As the orphaned niece of a cruel lord, Briand is the scapegoat of the castle. She has few friends and even fewer options, and every day is a struggle to stay ahead of trouble caused by malicious guards and irritable castle servants. Briand is set to be banished to the wildlands, a death sentence, when she when she accidentally unlocks a hidden power and involves herself in a rebel plot and her life abruptly changes. Imprisoned in the company of a band of rebels, Briand must do what seems impossible: call up sleeping dragons in the north. But the fearsome Prince's assassins called Seekers are looking for her, Briand doesn't know if she can trust the mysterious, enigmatic rebel leader Kael, and there might be a traitor in the rebels' midst.

The Poison in the Gift is a detailed ethnography of gift-giving in a North Indian village that powerfully demonstrates a new theoretical interpretation of caste. Introducing the concept of ritual centrality, Raheja shows that the position of the dominant landholding caste in the village is grounded in a central-peripheral configuration of castes rather than a hierarchical ordering. She advances a view of caste as semiotically constituted of contextually shifting sets of meanings, rather than one overarching ideological feature. This new understanding undermines the controversial interpretation advanced by Louis Dumont in his 1966 book, Homo Hierarchicus, in which he proposed a disjunction between the ideology of hierarchy based on the "purity" of the Brahman priest and the "temporal power" of the dominant caste or the king.

Sixteen-year-old Kyra, a highly-skilled potions master, is the only one who knows her kingdom is on the verge of destruction???which means she''s the only one who can save it. Faced with no other choice, Kyra decides to do what she does best: poison the kingdom''s future ruler, who also happens to be her former best friend. But, for the first time ever, her poisoned dart???misses. Now a fugitive instead of a hero, Kyra is caught in a game of hide-and-seek with the king''s army and her potioner ex-boyfriend, Hal. At least she''s not alone. She''s armed with her vital potions, a too-cute pig, and Fred, the charming adventurer she can''t stop thinking about. Kyra is determined to get herself a second chance (at murder), but will she be able to find and defeat the princess before Hal and the army find her? Kyra is not your typical murderer, and she''s certainly no damsel-in-distress???she''s the lovable and quick-witted hero of this romantic novel that has all the right ingredients to make teen girls swoon.

Whether they're writing a short detective story, crime novel, or something else, writers at every level--and in every genre--can find the information they need to make their work more accurate and gripping in this reference that cuts through the medical jargon to address everything from a poison's symptoms and reactions to how it can be administered.

The bad girl of the magical underworld is back and badder than ever Someone wants Marla Mason dead. Usually that’s not news. As chief sorcerer of Felport, someone always wants her dead. But this time she’s the target of a renegade assassin who specializes in killing his victims over days, months, or even years. Not to mention a mysterious knife-wielding killer in black who pops up in the most unexpected places. To make matters worse, an inmate has broken out of the Blackwing Institute for criminally insane sorcerers—a troubled psychic who can literally reweave the fabric of reality to match her own traumatic past. With her wisecracking partner Rondeau reluctantly in tow, Marla teams up with a “love-talker” whose dangerous erotic spells not even she can resist. Together they’re searching the rapidly transforming streets of Felport for a woman who’s become the Typhoid Mary of nightmares, infecting everything—and everyone—she touches with a chaos worse than death itself.

A troubled psychiatrist turns investigator when a young patient confesses to murder. Psychiatrist Mark Angelotti knows that genes don't lie. Or do they? Back at work after a devastating illness, Mark believes he has put his past behind him when he is asked to examine Charlie Dickerson, a mentally handicapped teenager whose wealthy mother insists he is a victim of sexual abuse. Mark diagnoses a different reason for Charlie's ills, but his prescription turns deadly when a teacher is murdered and Charlie confesses to the police. Volunteering to testify on Charlie's behalf, Mark's worst fears are realized when paternity tests show the victim was pregnant with Charlie's child. Now it's up to Mark to prove Charlie's innocence in a case where nothing is as first meets the eye. Not even genes--Mark's or Charlie's--can be trusted to shine a light on the truth.

Perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman and Tim Burton, this is no ordinary fairy tale. When Poison's baby sister is stolen by phaeries, Poison sets off on an incredible and dangerous journey to get her sister back from the Phaerie Lord. But as Poison travels to the Realm of Phaerie, she discovers that her story - and her destiny - is not in her control, and that she will need all her wits about her to survive. A fantasy where the power of story maybe the only thing that will save you, and where imagination knows no bounds.

Five short stories inspired by the American writer H. P. Lovecraft, creator and acknowledged master of the genre of Cosmic Horror. --- "Cuitiliu" Did the Great Old Ones ever walk in Ireland? Did they have something to do with what happened at Devil's Cliff? The forgotten pages of Amhlaoibh O Suilleabhain's Diary may hold the answers. --- "The Call of the Stars" His father left him a packet of mysterious Irish manuscripts, and when Mairtin Mac Cuarta read them, he felt the stars call to him. --- "The Book of Poison" Finnish student Panu Hoglund only wanted to read old books to learn the Irish language, but then one was sent to him that had an ancient poison in it. --- "The Midnight Worm in Ikaalinen" is at the heart of this collection: a prize-winning story by the Finnish philosopher S. Albert Kivinen, who introduced Lovecraft to Finnish readers of fantasy. In this story, Kivinen describes a cosmic monster who made its nest in Ikaalinen, a small market town in Western Finland-the hometown of the writer himself. --- "Paappana, or Erkki Santanen's Music" Club music drew hundreds of young people to the decaying suburb. But what black destiny was waiting for them in the cellar below?

Many early modern plays use poison, most famously Hamlet, where the murder of Old Hamlet showcases the range of issues poison mobilises. Its orchard setting is one of a number of sinister uses of plants which comment on both the loss of horticultural knowledge resulting from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and also the many new arrivals in English gardens through travel, trade, and attempts at colonisation. The fact that Old Hamlet was asleep reflects unease about soporifics troubling the distinction between sleep and death; pouring poison into the ear smuggles in the contemporary fear of informers; and it is difficult to prove. This book explores poisoning in early modern plays, the legal and epistemological issues it raises, and the cultural work it performs, which includes questions related to race, religion, nationality, gender, and humans’ relationship to the environment.