'Chaos in Utter Silence' is a collection of prose and poetry. This book walks through the perils of the mind and pleas of the heart. Chaos is not always easy to put into words. Each of us go through different realms of chaos and this book contains a number of pieces that depict the agony, even when a person is thought to be still. Although distressed, the book contains moments of comfort found in little things, that otherwise are overlooked. An amalgamation of confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, serenity and tranquility awaits its readers.

A provocative meditation on the role of silence in Christian tradition by the New York Times bestselling author of Christianity We live in a world dominated by noise. Religion is, for many, a haven from the clamor of everyday life, allowing us to pause for silent contemplation. But as Diarmaid MacCulloch shows, there are many forms of religious silence, from contemplation and prayer to repression and evasion. In his latest work, MacCulloch considers Jesus’s strategic use of silence in his confrontation with Pontius Pilate and traces the impact of the first mystics in Syria on monastic tradition. He discusses the complicated fate of silence in Protestant and evangelical tradition and confronts the more sinister institutional forms of silence. A groundbreaking book by one of our greatest historians, Silence challenges our fundamental views of spirituality and illuminates the deepest mysteries of faith.

I’m supposed to be better than this. I'm supposed to have a tenure-track job teaching music history to undergrads, writing papers about Bach, and proving to kids like me that you can work your way out of Harlem. I'm not supposed to be following a rock star around the country, fetching his mail, making sure his groupies are of age. I'm definitely not supposed to be sleeping with said rock star, who claims to be the Greek God Dionysus. At first I thought it was a load of crap. Nik's fans might think his music captures their hearts—and souls—but I knew better. Until one of Nik's orgiastic concerts gets out of hand and I don’t know which is worse: that he might be a god after all, or that he has a body count. Nik doesn’t care what I want or what I should be. He wants to tear down the world I've built, warping all I am, until his music is all that's left of me. I can't let him do that. I shouldn't believe in him. I've seen what happens to the people who believe in him. But I can't get his song out of my head. *** "The fascinating mix of raw power, modern popular culture, and potent interpersonal drama will leave readers hungry for more." –Publishers Weekly **See this title's page on RiptidePublishing.com for content warnings.**

This book is designed to provide basic philosophy and information regarding the vast number of subject matters covered. This was assembled in the understanding that the publisher and the author are not engaged in rendering legal, consultative, or other professional services. If such expert assistance is required, the services of competent and appropriate professionals should be sought. The author and the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage that may be indirectly or directly caused, or alleged to be caused, by the content of this book. It is also not the purpose of this book to reprint information that is otherwise available to the author, publisher, or reader. Rather, it seeks to complement, amplify, and/or supplement other texts available. The reader is urged to review all relevant material and learn as much as possible about life, tailoring that information to their individual situation. Further, efforts have been made to make this book as accurate as possible. However, there are undoubtedly editorial, typographical, and contextual errors contained herein. Therefore, the text should be viewed and utilized as a general guide, not as an ultimate source of information related to the various topics. This book also contains information that may no longer be relevant or accurate despite our desire to think our words and thoughts about life are timeless and perfect. Finally, the primary objective of this volume has something to do with the four Es—to enlighten, edify, educate, and entertain, perhaps even in that order. Personal philosophy and worldview are something we develop and maintain as individuals who evolve throughout life. It is the ambition of the writer to amplify these Es, hoping that in doing so, it will allow the reader to experience a more meaningful, balanced, complete, and productive encounter with life.

The ancient gods remain unsatisfied. Now Storm and Ash must find another to take Zhekali’s place among the divine servants. But when they reach Desantiva, they discover a land still reeling from the devastation of war. With questions that can only be answered in the holiest of places deep in the heart of the unforgiving territory, they begin a journey that will either save the land—or destroy it.

Grotesque Anatomies is a study of Menippean satire in English since the Renaissance. It consists of revisionist, close readings of canonical works such as Eliot’s The Waste Land and Pope’s Dunciad among others, and investigates how identifying them as Menippean satires changes our understanding of them. The initial chapter offers a comprehensive account of the form from antiquity to the present day, identifying its bifurcated development in the shorter form (Seneca-Lucian-Julian) and the longer, more encylopedic form (Varro-Petronius-Boethius), and their subsequent fusion during the Renaissance. It also contains an account of the critical reception of the genre, with the term ‘Menippean satire’ first being used by Justus Lipsius in 1581. Finally, Menippean satire is described as a literary version of the grotesque, and a brief theory of the grotesque in the modern period as ‘radical heterogeneity’ is outlined. This is also the foundation of a new definition of Menippean satire, drawing on previous definitions by Frye, Bakhtin and Kirk, and revising them for the modern period. The following chapters examine iconic works as examples of Menippean satire and of the grotesque. Chapter 2 offers an overview of the nose in Menippean satire and comic literature generally, and reads Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in this context. It also gives an account of metaphor as a ‘grotesque transformation’. Chapter 3 examines the figure of the stomach in Menippean satire and symposiastic literature, and reads Peacock’s Gryll Grange in this context. The link between the stomach as a figure of thinking in comic literature is the basis for an account of symbolic structuring as ‘grotesque association’. Chapter 4 is a close reading of the scatological imagery of Pope’s Dunciad, and how scatology generally tends towards a cyclical metaphysics. It also relates changes in print technology and copyright laws to the reticular scatological structure of the Dunciad. Chapter 5 argues for Eliot’s The Waste Land as a Menippean satire, focusing on the rhetorical figure of the enthymeme as a missing premise, as an example of ‘under-mindedness’ and as an ironic aspect of the fragmentation typical of late Romantic Menippean satires. Chapter 6 examines Urquhart’s eccentric The Jewel as a satire on the referential function of language, reading it in the context of projections for a universal language from this period. The final chapter identifies some key works by Derrida and Barthes as Menippean satires, noting the resurgence of the form in some postmodern and deconstructive writing.

Turning Back the Pages 1993-1923 is an autobiography to delight readers. It narrates the escapades of a boy born in 1918, raised during the 'dirty thirties', and who later became a bomber pilot in World War 2. Open it and enter life in England when the sound of an aircraft passing overhead would cause people to run outside to get a glimpse of this new technological wonder, and privately owned automobiles were a rarity. Some of the stories are serious but many will bring the reader to tears of laughter, particularly those relating the high jinks that aircrew got up to in their time off.

Quintus Claudius, Volume I by Ernst Eckstein is about the adventures of Herodianus on the rocks of Capreae. Excerpt: "It was in Rome itself, in the sublime solemnity of the Colosseum, among the ruins of the palaces of the Caesars and crumbling pillars of the temples of the gods, that the first dreamy outlines rose before my fancy of the figures here offered to the reader's contemplation. Each visit added strength to the mysterious impulse, to conjure up from their tombs these shadows of a mighty past, and afterward, at home, where the throng of impressions sorted and grouped themselves at leisure, my impulse ripened to fulfillment."

Quintus Claudius: A Romance of Imperial Rome is a tale of a young and restless Roman lad, who seeks his fortune in brutal circumstances of ancient Rome, near the end of the 1st century. Quintus lives with his mother and sisters in Baiae, small town in the bay of Naples, while his father is a priest to the temple of Jupiter in Rome. He is betrothed to his beloved Cornelia who is sent to Tibur on a decision by her uncle. The very next day after Quintus gets involved in an incident with emperor's wife who resides in Baiae, he receives two letters; one from his father who invites him to Rome; and the other from his fiancée who notifies him that she is coming to Rome as well. Quintus sets off to the capital eager to see his loved one, but the shadow of previous incident remains to follow him.