince at a ball. There is involvement with a glass shoe, a bit of magic, and in the end, they all live happily ever after. You've heard it before - but you've never heard it like this: In early America, at a time when dealings with dead bodies is considered taboo, Cindy's father is a mortician. She, for one, is fascinated by the controversial work, until her mother dies and her father marries Anna van Burren, who brings two new sisters into the family. Cindy's misery only grows from there. Following her father's untimely death, Cindy's life spirals into darkness as she is forced to become a servant in her own home, to wait on her hated siblings and stepmother. She has become so sequestered that she can't even let the one man she continues to think about know that she is alive. She met him once in the mortuary years ago - a handsome, curious boy who had been a surprise to her - until she'd discovered who he was. Now a man, Christian is a perfect specimen, and also the object of her step-sisters' affections. According to a stipulation of his inheritance, he must marry before age twenty-one. That day is fast approaching. Any hope Cindy had of seeing him again - or of salvaging anything that should have been left of her life - seems lost. Cindy's world is filled with misfortune. She believes she must be cursed. It takes the appearance of a strange woman who brings a wicked prophecy before Cindy can see how blessed she could become - and to see what sacrifices were made to give her hope once again.