Whether it is the three headed guard dog Fluffy in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, or even the story of Smaug in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth in The Hobbit; all these pop culture mythical creatures have a deep connection to the mythologies and folktales of ancient cultures.Where did they come from? What relevance do they serve in mythology? Why are some so obscure, while others become pop-culture enigmas? Get the answer to these questions, and learn about beasts from different world cultures.Folklorist Zayden Stone dives deep into the stories of these magical beasts and providesa fictional anecdote,a retelling of the original myths,an analysis of the symbolism and relevance of the creatures,and then pairs it with some beautiful black and white illustrations reimagined by artist Herdhian.In the Mythical Creatures and Mythological Beasts book, the illustrated guide takes you through six themes that have been specifically chosen since they are consistent across cultures. The categories include:arthropods for insects, crustaceans, and arachnids;avian for birds;canines for wolves and dogs;serpents for snakes and dragons;ungulates for hooved animals like horses and cows; andaquatic for water dwelling beasts.Presenting the creatures in categories makes it easier to see what the beasts have in common. You will find some overlapping themes across ancient cultures that point to universal ideas in how humans perceive the world.If you wonder where your favorite creature is, you will probably find them within these pages, even if they do not have their own chapter. For example, the ever-popular Pegasus can be found in the tale of the Gorgon sisters. He also had a half-brother, Arion, who features in the ungulates section. There is also a brilliant white-winged horse from Islamic tradition which may sound very familiar to Pegasus as well.If you have a love for the myths and want to learn about the unique beasts that dwell within them, this book is a great way to do it. Not only will you learn about ones you may have never heard of, but you will also be able to draw parallels between cultures and see how they interpreted their surroundings through stories of mythical creatures and magical beasts.

     Catherine Howard, the Duke of Norfolk’s niece, is raised in the very free atmosphere of her grandmother’s palace. Here she becomes aware of her own sexuality and the exciting effect she has on the men at court around her. She is also an unknowing part of her uncle’s devious plan to obtain more influence with the king - he pushes her onto the newly-divorced and lovesick King Henry VIII who is looking for a fifth wife. Meanwhile, John Butcher has become a guard in the dreaded Tower of London. He guards the king, witnesses the executions of Anne Boleyn and Thomas More and takes part in the fighting in Ireland. However, when he returns to London, his meeting with Catherine Howard, the king’s fifth queen, produces unexpected and dramatic results. In D. Lawrence-Young’s second Tudor novel we learn how Catherine Howard’s passionate nature mixed with the murky, deadly politics of the Tudor court and a furious king produce a classic story of passionate love, disappointment and revenge on a royal scale.

    With advice that is direct, prescriptive, and detailed, it takes the guesswork out of travel by unambiguously rating and ranking everything from hotels, restaurants, and attractions to rental car companies. With an Unofficial Guide in hand, and authors Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa as guides, find out what’s available in every category, from best to worst, and use step-by-step detailed plans to help make the most of your time at Walt Disney World.

    It's the first in the series to describe their events in the bloodthirsty combat of Indochina. Following the myths and legends about Nazis recruited by the French Foreign Legion to fight in Indochina, Eric Meyer's new book is based on the real story of one such former Waffen-SS man who lived to tell the tale. The Legion recruited widely from soldiers left unemployed and homeless by the defeat of Germany in 1945. They offered a new identity and passport to men who could bring their fighting abilities to the jungles and rice paddies of what was to become Vietnam. These were ruthless, trained killers, brutalised by the war on the Eastern Front, their killing skills honed to a razor's edge. They found their true home in Indochina, where they fought and became a byword for brutal military efficiency.

    When inexperienced entrepreneurs ask my advice about their idea for a tech startup, they often worry "What if Google decides to compete with us? They will crush us!" I respond that far more startups die of suicide than homicide. If you can avoid hurting yourself, then you are already better off than most of your competitors. Startups are a chance to build something entirely original with brilliant and ambitious people. But startups are also dangerous. Limited money means there is little room for mistakes. One bad decision can mean bankruptcy. The potential payoff attracts capital, which in turn attracts scam artists. The unscrupulous often lack the skills needed to succeed, but sometimes they are smart enough to trick investors. Even entrepreneurs who start with a strong moral compass can find that the threat of failure unmoors their ethics from their ambition. Emotions matter. We might hope that those in leadership positions possess strength and resilience, but vanity and fragile egos have sabotaged many of the businesses that I’ve worked with. Defeat is always a possibility, and not everyone finds healthy ways to deal with the stress. In this book I offer both advice and also warnings. I've seen certain self-destructive patterns play out again and again, so I wanted to document one of the most extreme cases that I've witnessed. In 2015 I worked for a startup that began with an ingenious idea: to use the software techniques known as Natural Language Processing to allow people to interact with databases by writing ordinary English sentences. This was a multi-billion dollar idea that could have transformed the way people gathered and used information. However, the venture had inexperienced leadership. They burned through their $1.3 million seed money. As their resources dwindled, their confidence transformed into doubt, which was aggravated by edicts from the Board Of Directors ordering sudden changes that effectively threw away weeks' worth of work. Every startup forces its participants into extreme positions, often regarding budget and deadlines. Often these situations are absurd to the point of parody. Therefore, there is considerable humor in this story. The collision of inexperience and desperation gives rise to moments that are simply silly. I tell this story in a day-to-day format, both to capture the early optimism, and then the later sense of panic. Here then, is a cautionary tale, a warning about tendencies that everyone joining a startup should be on guard against."

    Leading cycling writer Richard Moore's profile of Dave Brailsford, the head of Team Sky and the man who masterminded the British Cycling revolution, gives a unique insight into the psychology of one of the most fascinating figures in world sport.

    Combing through her stories, poems, articles, reviews, correspondence, and even her rare journalism and song lyrics, editor Barry Day has selected and arranged passages that describe her life and its preoccupations-urban living, the theater and cinema, the battle of the sexes, and death by dissipation. Best known for her scathing pieces for the New Yorker and her membership in the Algonquin Round Table ("The greatest collection of unsaleable wit in America."), Parker filled her work with a unique mix of fearlessness, melancholy, savvy, and hope. In Dorothy Parker, the irrepressible writer addresses: her early career writing for magazines; her championing of social causes such as integration; and the obsession with suicide that became another drama ("Scratch an actor...and you'll find an actress."), literature ("This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.") and much more.

    Hannah Levy masterminds her family's escape, despite her radical husband's objections, from czarist Russia after the Kishinev pogroms; elder daughter Sarah becomes a union organizer and a socialist while the younger Ruby rises to the top of the fashion design world; their friend Rachel abandons her ultra-Orthodox background to go to work for the Jewish Daily Forward. Through their lives, loves, and convictions, Meredith Tax draws the reader irresistibly into the explosive events that shaped women's possibilities in the early twentieth century. An absorbing, epic novel, "Rivington Street" is also suitable for use as a classroom text.

    He lands an enviable gig writing about shopping and fashion for the city’s major newspaper, but an ill-fated promotional junket gets Albo into hot water. He becomes a gossip item and finds himself caught in an acrimonious war between Old and New Media. Here's a gimlet-eyed account of the back-biting media scene, a glimpse into the inner workings of the fashion crowd, and a candid portrait of what it takes to survive as a writer in today’s chattering and watchful New York City."I was perilously close to exposing a secret underground economy of promotion: favors and junkets and banquets and gifts that keeps the city in motion, and keeps underpaid writers at work. Basically, I became the Silkwood of Swag."

    The first of its kind to carry doctors and surgeons who can take the hospital to the patient. Drug addicts, lorry crashes, open-heart surgery, stab wounds, headless chickens, mating llamas, and strip routines - it's all in a day's work for emergency doctor Tony Bleetman and his team.Whether they are landing in the middle of the M1 or at a maximum security jail, Tony and his crew Helimed 999 are the first on the scene in the most critical of emergencies.This gripping read will make you laugh, cry and marvel at the wonders of life (and death) in equal measure.

    Adopting a sunny, genial tone, Dunthorne lures the reader to darker places, exploring death and dread, failure and regret - the 'lounge of our suffering'. Often, he catches us off-guard: a 'whiplash' effect where poems shift from laughter to slaughter in a moment. Impertinent owls, an immersive theatre troupe, ancient men from the Great War and idiot balloonists - such characters dramatise our human fancies and foibles, joining the protagonist in scenarios both humorously bizarre and all-too-familiar. These performances serve to probe and unpeel the layers of the self - all the way down to the raw.

    The third installment of the mega-hit Twilight saga stormed movie theatres nationwide. This songbook includes 10 selections from the score penned by Howard Shore, arranged for piano solo: As Easy as Breathing * Compromise/Bella's Theme * Eclipse (All Yours) * First Kiss * Imprinting * Jacob's Theme * Jasper * The Kiss * Victoria * Wedding Plans. Includes fabulous color photos of Bella, Edward and Jacob!

    Becca struggles to make sense of her new relationship with an outcast dad, and the code of the Prophet which promises a superior existence with strict obedience. Blanketed by apocalyptic prophecies of world destruction for unbelievers and looming threats of being declared an apostate, she strives to “Keep Sweet” alongside an enormous new family of three mothers, a new father, and dozens of brothers and sisters. Underneath the beauty of wholesome childhood adventures with family and friends is an aching awareness that something isn’t right as she grows into womanhood and realizes her future is not her own. She must break the code before it is too late.

    Less than a decade later, weakened by internecine rivalry and intrigue, Punjab fell into the waiting hands of the British. The ruler who signed away the kingdom and its treasures, including the famed Koh-i-noor diamond, was an eleven-year-old boy, Duleep Singh, the youngest of Ranjit Singh’s acknowledged sons.In this nuanced and poignant novel that draws upon true events, Navtej Sarna tells the unusual story of the last Maharaja of Punjab. Soon after the British had annexed his kingdom, Duleep was separated from his mother and his people, taken under British guardianship and converted to Christianity. At sixteen, he was transported to England to live the life of a country squire—an exile that he had been schooled to seek himself. But disillusionment with the treatment meted out to him and a late realization of his lost legacy turned Duleep into a rebel. He became a Sikh again and sought to return to and lead his people. The attempt was to drag him into the murky politics of nineteenthcentury Europe, and leave him depleted and vulnerable to every kind of deceit and ridicule. His end came in a cheap hotel room in Paris, but not before one last act of betrayal and humiliation.

    Lonely and friendless after the death of her father, she finds solace in her first boyfriend, and together they flee across the city when the fighting breaks out. On the same night, Daniel, the son of a colonel, also makes his escape, but finds himself stranded by the River Nile, alone and vulnerable. Lilian is a young mother, who runs for her life holding the hand of her little boy Harmony until a bomb attack wrenches them apart, forcing her to trek on alone.After epic journeys of endurance, their lives cross in Bidi Bidi in Uganda the world s largest refugee camp. There they meet James, a counsellor who helps them to find light and hope in the darkest of places.The End of Where We Begin is a gripping and intimate true life account of three young people whose promising lives are brutally interrupted by war. It documents their heart-breaking and inspiring battle to keep moving on through the extremes of attack, injury, exile and trauma. It is a story of the bonds of community and resilience in adversity a powerful message for our troubled times.