“Are You Sure? A Story of Aesthetic World” is a modest irony on our belief of certainty. In search of a meaningful way to live the life, Am reads various self-help, religious and biographical books. Through their suggested ways, his life becomes more uncertain, miserable. With the help of Google, he finds a historical place near lonely and deserted sea coast, where his life takes an unusual turn. He successfully finds the symbols of the secret of life. Just like Budhha, he experiences the cosmic rhythm on the beach. Even then, he could not identify the certain way of life (the secret). One night, he confronts a strange power of Nature on the beach and he faints. Next morning, he is thrown out of the hotel without luggage and money. After series of incidences full of twist and turns, the story ends with Am’s realization of the irony of life, “Human can live a wonderful life by using his/her Common Sense without being positive-negative, certain-uncertain.”

The prize-winning, New York Times bestselling short story collection from the internationally bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo 'The best book you'll read this year' New York Times 'Dazzlingly surreal stories about a failing America' Sunday Times WINNER OF THE 2014 FOLIO PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013 George Saunders's most wryly hilarious and disturbing collection yet, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations. A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of Darkenfloxx(TM) in some unusual drug trials; and Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, this collection sings with astonishing charm and intensity.

Which sort of seducer could you be? Siren? Rake? Cold Coquette? Star? Comedian? Charismatic? Or Saint? This book will show you which. Charm, persuasion, the ability to create illusions: these are some of the many dazzling gifts of the Seducer, the compelling figure who is able to manipulate, mislead and give pleasure all at once. When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power, has toppled empires, won elections and enslaved great minds. In this beautiful, sensually designed book, Greene unearths the two sides of seduction: the characters and the process. Discover who you, or your pursuer, most resembles. Learn, too, the pitfalls of the anti-Seducer. Immerse yourself in the twenty-four manoeuvres and strategies of the seductive process, the ritual by which a seducer gains mastery over their target. Understand how to 'Choose the Right Victim', 'Appear to Be an Object of Desire' and 'Confuse Desire and Reality'. In addition, Greene provides instruction on how to identify victims by type. Each fascinating character and each cunning tactic demonstrates a fundamental truth about who we are, and the targets we've become - or hope to win over. The Art of Seduction is an indispensable primer on the essence of one of history's greatest weapons and the ultimate power trip. From the internationally bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, and The 33 Strategies Of War.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

Vernon Lee was the pen name of Violet Paget (1856–1935) – a prolific author best known for her supernatural fiction, her support of the Aesthetic Movement and her radical polemics. She was also an active letter writer whose correspondents include many well-known figures in fin de siècle intellectual circles across Europe. However, until now no attempt has been made to make these letters widely available in their complete form. This multi-volume scholarly edition presents a comprehensive selection of her English, French, Italian, and German correspondence — compiled from more than 30 archives worldwide — that reflect her wide variety of interests and occupations as a Woman of Letters and contributor to scholarship and political activism. Letters written in a language other than English have been expertly translated by scholars Sophie Geoffroy (from the French), Crystal Hall (from the Italian), and Christa Zorn (from the German). The edition focuses on those letters concerning the writing, ideas and aesthetics that influenced Lee’s articles, books and stories. Full transcriptions of some 500 letters, covering the years 1856-1935, are arranged in chronological order along with a newly written introduction that explains their context and identifies the recipients, friends and colleagues mentioned. Since scholarship on Lee’s critical and creative output is still in the beginning stages, these letters will serve a purpose to students and researchers in a number of academic fields. In this first volume, tracing the years 1856– 1884, the assembled letters cover the beginnings of her career, encompassing her first publication, visits to London and encounters with some of the important artistic figures of the time. As her career begins to blossom, the letters also reflect the expansion of her subject matter from cultural studies and art history to novels and aesthetic philosophy. Correspondents include Lee’s parents, Matilda and Henry Paget; her brother the poet Eugene Lee-Hamilton; English poet Mary Robinson; English authors Henrietta Jenkin and Linda Villari; and Italian writers Enrico Nencioni, Mario Pratesi, and Angelo De Gubernatis, among others.

This dark comedy explores the lost universes of disgraced idol Dylan Greenyears. Dylan had always wanted to live as many lives as he could—that was the appeal of being an actor. But at the end of a brief stint as a Hollywood heartthrob, Dylan loses the lead in Titanic and exiles himself and his wife to a recently settled exoplanet called New Taiwan. At first, life beyond Earth seems uncannily un-wondrous. Dylan teaches at an American prep school, raises a family with his high school sweetheart, and lives out his restlessness through literature. But then a box of old fan mail (and the hint of a galaxy-wide conspiracy) offers Dylan a chance to recapture the past. As he tries to balance this transdimensional midlife crisis against family life, Dylan encounters a cast of extraordinary characters: a supercomputer with aspirations of godhood, a Mormon-fundamentalist superfan, an old-school psychoanalyst, a sampling of his alternate selves, and, once again, the love of his lives. King of the Worlds throws cosmology, technology, nineties pop culture, and religion into an existential blender for a mix that is by turns tragic and absurd, elegiac and filled with wonder. M. Thomas Gammarino is the author of the novel Big in Japan and the novella Jellyfish Dreams. His short fiction has appeared in the New York Tyrant, Tinfish, Word Riot, and the Hawai'i Review, among others. In 2014, Gammarino received the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, Hawaii's highest literary honor. He lives and teaches in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Your Invitation Awaits… You’ve tried harder. You’ve been more intentional. You’ve done everything “right.” In your search for meaning and purpose, you’ve placed your hope in many different things—only to find yourself at a turning point, quietly asking, Is this it? Is this all there is? If the direction of your life is leading you away from peace, contentment, and true fulfillment, Emily Lex has some great news to share with you: God is offering you a better way. A way of real rest. A way of quiet confidence. A way to free yourself from expectations. A way to become the person he created you to be. A way to learn his unforced rhythms of grace. Do you breathe a sigh of hope when you hear this holy and gentle invitation from Jesus? “Come to me… Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” If so, then you are ready to accept his offer to recover and renew your life. Start your journey today.

As cartoonist, author, public speaker, blogger, and periscoper, Scott Adams has had best-sellers in several different fields: his Dilbert cartoons, his meditations on the philosophy of Dilbert, his works on how to achieve success in business and all other areas of life, his two remarkable books on religion, and now his controversial work on political persuasion. Adams’s two most recent best-sellers are How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (2014) and Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter (2017). Adams predicted Donald Trump’s election victory (on August 13th 2016) and has explained then and more recently how Trump operates as a Master Persuader, using “weapons-grade” persuasive techniques to defeat his opponents and often to stay several moves ahead of them. Adams has provocative ideas in many areas, for example his outrageous claim that 30 percent of the population have absolutely no sense of humor, and take their cue from conventional opinion in deciding whether something is a joke, since they have no way of deciding this for themselves. In Scott Adams and Philosophy, an elite cadre of people who think for a living put Scott Adams’s ideas under scrutiny. Every aspect of Adams’s fascinating and infuriating system of ideas is explained and tested. Among the key topics: Does humor inform us about reality? Do religious extremists know something the rest of us don’t? What are facts and how can they not matter? What happens when confirmation bias meets cognitive dissonance? How can we tell whether President Trump is a genius or just dumb-lucky? Does the Dilbert philosophy discourage the struggle for better workplace conditions? How sound is Adams’s claim that “systems” thinking beats goal-directed thinking? Does Dilbert exhibit a Nietzschean or a Kierkegaardian sense of life? Or is it Sisyphian in Camus’s sense? Can truth be over-rated? “The political side that is out of power is the side that hallucinates the most.” If there’s a serious chance we’re living in a Matrix-type simulation, how should we change our behavior? Are most public policy issues just too complex and technical for most people to have an opinion about? In politics, says Adams, it’s as if different people watch the same movie at the same time, some thinking it’s a romantic comedy and others thinking it’s a horror picture. How is that possible? Does logic play any part in persuasion?

The Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling enables people in the healing professions to utilise storytelling, pictures and metaphors as interventions to help their patients. Communicating in parallel worlds and using simple images and solutions can help to generate positive attitudes, which can then be nurtured and enhanced to great effect. Following an "Introduction" to the therapeutic use of stories, which closes with helpful "Instructions for use", the book is divided into two parts, both of which contain a series of easily accessible chapters. Part One includes stories with specific therapeutic applications linked to symptoms and situations. Part Two explains and investigates methods and offers a wide range of tools; these include trance inductions, adaptation hints, reframing, the use of metaphor and intervention techniques, how stories can be structured, and how to invent your own. The book also contains a detailed reference section with cross-referenced key words to help you find the story or tool that you need. With clear guidance on how stories can be applied to encourage positive change in people, groups and organisations, the Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling is an essential resource for psychotherapists and other professions of health and social care in a range of different settings, as well as coaches, supervisors and management professionals.