Condemned to hang after his raid on Harper’s Ferry, John Brown prophesied that the crimes of a slave-holding land would be purged away only with blood. A study of omens, maledictions, and inspired invocations, The Oracle and the Curse examines how utterances such as Brown’s shaped American literature between the Revolution and the Civil War. In nineteenth-century criminal trials, judges played the role of law’s living oracles, but offenders were also given an opportunity to address the public. When the accused began to turn the tables on their judges, they did so not through rational arguments but by calling down a divine retribution. Widely circulated in newspapers and pamphlets, these curses appeared to channel an otherworldly power, condemning an unjust legal system and summoning readers to the side of righteousness. Exploring the modes of address that communicated the authority of law and the dictates of conscience in antebellum America’s court of public opinion, Caleb Smith offers a new poetics of justice which assesses the nonrational influence that these printed confessions, trial reports, and martyr narratives exerted on their first audiences. Smith shows how writers portrayed struggles for justice as clashes between human law and higher authority, giving voice to a moral protest that transformed American literature.

Caleb Smith explores the confessions, trial reports, maledictions, and martyr narratives that juxtaposed law and conscience in antebellum America’s court of public opinion and shows how writers portrayed struggles for justice as clashes between human law and higher authority, giving voice to a moral protest that transformed American literature.

A study of the question tablets from the oracle at Dodona and binding-curse tablets from across the ancient Greek world, These tablets reveal the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, and help us to understand some of the ways in which they managed risk and uncertainty in their daily lives.

Husband-and-wife treasure-hunters Sam and Remi Fargo search for an ancient scroll which carries a deadly curse. But their mission becomes more complicated when they run afoul of a band of robbers

Determined to recruit six supernaturally gifted children to defeat a growing evil force, Ian and Theodosia Wigby embark on a life-threatening journey through a magic portal in search of a healer who will protect Delphi Keep from a dark enemy.

Brenawyn has made impossible promises. She has agreed to become the Druid high priestess, she has agreed to restore the balance between worlds, she has promised to save Alexander from a century's old curse, and to top it all off, the god Finvarra has just dropped her 600 years in past so that she can fulfill an ancient prophecy. Now she must make impossible choices: between saving her lover or rescuing her best friend, between staying in the past or returning to the present. But most of all, she must choose who she will become.Oracle's Curse, the third book in The Celtic Prophecy series, takes the reader on a journey to a world of dark magic, a world where dangers abound and Brenawyn has no one to trust.

There's a place filled with tales that don't have an ending. Puzzles that won't be solved until someone steps in to finish them. Enter the Library - Marcus and his friends have found the key to open it. This fast-paced, thrilling chapter book was previously published as Curse of the Boggin.