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The Divine Comedy is Dante's record of his visionary journey through the triple realms of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. This, the first epic of which its author is the protagonist and his individual imaginings the content, weaves together the three threads of classical and Christian history, contemporary Medieval politics and religion, and Dante's own inner life including his love for Beatrice, to create the most complex and highly structured long poem extant.

Goethe’s two-part dramatic work, Faust, based on a traditional theme, and finally completed in 1831, is an exploration of that restless intellectual and emotional urge which found its fullest expression in the European Romantic movement, to which Goethe was an early and major contributor. Part I of the work outlines a pact Faust makes with the devil, Mephistopheles, and encompasses the tragedy of Gretchen, whom Faust seduces.

Existentialism is the literary cri de coeur resulting from the realization that without God, everything good, true, and beautiful in human life is destined to be destroyed in a pitiless material cosmos. Theodore Dalrymple and Kenneth Francis examine the main existentialist works, from Ecclesiastes to the Theatre of the Absurd, each man coming from a different perspective. Francis is a believer, Dalrymple is not, but both empathize with the struggle to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. This book is part literary criticism, part philosophical exploration....

Jungian analysts Vlado Solc and George J. Didier set out to explore the psychological dynamics and causes of religious fundamentalism and fanaticism. The book offers an in-depth psychological analysis of what happens when a person becomes possessed by the unconscious energies of the self.

David Hume (1711-1776) was the most important philosopher ever to write in English as well as a master stylist. This volume contains his major philosophical works. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), published while Hume was still in his twenties, consists of three books on the understanding, the passions, and morals.

Jack the Ripper still causes a shudder, synonymous as it is with violent murder and mutilation. But also of mystery and speculation, for the gruesome series of killings in London's East End in that horrific autumn of 1888 have never been finally solved. The identity of the Ripper, his motives, and his association have been the subject of endless discussion and speculation since Victorian times. Suspects have been as varied as a Jewish slaughter man and the Duke of Clarence.

Almost a century after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Kaiser Wilhelm II is still viewed as either a warmonger or a madman, as the hundred-year-old propaganda posters remain fixed in the general consciousness. Was he, though, truly responsible for the catastrophe of the First World War, or was he in fact a convenient scapegoat, blamed for a conflict which he desperately tried to avoid?

Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984) was a brilliant mathematician and a 1933 Nobel laureate whose work ranks alongside that of Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. Although not as well-known as his famous contemporaries Werner Heisenberg and Richard Feynman, his influence on the course of physics was immense. His landmark book, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, introduced that new science to the world and his "Dirac equation" was the first theory to reconcile special relativity and quantum mechanics.

In an age of wizards and walled cities, Raffalon is a journeyman member of the ancient and honorable guild of Purloiners and Purveyors—in other words, a thief. His skills allow him to scale walls, tickle locks, defeat magical wards. He lifts treasures and trinkets, and spends the proceeds on ale and sausages in taverns where a wise thief sits with his back to the wall. But somehow things often go the way they shouldn’t, and then Raffalon has to rely upon his wits and a well-calibrated sense of daring.

The Dowager Duchess of Loring had finally married off all her grandchildren and was now uncertain about what her future held. When she accompanies her grandson and his new wife on a trip to Italy, a chance encounter with a past love turns her world upside down.

Composed around 1294 in Italian, the Vita Nuova tells the story of Dante's encounters with and love for Beatrice, culminating in her early death and its effect upon him. Utilizing and developing the conventions of courtly love, in a mixture of prose and verse, Dante deepens the emotional content of the genre, while pointing the way towards the intellectual and spiritual journey of the Divine Comedy.

Tommy Belanger had been born into a dysfunctional family - fed by alcohol abuse, abject poverty, and the trials and tribulations associated with living in isolation. His was a life filled with child abuse, incest, bestiality, and zoophilia. Tommy hated how those things affected him and his siblings. And he detested his father.

Gwendolyn Lambert's family was reduced to penury after her father was disgraced and killed in a duel. Gwen and her invalid mother survive on a mere pittance in the city of Bath. Her mother's cousin, the Dowager Duchess of Loring, is determined to see Gwendolyn taken care of and restored to her rightful place, but she does not have any use for society after her family was treated ill by them. But the savvy dowager has a few tricks up her sleeve, including her handsome and charming grandson. Unfortunately, she did not count on him being sent to America.

Six years of battle has changed Nathaniel: older, wiser, the conqueror of the addictions that drove his misspent youth, he’s avowed to start afresh. But a chance meeting with Lydia unnerves him; she is so very keen to speak to him, yet he cannot fathom why. Has she waited for him all these years? He is unfit for her and is focused on making amends for another’s life that he ruined, and he urges her to forget him.

The ghostly little monk of Foulridge and the giant apparition from Heaton Norris are just two of the denizens of the North-West you might not care to meet on a dark, stormy evening. But for those intrepid souls whose hearts quicken at the thought of eerie footsteps and muffled groans Peter Underwood has assembled an impressive collection of traditional legends.

For more than three decades, Yugoslavia's history played out in the life of one man. That man was Josip Broz Tito. The fictional autobiography of a regime insider, K. Balej's thoroughly researched novel provides a revealing insight into the emergence and functioning of the Yugoslav socialist system from the time of the Vienna Congress in 1815 to Tito's own death in 1980. It is an immersive exploration of the changing nature of Tito's power and the fascinating symbiosis of man and state that Tito represents.

Brighton, 1938. Charlie "Big Bad" Woolf thought it would be easy money, and there’s precious little of that for a private detective in a seaside town. It was just a trip up to London to hand over an envelope - a favor for his old partner, Alan O’Connor. But Woolf couldn’t resist taking a peek inside. The pictures were unadulterated smut: a man and a girl in a hotel room. Blackmail, pure and simple - right up O’Connor’s street.

Written in the Middle English of the late 14th century, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight survives in a single manuscript which also contains three religious poems including "Pearl", written it seems by the same author, who is therefore referred to as The Pearl Poet. The poem tells the story of an incident at the court of King Arthur, involving Sir Gawain’s acceptance of a challenge from the mysterious Green Knight, and leading to a test of his chivalry and courage.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories, written in the Middle English vernacular, supposedly told among a group of pilgrims traveling from London to Canterbury. Chaucer uses the form, possibly based on knowledge of Boccaccio’s Decameron gained on a visit to Italy in 1373, to provide a highly varied portrait of his society, both secular and religious. The journey of the pilgrims, unlike that of, say, Homer’s Odysseus or of Dante in the Divine Comedy, is relatively unimportant compared to the tales themselves, where Chaucer’s true interest lies.

Jerry Wonder is the hero of this hilarious coming-of-age novel. A 19-year-old Mormon missionary, Jerry leaves South Dakota to save souls in New Zealand for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Elder Wonder's path is fraught with challenge. He misses his girlfriend, Susan, who tried valiantly to seduce him before he left, but to his regret, he remained strong for both of them. Now, he worries he will lose her in his two-year absence. And he is flawed.