The Secret Of Blossom Rise

When a young nurse accepts a job at a former military hospital, she unearths a family secret and finds the spectral occupants a little too familiar. A short ghost story.

Dark tales of ghosts of war, blood from the Autumn of Terror, the wrath of nature, an unusual murder and a cynical vampire. Twisted poetry of loss and mayhem. Some adult themes and language. Winner of the NN Light Best Short Story Category 2021

For the first time in an omnibus, this duology chronicles the adventures of naturalist Tristram Flattery as he voyages to discover the lost history of magic in a world where reason and science reign. The Age of Mages is over, and all the secrets of their magical arts are thought to be lost to the world. There are even those who suspect that the last of the great Mages spent their final years scrupulously eradicating all traces of their craft from the pages of history--insuring that their art will never be practiced again. It is the dawn of a new era: an age of reason, science, and exploration, and Tristam Flattery is one of its most promising young naturalists. But when Tristam is summoned to the royal court of Farrland to try to revitalize a failing species of plant which seems to have mysterious, almost magical, medicinal properties--a plant without which, he is told, the aging king will surely die--he soon realizes that he has been drawn into the heart of a political struggle which spans generations, a conflict which threatens the very foundations of his civilization. And before long, Tristam is caught in the grip of a destiny which will lead him to the ends of the known world--on a voyage of discovery that has more to do with magic than with science....

A dozen tumultuous years after the dramatic events at the Paris Opera House Raoul, Comte de Chagny is still haunted by the mysterious Opera Ghost – the creature of legend who held staff at the Opera House under his thrall, kidnapped Raoul’s lover and murdered his brother. In Raoul’s troubled imagination the ghosts of the past are everywhere, and strange and powerful music still calls in his dreams. Madness, obsession and the legacy of the past weave their spell in this short, tragic tale based on the Phantom of the Opera.

When humans come to fell the last forest, they are in for a nasty surprise. A short dark fantasy tale of the wrath of nature.

While most astrology books focus on sun signs only, the most obvious things about us -- our personality and physical type -- are mostly determined by the zodiac sign on the eastern horizon at the precise moment of birth. This sign is referred to as our "rising sign". Whereas the sun sign represents the ego expression, the rising sign signifies physical type and personality, which are the tools we use to get what we want. This book guides readers toward an accurate assessment of their rising signs, and then shows how, in conjunction with oneAEs sun sign, understanding the meaning of the rising sign will enable you to get what you want out of life. ItAEs an astrology book with a promise, and it has a unique focus.

Originally published in 1993, this book traces how governments in France, Germany, Britain, Denmark and Ireland became involved in replacing industrial revolution urban slums with mass high-rise, high-density concrete estates. As the book considers each country’s housing history and traditions, and analyses the contrasting structures and systems, it finds convergence of problems in the growing tensions of their most disadvantaged communities. The book underlines the continuing drift towards deeper polarization, an issue which has become ever more important in the multi-lingual, ethnically diverse urban societies of the 21st Century. The book’s detailed coverage of the historical, political and social changes relating to housing within the various countries make it an important text for students and practitioners concerned with housing, urban affairs, social policy and administration.

Naughty imps, missing socks, cunning thieves and baffled gods feature in this collection of short fantasy fiction. Winner of the 2018 Best Fantasy on NN Light Book Heaven

Celebrity personalities, who reign over much of our cultural landscape, owe their fame not to specific deeds but to the ability to project a distinct personal image, to create an icon of the self. Rising Star is a fascinating look at the roots of this particular form of celebrity. Here Rhonda Garelick locates a prototype of the star personality in the dandies and aesthete literary figures of the nineteenth century, including Beau Brummell, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Oscar Wilde, and explores their peculiarly charged relationship with women and performance. When fin-de-siècle aesthetes turned their attention to the new, "feminized" spectacle of mass culture, Garelick argues, they found a disturbing female counterpart to their own highly staged personae. She examines the concept of the broadcasted self-image in literary works as well as in such unwritten cultural texts as the choreography and films of dancer Loie Fuller, the industrialized spectacles of European World Fairs, and the cultural performances taking place today in fields ranging from entertainment to the academy. Recent dandy-like figures such as the artist formerly known as Prince, Madonna, Jacques Derrida, and Jackie O. all share a legacy provided by the encounter between "high" and early mass culture. Garelick's analysis of this encounter covers a wide range of topics, from the gender complexity of the European male dandy and the mechanization of the female body to Orientalist performance, the origins of cinema, and the emergence of "crowd" theory and mass politics.