In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires


Raymond T. McNally - 1972
    This revised edition now includes entries from Bram Stoker's recently discovered diaries, the amazing tale of Nicolae Ceausescu's attempt to make Vlad a national hero, and an examination of recent adaptations in fiction, stage and screen.

My Haunted Apartment


Lisa Gellers - 2013
    Like most people Lisa Gellers never believed in ghosts or hauntings.  But all that changed when she moved into her first apartment.  It wasn’t long before strange things began to happen: objects moving on their own, things disappearing, disembodied voices, and a dark shadow that followed her wherever she went.Now a true believer in the paranormal, Lisa has decided to share her story.  For any who have suffered from a real haunting, hopefully this will provide you some confort and the knowledge that you are not alone.

An Intelligent Person's Guide to Education


Tony Little - 2015
    One of the most progressive and imaginative people in British education today he has hitherto kept a low profile. This book accompanies a three part television series to be screened on BBC 2 but differs from it significantly.There is a crisis in the British education system. Year on year GCSE and A Level pupils post better exam results, with more students achieving top grades. Yet business leaders and employers complain bitterly that our schools are not producing people fit for purpose. What we have become is a nation 'Over schooled and under educated'. Far from being locked in an ivory tower, a bastion of privilege, Mr Little has used his time as a teacher and headmaster to get to grips with fundamental questions concerning education. He wants to produce people fit to work in the modern world. How do children absorb information? What kind of people does society need? What is education for? Not only is the author one of the great reforming headmasters of our time but he has planted Academies in the East end of London, founded a state boarding school near Windsor and yet is a passionate advocate of single sex schools.This book is not a text book for colleges of education- it is a book to enlighten the teaching profession and just as much for anxious parents. The book is simply arranged under topics such as authority, expectations, progress, self-confidence, sex, crises and creativity.Tony Little thinks it is time to ask some fundamental questions, and to make brave decisions about how we make our schools and our schoolchildren fit for purpose.

Nocturne House: Supernatural and human evil collide in a page-turning thriller (Legacy of Darkness Book 3)


London Clarke - 2020
    But the woman barely looks like his wife, and she’s going by a different name. Worse, she’s obsessed with another man and memories of a life she’s lived in a place called Nocturne House. As Laura relays the story of her disappearance and the people responsible, she also reveals her connection to a dangerous cult, a group of modern-day vampires that controls and manipulates through psychological strongholds, supernatural entities, and all-too-human wicked intentions. Hunter soon realizes that Laura is still in danger, and she remains bound to the house through her heart, mind, and blood. In the final suspenseful installment of the Legacy of Darkness series, supernatural and human evil collide in a tale about the power and danger of living outside society’s expectations and the relationships that can ruin or redeem us.

Supposedly Haunted: True Life Experiences of a Paranormal Investigator


E.E. Bensen - 2016
    He discusses what brought him into the paranormal research field, describes real life supernatural events witnessed firsthand during his numerous investigations, and also provides an opinion of what all of it might be. Experiencing paranormal phenomena has a way of changing one's perspective. Locations include Waverly Hills Sanatorium, Preston Castle, The Washoe Club, The Stanley Hotel, Old Tooele Hospital (Asylum 49), Farrar Elementary School, and more!

The Broken Fountain


Thomas Belmonte - 1979
    Resisting standard depictions of the social and moral lives of the poor, Belmonte presents nuanced portraits of his subjects. He was also one of the first anthropologists to reflect on his own reactions and emotions. He describes the traumatic experience of living alone in a strange urban environment and his social interactions with the residents of Fontana del Re.

The Dead Below: The Haunting of Denver Botanic Gardens


Richard Estep - 2019
     Built on top of the old city cemetery, Denver Botanic Gardens sits upon thousands of unrecovered human remains. Small wonder, then, that visitors and staff alike have reported all manner of ghostly activity, ranging from disembodied voices, cold spots, and phantom footsteps, to shadow figures and full-bodied apparitions. Are the spirits of the restless dead making their presence known to the living? Join paranormal investigator Richard Estep, of TV's 'Haunted Case Files,' 'Haunted Hospitals,' and 'Paranormal 911,' as he and a small team of dedicated researchers are locked down inside Denver Botanic Gardens in an attempt to uncover the truth for themselves.

Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction


Grady Hendrix - 2017
    and covered in blood!Demonic possession! Haunted condominiums! Murderous babies! Man-eating moths! No plot was too ludicrous, no cover art too appalling, no evil too despicable for the Paperbacks From Hell.Where did they come from? Where did they go? Horror author Grady Hendrix risks his soul and sanity (not to mention yours) to relate the true, untold story of the Paperbacks From Hell.Shocking story summaries! Incredible cover art! And true tales of writers, artists, and publishers who violated every literary law but one: never be boring. All this awaits, if you dare experience the Paperbacks From Hell.

Strategies for Beating Small Stakes Poker Cash Games


Jonathan Little - 2015
     Are you stuck playing in lousy cash games versus lousy opponents? Despite your best efforts, do you manage to lose even at the smallest stakes? It’s time to master small stakes cash games with a world-class poker champion as your guide. Jonathan Little has cashed for more than $6.4 million in live poker tournaments. This two-time World Poker Tour champion knows that to make millions on poker’s biggest stage, you have to start small. In fact, he started with only a $50 bankroll. Through his revolutionary approach, you can finally master the skills it takes to win in cash games. By learning how to crush your small stakes opponents, you’ll be prepared to handle bigger challenges -- and bigger cash outs -- that come with larger buy-in cash games. In Strategies for Beating Small Stakes Poker Cash Games, you’ll discover: - Skills that will instantly improve your poker game - How to stop blaming bad luck and learn the real secret to mastering poker - The pitfalls to avoid that will allow you to crush your mistake-prone peers - The reasons pros make the plays they make and how you can adopt their methods - How to win more money from poker, and much, much more! When you learn to think for yourself and adjust your strategy based on specific opponents, you’ll start to turn your game around. As the author of 11 best-selling poker books, Little can show you exactly how to learn these skills and win much more money in the long term. If you like concise, actionable information you can start using right away, then you’ll love Little’s game-changing poker guide. Buy the book to start cashing out today!

Monster Theory: Reading Culture


Jeffrey Jerome CohenKathleen Perry Long - 1996
    Monsters provide a key to understanding the culture that spawned them. So argue the essays in this wide-ranging and fascinating collection that asks the question, What happens when critical theorists take the study of monsters seriously as a means of examining our culture? aIn viewing the monstrous body as a metaphor for the cultural body, the contributors to Monster Theory consider beasts, demons, freaks, and fiends as symbolic expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior. Through a historical sampling of monsters, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies to our continued desire to explore difference and prohibition. Contributors: Mary Baine Campbell, Brandeis U; David L. Clark, McMaster U; Frank Grady, U of Missouri, St. Louis; David A. Hedrich Hirsch, U of Illinois; Lawrence D. Kritzman, Dartmouth College; Kathleen Perry Long, Cornell U; Stephen Pender; Allison Pingree, Harvard U; Anne Lake Prescott, Barnard College; John O'Neill, York U; William Sayers, George Washington U; Michael Uebel, U of Virginia; Ruth Waterhouse. "

Reality Hunger: A Manifesto


David Shields - 2010
    YouTube and Facebook dominate the web. In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, his landmark new book, David Shields (author of the New York Times best seller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead) argues that our culture is obsessed with “reality” precisely because we experience hardly any.Most artistic movements are attempts to figure out a way to smuggle more of what the artist thinks is reality into the work of art. So, too, every artistic movement or moment needs a credo, from Horace’s Ars Poetica to Lars von Trier’s “Vow of Chastity.” Shields has written the ars poetica for a burgeoning group of interrelated but unconnected artists in a variety of forms and media who, living in an unbearably manufactured and artificial world, are striving to stay open to the possibility of randomness, accident, serendipity, spontaneity; actively courting reader/listener/viewer participation, artistic risk, emotional urgency; breaking larger and larger chunks of “reality” into their work; and, above all, seeking to erase any distinction between fiction and nonfiction.The questions Reality Hunger explores—the bending of form and genre, the lure and blur of the real—play out constantly all around us. Think of the now endless controversy surrounding the provenance and authenticity of the “real”: A Million Little Pieces, the Obama “Hope” poster, the sequel to The Catcher in the Rye, Robert Capa’s “The Falling Soldier” photograph, the boy who wasn’t in the balloon. Reality Hunger is a rigorous and radical attempt to reframe how we think about “truthiness,” literary license, quotation, appropriation.Drawing on myriad sources, Shields takes an audacious stance on issues that are being fought over now and will be fought over far into the future. People will either love or hate this book. Its converts will see it as a rallying cry; its detractors will view it as an occasion for defending the status quo. It is certain to be one of the most controversial and talked-about books of the year.

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America


David Hajdu - 2008
    No sooner had this new culture emerged than it was beaten down by church groups, community bluestockings, and a McCarthyish Congress--only to resurface with a crooked smile on its face in "Mad "magazine. The story of the rise and fall of those comic books has never been fully told--until "The Ten-Cent Plague." David Hajdu's remarkable new book vividly opens up the lost world of comic books, its creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority. When we picture the 1950s, we hear the sound of early rock and roll. "The Ten-Cent Plague "shows how--years before music--comics brought on a clash between children and their parents, between prewar and postwar standards. Created by outsiders from the tenements, garish, shameless, and often shocking, comics spoke to young people and provided the guardians of mainstream culture with a big target. Parents, teachers, and complicit kids burned comics in public bonfires. Cities passed laws to outlaw comics. Congress took action with televised hearings that nearly destroyed the careers of hundreds of artists and writers.

The Vampire Companion


Katherine Ramsland - 1991
    That the books are entertainment seems a given, and for that I'm grateful. That they can be seen as a religious journey is also clear. I am immersed in the questions, and praying for the answers. Lestat, c'est moi. I want you to love all of my characters. I am, in the writing of these and other novels, as ambitious as Dickens. I want everybody to cry when Claudia dies, just like they did for Little Nell."-- Anne RiceFebruary 8, 1995Interview with the Vampire. The Vampire Lestat. The Queen of the Damned. The Talc of the Body Thief Memnoch the Devil. With her bestselling, epic saga, Anne Rice has reinvented the legend and literature of one of fiction's most popular and captivating archetypes. Now, Katherine Ramsland, Anne Rice's biographer, has completely revised and updated the ultimate reference guide to the world, history, and adventures of these haunting characters, from the unforgettable Lestat to Rice's newest chilling creation, Memnoch the Devil.Written with the full cooperation of Anne Rice -- and now with more than 1,200 entries -- The Vampire Companion offers an insightful exploration, appreciation, and interpretation of all the characters and events, names and places, symbols and themes in the five volumes of The Vampire Chronicles, including more than one hundred pages of new entries on Rice's latest vampire novel, Memnoch the Devil. Everything that readers might want to explore further is annotated and analyzed in this entertaining and enlightening work: the unforgettable characters of Louis, Lestat, Claudia, Akasha, Armand, and Memnoch; the important points of interest on Lestat's fascinating tour through Heaven and Hell; ancient lore; Rice's unique contributions to the mythos of vampires; the literary inspirations that echo through the novels; Rice's own reflections and revelations about her work and about the movie Interview with the Vampire; and much more.Richly illustrated with new photos, drawings, maps, and a complete time line of events in The Chronicles, The Vampire Companion is as captivating as the phenomenal saga it explores. It is a guidebook that no visitor to the world of Anne Rice should be without.

The Rochdale Poltergeist: A True Story


Jenny Ashford - 2015
    Until I did. And then I was thinking, ‘Oh God, do I really want to continue with this?’” - Steve Mera BSc., Director of the Scientific Establishment of Parapsychology Steve Mera had been investigating paranormal phenomena for many years, and had never seen anything that shook him to his very foundations. All that changed in 1996, when he was called in with his team to look into the bizarre occurrences taking place at a small bungalow in Rochdale, Manchester, England. Flying objects, disembodied voices, phantom smells and sounds, and strangest of all, copious falls of water seemingly coming from nowhere plagued the Gardner family for nearly a year. What Steve experienced during the investigation was enough to make him question his entire career path, and remains one of only a handful of cases that he is completely unable to rationally explain. This account, written by horror author Jenny Ashford from interviews conducted with Steve about the case, is a bone-chilling foray into the paranormal that will make even the most ardent skeptic sleep with the lights on.

The Dark Shadows Companion


Kathryn Leigh Scott - 1993
    The timeless magic of Dark Shadows continues years after the first episode was presented on ABC - TV, June 27, 1966.The Dark Shadows Companion is a special 25th anniversary celebration of the show everyone "ran home from school to watch."