A thieving badger meets a dreadful fate.

Dazai Osamu wrote The Fairy Tale Book (Otogizōshi) in the last months of the Pacific War. The traditional tales upon which Dazai's retellings are based are well known to every Japanese schoolchild, but this is no children's book. In Dazai's hands such stock characters as the kindhearted Oji-san to Oba-san ("Grandmother and Grandfather"), the mischievous tanuki badger, the fearsome Oni ogres, the greedy old man, the "tongue-cut" sparrow, and of course Urashima Taro (the Japanese Rip van Winkle) become complex individuals facing difficult and nuanced moral dilemmas. The resulting stories are thought-provoking, slyly subversive, and often hilarious. In spite of the "gloom and doom" atmosphere always cited in reviews of The Setting Sun and the later No Longer Human, though, Dazai's cutting wit and rich humor are evident in the entire body of his work. His literature depicts the human condition in painfully blunt and realistic terms, but, like life itself, is often accompanied by a smile.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 1st IFIP Entertainment Computing Symposium held in Milan, Italy on September 7-10, 2008. The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The scope of the series includes: foundations of computer science; software theory and practice; education; computer applications in technology; communication systems; systems modeling and optimization; information systems; computers and society; computer systems technology; security and protection in information processing systems; artificial intelligence; and human-computer interaction. Proceedings and post-proceedings of refereed international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing.

Boats, trains, cars, planes, bikes, buses, and balloons soar and race, taking people to faraway places. Bounce, zoom, and rattle along in this bright, playful book jam-packed with vehicles of all shapes and sizes.

Born of Japan's cultural encounter with Western entertainment media, manga (comic books or graphic novels) and anime (animated films) are two of the most universally recognized forms of contemporary mass culture. Because they tell stories through visual imagery, they vault over language barriers. Well suited to electronic transmission and distributed by Japan's globalized culture industry, they have become a powerful force in both the mediascape and the marketplace.This volume brings together an international group of scholars from many specialties to probe the richness and subtleties of these deceptively simple cultural forms. The contributors explore the historical, cultural, sociological, and religious dimensions of manga and anime, and examine specific sub-genres, artists, and stylistics. The book also addresses such topics as spirituality, the use of visual culture by Japanese new religious movements, Japanese Goth, nostalgia and Japanese pop, "cute" (kawali) subculture and comics for girls, and more. With illustrations throughout, it is a rich source for all scholars and fans of manga and anime as well as students of contemporary mass culture or Japanese culture and civilization.

A train gets noisier and more crowded as quacking ducks, dancing acrobats, talking yaks, and packs of elephants board.

A journalist’s job could get her killed… Years ago, Elizabeth Hart took down a human trafficking ring in the Rocky Mountains with a single blog post—and now someone wants revenge. But her ex-fiancé, Officer Riggen Price, won’t let anyone hurt her or his newly discovered son. With the threats only escalating, can Liz trust the man who broke her heart…and live to give their family a second chance?

"A man in his daughter's bed is a link out of the human chain", broods the King, a father who has irrevocably crossed the age-old boundary between parent and child. Brilliantly imagined and deftly executed, this provocative literary fable of lust and obsession is the tale of two sets of brothers, one of each pair blessed with beauty and grace and the other physically cursed; two mothers, one an icy queen of a frozen kingdom and the other obsessed with her thousands of birds; two riddles spun by a mysterious Persian; and Amalasuntha, the Princess whose father has placed her on top of a glass mountain to protect her from the lust of men, including his own. A taut and feverish tale of Oedipal tension and transformation that reverberates with the power of myth and folklore, The Glass Mountain is an astounding allegory for our time.

A killer on the hunt... Treacherous Mountain Investigation by Stephanie M. Gammon Years ago, Elizabeth Hart took down a human trafficking ring in the Rocky Mountains with a single blog post—and now someone wants revenge. But her ex-fiancé, Officer Riggen Price, won’t let anyone hurt her or his newly discovered son. With the threats only escalating, can Liz trust the man who broke her heart…and live to give their family a second chance? Wyoming Mountain Escape by Laura Scott Just as Chelsey Robards decides to call off her wedding, her soon-to-be husband is shot and killed at the altar. When the bullets start to fly her way, the best man, former Special Ops soldier Duncan O’Hare, drags her to safety. But with an unknown enemy on their trail, can they survive long enough to find out why she’s a target? USA TODAY Bestselling Author Laura Scott 2 Thrilling Stories Treacherous Mountain Investigation and Wyoming Mountain Escape

Santa comes to the barnyard in this holiday addition to the award-winning Click, Clack series from the New York Times bestselling Doreen Cronin