The circus has been both one of the most influential forms of international popular entertainment and yet at the same time remains almost entirely absent from academic studies of popular theatrical forms. This book offers readers an introduction to the cultural history of the circus and gives an account of the dominant characteristics of the circus's aesthetic practices and relates these to the sometimes precarious developments, changes and variations in its economic organization, architecture and social status. The book goes on to outline the particular challenges that this essentially live, dangerous and body-centred form presents to literary and film representation and does so through the particular examples of works by Charles Dickens, Federico Fellini and Wim Wenders. This wide-ranging and accessible book offers ways of thinking about the meaning and significance of the circus as a specifically modern form of art and entertainment.

"The book is like a dream you want to last forever" (Roberta Silman, The New York Times Book Review), now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund The Rings of Saturn—with its curious archive of photographs—records a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne’s skull, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt’s "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII, the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich. W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants (New Directions, 1996) was hailed by Susan Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read." It was "one of the great books of the last few years," noted Michael Ondaatje, who now acclaims The Rings of Saturn "an even more inventive work than its predecessor, The Emigrants."

Whispers of an ancient magic drew them together ... In the medieval land of Hafne, a curse has swept through the land leaving it barren and without hope. As one of the chosen, Vala watches for signs of the prophecy and with it, the owner of a ring who is destined to fight by her side and drive away the darkness. The newly arrived Norman enemy is an unnecessary complication in Hafne-and in beautiful Vala's heart. ... An unspeakable evil fights to keep them apart. Giles arrives with his Norman men in time to rescue a mysterious woman from a watery death. Holding Vala in his arms, the stirrings of destiny and desire begin, binding him to a prophecy of which he surely has no part-binding him to a search for his true origins and a fight to save his soul and hers.

"Of the many composers in the Western classical tradition who celebrated the marriage between psyche and sound, those explored in this book followed the lines diverging from Wagner in philosophizing the nature of desire in music. This books offers two new theories of tonal functionality in the music of the first half of the twentieth century that seek to explain its psychological complexities. First, the book further develops Riemann's three diatonic chord functions, extending them to account from chromatic chord progression and substitution. The three functions (Tonic, Subdominant, Dominant) are compared to Jacques Lacan's twin-concepts of metaphor and metonymy which drive the human desiring apparatus. Second, the book develops a technique for analysing the "drives" that pull chromatic music in multiple directions simultaneously, creating a libidinal surface that mirrors the tensions of the psyche found in Schopenhauer, Freud and post-Freudians-Lacan, Lyotard, and Deleuze.The harmonic models are tested in psychologically challenging pieces of music by post-Wagnerian composers. From the obsession with death and mourning in Josef Suk's Asrael Symphony to an exploration of "perversion" in Richard Strauss's Elektra; from the post-Kantian transcendentalism of Charles Ives' Concord Sonata to the "Accelerationism" of Skryabin's late piano works; from the Sufi mysticism of Szymanowski's Song of the Night to the failed fantasy of the American dream in Aaron Copland's The Tender Land, the book cuts a path through the dense forests of chromatic complexity, and digs deep into the psychological make-up of post-Wagnerian psychodynamic music"--

Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns with Ring Shout, a dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror “A fantastical, brutal and thrilling triumph of the imagination...Clark’s combination of historical and political reimagining is cathartic, exhilarating and fresh.” —The New York Times A 2021 Nebula Award Winner! A 2021 Locus Award Winner! A 2021 Hugo Award Finalist! A 2021 World Fantasy Award Finalist! A 2021 Ignyte Award Finalist! A 2021 Shirley Jackson Award Finalist! A 2021 AAMBC Literary Award Finalist! A 2021 British Fantasy Award Finalist! A New York Times Editor's Choice Pick! A Booklist Editor's Choice Pick! A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist! A 2020 SIBA Award Finalist! Featured on the 2021 RUSA Reading List: Fantasy Shortlist! Named a Best of 2020 Pick for NPR | Library Journal | Book Riot | LitReactor | Bustle | Polygon | Washington Post IN AMERICA, DEMONS WEAR WHITE HOODS. In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die. Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up. Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.