Masques And Martyrs

Led by Peter Octavian, the Shadows continue their battle against the ruthless Hannibal and his vampiric minions, who mean to enslave humanity-and devour all in their path.

For the Shadows, nothing can ever be the same again. Their existence revealed to the world in Of Saints and Shadows, the truth of their divided heritage revealed to themselves in Angel Souls and Devil Hearts, they must now fight the hardest battle of all -- against others of their own kind. The fragile alliance of human and vampire was shattered forever by Hannibal, among the most ancient of Shadows, who turned on them both in their hour of greatest need. Driven by blood, he thirsts for dominion, and humankind to him will always be prey. For those Shadows who walk a different path there is only one choice to be made. Hannibal must be destroyed before he destroys them all. But his followers are many, and those who oppose him are few...

It has taken me years to realize just how extraordinary my life has been. My trend of good fortune has always been more than coincidental. This journey through change has taken me from theory to thesis and far beyond transformation. We live in a world where exploring the unexplained is now confined by science. For those who choose the unconventional path, it seems that social incarceration and emotional imprisonment awaits all who are willing to stand so bold. So rather than seeking answers, people merely began picking one from a box. I have not dreamed of, nor searched for heroes, for I have always lived among them. I have not pretended to be another nor prayed for anything that I have obtained. Yet, somehow I have acquired them all. You see, I have yet to narrow my factors to one single answer, which means, as long as this deductive reasoning continues, I must still be living to face another day. For all those dreamers, like me, I simply could not ask for more.

When the quarantine occurred in 2020, I found myself writing once more and looking back on everything that I had written over the past several years. I was quite shocked when I came to the realization that my first book of poetry had been published ten years prior. I had been writing now for the past 35 years, and while that doesn't make me some sort of expert, or authority on explaining emotions, it certainly suggests a sense of dedication to something that was incredibly meaningful to me. There were times I almost gave it up, and there were even periods of my life where I quit writing altogether, but something always brought me back to it, again and again. I can't really explain the passion I have for poetry, but I've always been grateful for the ability to look back on my experiences and admire all the lessons I have learned along the way. I guess the one thing I learned that will never change in this journey... My passion for writing, my desire to continue learning from those around me, and my aspiration to spread empathy to anyone who is willing to listen, and for that opportunity alone, I thank you.

The second Peter Octavian novel in the classic urban fantasy series- reissued in a brand-new package-by the award-winning author.

Combine a Boston P.I., the Vatican, and vampires, and what do you have? A novel-and a series-that will appeal to fans of Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, and Dan Brown.

The Cromwellian Protectorate was a period of innovation in poetry and drama, as well as constitutional debate. This new account of the period focuses on key cultural institutions - Parliament, an embassy to Sweden, Oxford University, Cromwell's state funeral - to examine this poetry's relationship with a culture in transformation and crisis. Edward Holberton shows that the Protectorate's instabilities helped to generate lively and innovative poetry. Protectorate verse explores the fault-lines of a culture which ceaselessly contested the authority of its own institutions, including the office of Protector itself. Poetry by Andrew Marvell, Edmund Waller, William Davenant, and John Dryden, contributed to a vibrant poetic culture which embraced diverse forms and occasions: masques for the weddings of Cromwell's daughters, diplomatic poems to Queen Christina of Sweden, naval victories, civic pageants, and university anthologies in celebration of a peace treaty. Many of these texts prove difficult to align with established ideas of the political and cultural contests of the age, because they become entangled with cultural institutions which could no longer be taken for granted, and were in many cases transforming rapidly, with far-reaching historical consequences. Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate asks how poetry confronted questions that were complicated by institutional practices, how poets tried to square their wider cultural sympathies with their interests in a particular parliamentary or university crisis, and how changes in institutions afforded poets critical insights into their society's problems and its place in the world. The readings of this book challenge previous representations of Protectorate culture as a phase of conservative backsliding, or pragmatic compromise, under a quasi-monarchical order. Protectorate verse emerges as nuanced and vital writing, which looks beyond the personality of Oliver Cromwell to the tensions that shaped his power. Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate argues that it is precisely through being contingent and compromised that these poems achieve their vitality, and become so revealing.