Beware...this book is cursed! These strange but true stories of the world’s most infamous items will appeal to true believers as well as history buffs, horror fans, and anyone who loves a good spine-tingling tale. They’re lurking in museums, graveyards, and private homes. Their often tragic and always bizarre stories have inspired countless horror movies, reality TV shows, novels, and campfire tales. They’re cursed objects, and all they need to unleash a wave of misfortune is . . . you. Many of these unfortunate items have intersected with some of the most notable events and people in history, leaving death and destruction in their wake. But never before have the true stories of these eerie oddities been compiled into a fascinating and chilling volume. Inside, readers will learn about: • Annabelle the Doll, a Raggedy Ann doll that featured in the horror franchise The Conjuring • The Unlucky Mummy, which is rumored to have sunk the Titanic and kick-started World War I • The Dybbuk box, which was sold on eBay and spawned the horror film The Possession • The Conjured Chest, which has been blamed for fifteen deaths within a single family • The Ring of Silvianus, a Roman artifact believed to have inspired J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit • And many more!

On the island of Santorini, a team of archaeologists uncover a find that could change the world's understanding of history. Across the globe in Australia, two detectives struggle to solve a mysterious murder only to find that it is part of a far darker conspiracy. The sunshine of the Gold Coast is darkened by a fierce storm as a group of teenagers fight to survive an attack by strange mythical creatures. In France, a Napoleonic historian uncovers clues to a mystery over three thousand years old. As they each seek the truth they are all drawn together to fight a common enemy. After three thousand years, the race of Rataal has returned to earth to reclaim their king.

Much of the theater of antiquity is marked by erasures: missing origins, broken genres, fragments of plays, ruins of architecture, absented gods, remains of older practices imperfectly buried and ghosting through the civic productions that replaced them. Ruins: Classical Theater and Broken Memory traces the remains, the remembering, and the forgetting of performance traditions of classical theater. The book argues that it is only when we look back over the accumulation of small evidence over a thousand-year sweep of classical theater that the remarkable and unequaled endurance of the tradition emerges. In the absence of more evidence, Odai Johnson turns instead to the absence itself, pressing its most legible gaps into a narrative about scars, vanishings, erasures, and silence: all the breakages that constitute the ruins of antiquity. In ten wide-ranging case studies, theater history and performance theory are brought together to examine the texts, artifacts, and icons left behind, reading them in fresh ways to offer an elegantly written, extended meditation on “how the aesthetic of ruins offered a model for an ideal that dislodged and ultimately stood in for the historic.”

In this examination of landscape and memory, four sites of American history are revealed as places where historical truth was written over by oppressive fiction—with profound repercussions for politics past and present. Popular narratives of American history conceal as much as they reveal. They present a national identity based on harvesting the treasures that lay in wait for European colonization. In Whose Ruins tells another story: winding through the US landscape, from Native American earthworks in West Virginia to the Manhattan Project in New Mexico, this history is a tour of sites that were mined for an empire’s power. Showing the hidden costs of ruthless economic growth, particularly to Indigenous people and ways of understanding, this book illuminates the myth-making intimately tied to place. From the ground up, the project of settlement, expansion, and extraction became entwined with the spiritual values of those who hoped to gain from it. Every nation tells some stories and suppresses others, and In Whose Ruins illustrates the way American myths have been inscribed on the earth itself, overwriting Indigenous histories and binding us into an unsustainable future. In these pages, historian Alicia Puglionesi​illuminates the story of the Grave Creek Stone, “discovered” in an ancient Indigenous burial mound, and used to promote the theory that a lost white race predated Native people in North America—part of a wider effort to justify European conquest with alternative histories. When oil was discovered in the corner of western Pennsylvania soon known as Petrolia, prospectors framed that treasure, too, as a birthright passed to them, through Native guides, from a lost race. Puglionesi traces the fate of ancient petroglyphs that once adorned rock faces on the Susquehanna River, dynamited into pieces to make way for a hydroelectric dam. This act foreshadowed the flooding of Native lands around the country; over the course of the 20th century, almost every major river was dammed for economic purposes. And she explores the effects of the US nuclear program in the Southwest, which contaminated vast regions in the name of eternal wealth and security through atomic power. This promise rang hollow for the surrounding Native, Hispanic, and white communities that were harmed, and even for some scientists. It also inspired nationwide resistance, uniting diverse groups behind a different vision of the future—one not driven by greed and haunted by ruin. This deeply researched work of narrative history traces the roots of American fantasies and fears in a national tradition of selective forgetting. Connecting the power of myths with the extraction of power from the land itself reveals the truths that have been left out and is an invaluable torch in the search for a way forward.

After accidentally injuring his neighbor, Matt Sprouts thinks he has "the Curse,” a hometown myth that ruins middle schoolers’ lives. To defeat the Curse, Matt decides he needs to solve the mystery—and FAST!—but that’s not easy to do when you’re entering middle school, keeping track of your little brother, trying to defeat the best soccer team, and oh yeah, not breaking any more toes. Twelve-year-old Matt Sprouts is in big trouble. He didn't mean to hurt his neighbor Jenna with that awesome martial arts move—it just happened! Blame it on morning cartoons or Jenna's lack of coordination. Any­ways, getting grounded is the worst thing that could happen, right? Wrong. After the incident spirals into a series of downright unfortunate events, it's decided that Matt has contracted "the Curse," a hometown myth that has ruined the lives of middle schoolers before him. And as if the Curse weren't enough, entering sixth grade proves to be just as mysterious—there's a strange girlfriend, wacky teachers, and . . . c'mon, can Matt's toes stop breaking PLEASE?! Matt decides to take matters into his own hands. Now he just has to break the Curse . . . before all his bones break. "Funny, heartwarming, and impossible to put down, this book is a must-read for anyone trying to survive the perils of middle school." – Dustin Brady, bestselling author of Trapped in a Video Game, World's Worst Time Machine, the Leila and Nugget Mysteries, and Escape from a Video Game "Matt Sprouts is the next star of middle-grade comedy! Matt Eicheldinger expertly draws from his life to create this heart-warming and fun illustrated series." – Jarret Krososzka, New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award Finalist "This is the kind of book that makes a kid stay up past their bedtime, reading with a flashlight under the blanket.” – Nina Hamza, bestselling author of Ahmed Azis's Epic Year

A rebellious princess. A cursed rogue. A forbidden love that will bring a kingdom to its knees. As niece of the king, Elise Lysander cares about two things: sneaking into gambling dens, and avoiding an advantageous marriage at all costs. When her uncle holds the life of her deathly-ill father over her head, reluctantly, Elise puts her fate into the hands of Legion Grey, the handsome and mysterious dowry negotiator. He may be arrogant and infuriating, but soon Legion incites a blistering, forbidden passion she can't ignore. As their attraction grows, so do the dangers: attacks from black-eyed people, a cursed enemy who is more beast than man, and rumors of fae returning for the crown they believe was stolen from them long ago. After a bloody coup upends the kingdom, Elise flees with Legion, but nothing is as it seems. The man she allowed into her heart reveals his own secret plans with the return of magic-and he has every intention of using Elise to see them through. With war between magic and mortal on the horizon, Elise must pick a side to protect her kingdom. Does she stand with her people who stole the throne? Or with a man who lied his way into her heart and whose secret past could bring her destruction? Filled with luscious world building, banter-filled romance, and epic battles, this first book in the Broken Kingdoms series is part Viking, part Beauty and the Beast. One-click to start reading today. *Author Note* Be prepared, these fairy tale retellings might begin as a slow burn romance, but the series progresses with the spice and steam. Book 1 is not the standard for the heat of the romance and each book gets spicier.

A deadly Curse from the past threatens all Afshaneh loves Dark magic is transforming animals into ferocious, twisted creatures. What happens if it infects a person? Afshaneh and her friends must embark on a mission to discover the source and end it before disaster strikes. No one is surprised when the trail leads them back to the Fallen mages’ fortress. But the cure is unexpected and potentially deadly. Along the way Afshaneh discovers a disturbing truth from her past and she is distracted by the handsome and charismatic mage, Mikos, who Shahmir hopes can help train Afshaneh. Can she resist his charms? Does she even wish to? The plans of the Fallen are slowly revealed as Afshaneh and her friends battle magic and the Cursed beasts on this second adventure. Will Afshaneh and her friends once again be able to thwart the Fallen’s plans? Or will their power continue to grow?