The Nature of the Beast is a New York Times bestselling Chief Inspector Gamache novel from Louise Penny. Hardly a day goes by when nine year old Laurent Lepage doesn't cry wolf. From alien invasions, to walking trees, to winged beasts in the woods, to dinosaurs spotted in the village of Three Pines, his tales are so extraordinary no one can possibly believe him. Including Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache, who now live in the little Quebec village. But when the boy disappears, the villagers are faced with the possibility that one of his tall tales might have been true. And so begins a frantic search for the boy and the truth. What they uncover deep in the forest sets off a sequence of events that leads to murder, leads to an old crime, leads to an old betrayal. Leads right to the door of an old poet. And now it is now, writes Ruth Zardo. And the dark thing is here. A monster once visited Three Pines. And put down deep roots. And now, Ruth knows, it is back. Armand Gamache, the former head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, must face the possibility that, in not believing the boy, he himself played a terrible part in what happens next.

Most of what we know about emotions is unreliable. It's gathered either by asking people about their feelings, or by putting them in an MRI and studying how they react to pretend situations, to which they are unlikely to respond as they would in real life. If we're ever going to understand how emotions work, we need a better way of studying them. In The Nature of the Beast, pioneering neuroscientist David J. Anderson reveals how he has begun to solve this problem. He and his team have figured out how to study the brain activity of animals as they navigate real-life scenarios, like foraging, fleeing a predator, or competing for a mate. His research has revolutionized what we know about animal fear and aggression. Here, he explains what his research can teach us about human behavior, offering new insights into why isolation makes us more aggressive, how sex and violence connect, and whether there's a link between aggression and mental illness. Part How Emotions Are Made, part Mama's Last Hug, The Nature of the Beast reconceptualizes how the brain regulates emotions--and explains why we have them at all.

It is widely known that such Western institutions as the museum, the university, and the penitentiary shaped Japan’s emergence as a modern nation-state. Less commonly recognized is the role played by the distinctly hybrid institution—at once museum, laboratory, and prison—of the zoological garden. In this eye-opening study of Japan’s first modern zoo, Tokyo’s Ueno Imperial Zoological Gardens, opened in 1882, Ian Jared Miller offers a refreshingly unconventional narrative of Japan’s rapid modernization and changing relationship with the natural world. As the first zoological garden in the world not built under the sway of a Western imperial regime, the Ueno Zoo served not only as a staple attraction in the nation’s capital—an institutional marker of national accomplishment—but also as a site for the propagation of a new “natural” order that was scientifically verifiable and evolutionarily foreordained. As the Japanese empire grew, Ueno became one of the primary sites of imperialist spectacle, a microcosm of the empire that could be traveled in the course of a single day. The meaning of the zoo would change over the course of Imperial Japan’s unraveling and subsequent Allied occupation. Today it remains one of Japan’s most frequently visited places. But instead of empire in its classic political sense, it now bespeaks the ambivalent dominion of the human species over the natural environment, harkening back to its imperial roots even as it asks us to question our exploitation of the planet’s resources.

The werewolf is an increasingly popular subject of academic study, and several monographs have been published in recent years. Of these, the closest in format and subject matter (e.g. the contemporary werewolf in popular fiction) are as follows: Chantal Bourgault Du Coudray, The Curse of the Werewolf: Fantasy, Horror, and the Beast Within (New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2006) Brent A. Stypczynski, The Modern Literary Werewolf: A Critical Study of the Mutable Motif (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 2013) Kimberly McMahon-Coleman and Rosalyn Weaver, Werewolves and Other Shapeshifters in Popular Culture (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2012)

Turned into a major feature film, 'The Nature of the Beast' is the award-winning story of a community devastated by unemployment and an unknown beast roaming the moors, and which young Bill Coward is determined to track down.

In this captivating new collection from Hannah Howell, Adrienne Basso, and Eve Silver, three women meet the irresistible vampires who are their destiny--and discover a passion satisfied only by complete surrender. . . "Dark Hero" by Hannah Howell Unlike most of his clan, Berawald MacNachton chooses to live in comfortable seclusion, far from the enemies who hunt his kind--until Evanna Massey and her young brother intrude upon his solitude. . . "Bride of the Beast" by Adrienne Basso When Haydn of Gwynedd first met Bethan of Lampeter, she was a brave and fearless young girl, risking her life to save his. Now Bethan has grown into a striking, courageous woman who needs Haydn's help to defeat her tyrannical stepfather. Haydn's dark gift compels him to offer marriage in name only, but he cannot deny the passion that sears them both. . . "Kiss of the Vampire" by Eve Silver Devoted to her work at King's College Hospital, Sarah Lowell is shocked to discover that someone--or something--is killing the weakest patients, draining them of their blood. Killian Thayne, an enigmatic surgeon, offers Sarah his protection, but his sensual, commanding presence presents another kind of danger. . .

Poet, Magician, Mountaineer, Polemicist and Pornographer, Aleister Crowley was the most famous, or infamous, name in twentieth century occultism. With his usual flair and style, Colin Wilson brings this complex and enigmatic figure to life and provides an engrossing portrait of the self-styled Great Beast, the man whom the contemporary press dubbed "The Wickedest Man in the World".The popular image of him as, in the words of Francis King, 'an insatiable sexual athlete, a pimp who lived on the immoral earnings of his girl-friends, and a junkie who daily took enough heroin to kill a roomful of people', has a basis in fact; but there were other, less obnoxious and despicable, aspects of this highly original character. Crowley's greatest legacy is his eclectic occult system: his Magick persists, a potent synthesis of Golden Dawn magic, oriental esoteric techniques, sexual magic, and the all-encompassing Law of Thelema with its two fundamental principles, 'Every man and woman is a star' and the notorious 'Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law'.