Explore the traditional spells and charms of Britain's folk-magic tradition, including those for good fortune, love, healing, and curses and their removal. With spells drawn from the Museum of Witchcraft's extensive library, you will discover a variety of simple and complex magical workings, including a fascinating cloth consecration song and a talisman for protection in battle. Includes four-color illustrations and photos.

Charm in Literature from Classical to Modernism: Charmed Life discusses charm as both an emotional and aesthetic phenomenon. Beginning with the first appearance of literary charm in the Sirens episode of the Odyssey, Richard Beckman traces charm throughout canonical literature, examining the metamorphoses of charm through the millennia. The book examines the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Proust, Joyce, Mann, and others, considering the multiplicity of ways charm is defined, depicted, and utilized by authors. Positioning these poems, dramas, and novels as case studies, Beckman reveals the mercurial yet enduring connotations of charm.

The books that we choose to keep -- let alone read -- can say a lot about who we are and how we see ourselves. In My Ideal Bookshelf, dozens of leading cultural figures share the books that matter to them most; books that define their dreams and ambitions and in many cases helped them find their way in the world. Contributors include Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Keller, Michael Chabon, Alice Waters, James Patterson, Maira Kalman, Judd Apatow, Chuck Klosterman, Miranda July, Alex Ross, Nancy Pearl, David Chang, Patti Smith, Jennifer Egan, and Dave Eggers, among many others. With colorful and endearingly hand-rendered images of book spines by Jane Mount, and first-person commentary from all the contributors, this is a perfect gift for avid readers, writers, and all who have known the influence of a great book.

Rory Chasen, manager of the Lucky Dog Boutique in Destiny, California, hopes her new line of good-luck doggy toys will be a hit, especially the stuffed rabbits with extra-large feet. The timing of the line's debut proves ill-fated, though, as several local shops—including Rory's—are ransacked and vandalized with spilled salt and other unlucky charms. The most likely culprit is disgruntled real estate agent Flora Curtival, whose issues with the town give her a motive. But after Flora is murdered and one of Rory's toy rabbits is found with the body, Rory needs all the luck she can get while trying to determine just who killed the superstitious vandal. Praise: "This is one author who has a great gift for telling a great tale that both humans and animals can enjoy."—Suspense Magazine

"That feeling of becoming a new person in a different place, even if it's an illusion, is intoxicating to me, and always has been. I love writing about places, but only places where I don't belong."—James Arthur Awakening is the theme of this fiery debut about the "ghost world" of shadows and personae. A sense of history, politics, and place is an integrated and integral part of the whole, alive with stirring accounts of travel, intimate moments of solitude, and encounters with the ineffable. Romantic in spirit and contemporary in outlook, James Arthur writes exciting, rhythmical, elastic poems. "Charms against Lightning" Against meningitis and poisoned milk, flash floods and heartwreck, against daydreams Against losing your fingers, drinking detergent, earthquakes, baldness, divorce, against falling in love with a child Against lupus and lawsuits, lying stranded between nations, against secrets and frostbite, the burring of trains that never arrive Against songlessness, your mother's depression, the death of the cedars, Siberian crane Against these talismans against lightning; the shutters swing, and clack their yellow teeth; the deep sky welters and the windows quiver James Arthur's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, and Narrative. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, and raised in Toronto, Ontario, he earned degrees from the University of Toronto, the University of New Brunswick, and the University of Washington. He is a recent recipient of the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Gloria, a young prostitute who has a son, make an ageement to help widower John Williams raise his infant daughter, but, after a tragic event, she finds herself longing for a family.