Hilarious and relatable to all singletons of the realm, this medieval guide to modern dating is sure to turn thine frown upsidedown.
Uncover fascinating paranormal activity on this chilling, nerve-wracking global tour of 100 haunted locations.
Set out on a uniquely dark armchair journey, and witness the shocking supernatural events, ghosts and unexplained phenomena that have captivated humankind for as long as we have told stories to each other, looked to the skies, and wondered whether we really are alone... The paranormal places include:
Legends about spirits that rise from the dead, places where the crops don't grow, or sites where strange lights are seen at night... glaciers that bleed, ghost towns, crumbling castles, disused (and active) cemeteries, eerie forests, and freak nature patterns...
Featuring some of the most ferocious and humorous book curses ever inscribed, this is a lively, engaging introduction to the history and development of bookish maledictions.
Have you ever wanted to protect your books from forgetful borrowers, merciless page-folders, or outright thieves? Perhaps you have even wished harm on those who have damaged your books--but would you threaten them with hellfire, hanging, or the plague?
This book contains a collection of some of the most ferocious and humorous book curses ever inscribed--from fearsome threats discovered emblazoned on stone monuments from the ancient Near East to elaborate manuscript maledictions and chilling warnings scribbled in printed books. Book curses are entertaining writings in themselves, but they also offer a tantalizing insight into how passionately texts and books have been valued by their owners and readers over the centuries. Here you will find an engaging introduction to the history and development of the book curse and perhaps some inspiration to pen a few of your own.
Become a competent, confident spell-worker with this practical guide to witchcraft, presented in a beautiful hardcover with gilded page edges.
Containing an extensive collection of traditional spells and techniques, this guide will help readers attract positive friendships, love and luck as well as promote healing, careers and protection. The Practical Book of Witchcraft is an essential reference for anyone wishing to master the incredible art of wicca and spell-making. Includes:- A section on tools used as well as information on how to consecrate them
- Correspondences for different spells
- Rituals for manifesting your wishes This spell-binding book provides a wonderful introduction into witchcraft and makes a perfect gift. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Mystic Archives are beautiful hardcover guides which reveal the hidden mysteries of esoteric arts, presented with foil-embossing, Wibalin binding, patterned endpapers and gilded page edges.
Learn the compelling cultural histories behind some of the world's supernatural beliefs with The Book of Superstitions.
Friday the 13th; rabbit feet; knocking on wood; walking under a ladder; the curse of the evil eye. We all have a superstition or two. Unveil the origins of some of the most universal and little known superstitions that have influenced cultures around the world for centuries. Including beliefs that gained a foothold in African and European folklore, notions from ancient Greece, legends of the British Isles, and beyond, this is a captivating read for people of all ages and backgrounds.
Inside you'll find:
Discover why superstitions have bewitched us for centuries with The Book of Superstitions. Fingers crossed you'll love this book!
2023 Ray and Pat Browne Best Single Work by One or More Authors in Popular and American Culture, Popular and American Culture Association (PACA) / Popular Culture Association (PCA)
2023 Ray and Pat Browne Best Edited Reference/Primary Source Work in Popular Culture Award (Honorable Mention), Popular and American Culture Association (PACA) / Popular Culture Association (PCA)
2023 Peter C. Rollins Book Award, Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations (SWPACA)
Comic Book Women offers a feminist history of the golden age of comics, revising our understanding of how numerous genres emerged and upending narratives of how male auteurs built their careers. Considering issues of race, gender, and sexuality, the authors examine crime, horror, jungle, romance, science fiction, superhero, and Western comics to unpack the cultural and industrial consequences of how women were represented across a wide range of titles by publishers like DC, Timely, Fiction House, and others. This revisionist history reclaims the forgotten work done by women in the comics industry and reinserts female creators and characters into the canon of comics history.
- The Unlucky Mummy, which is rumored to have sunk the Titanic and kick-started World War I
- The Dybbuk box, which was sold on eBay and spawned the horror film The Possession
- The Conjured Chest, which has been blamed for fifteen deaths within a single family
- The Ring of Silvianus, a Roman artifact believed to have inspired J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit
- And many more!
"Delightful."--Times Literary Supplement - "Intriguing."--The Sydney Morning Herald - "Fascinating, well-illustrated."--Nature - "Altogether surprising and hard to categorise."--London Review of Books - "There are many stories to be told here, and Bashford tells them well."--Literary Review
The astonishing history of palmistry and biometrics--from occult physicians to the very foundations of modern science and medicine.
Why did Isaac Newton read books on chiromancy, the occult science of hand reading that revealed the secrets of the soul? Why did Charles Darwin claim that the hand gave humans dominion over all other species? Why did psychoanalyst Charlotte Wolff climb into the primate cages of the London Zoo, taking hundreds of delicate palm prints? Why did Francis Galton, the father of fingerprinting, take palm prints too? And why did world-leading geneticists study the geometry of palm lines in their search for the secrets of chromosomal syndromes? Decoding the Hand is an astounding history of magic, medicine, and science, of an enduring search for how our bodily surfaces might reveal an inner self--a soul, a character, an identity. From sixteenth-century occult physicians influenced by the Kabbalah to twentieth-century geneticists, and from criminologists to eugenicists, award-winning historian Alison Bashford takes us on a remarkable journey into the strange world of hand readers, revealing how signs on the hand--its shape, lines, marks, and patterns--have been elaborately decoded over the centuries. Sometimes learned, sometimes outrageously deceptive, sometimes earnest, and, more often than we ever expected, medically and scientifically trained, these palm readers of the past prove to be essential links in the human quest to peer into bodies, souls, minds, and selves. Not only for fortune-telling palmists were the future and the past, health, and character laid bare in the hand, but for other experts in bodies and minds as well: anatomists, psychiatrists, embryologists, primatologists, evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and more. Drawing telling parallels between the divination promised by palmistry and the appeal to self-knowledge offered by modern genetic testing, Decoding the Hand also makes clear that palm-reading is far from a relic or simple charlatanism. Bashford's sagacious history of human hands touching and connecting opens wide the essential human pursuit of what lies within and beyond.










