Introducing unconventional rector’s wife and amateur sleuth Jodie Welsh in the first of a brand-new mystery series Highflying city career woman Jodie Welsh was prepared for a dramatic change in lifestyle when she met and married the Reverend Theo Welsh, settling down to an entirely new kind of life as the wife of a country vicar in the picturesque village of Lesser Hogben. But if she thought life as a city deal-maker was tough, nothing could have prepared her for the emotional rollercoaster of local church and village politics. As a newcomer, Jodie encounters hostility and disapproval from several of the villagers, particularly in her efforts to engage and assist Lesser Hogben’s disaffected youth. When a local lad Jodie employed to help in her garden disappears, along with Jodie’s expensive camera, everyone around her is inclined to assume the worst. Only Jodie and the missing boy’s friend Mazza are convinced of his innocence. But Burble’s disappearance marks the start of a series of disturbing incidents which escalate in intensity – until the body shows up, and Jodie must use her well-honed negotiating and networking skills to unmask a ruthless killer.

A lush, dazzlingly original young adult fantasy about an epic clash of witches, gods, and demons. Elysium, Oklahoma, is a town like any other. Respectable. God-fearing. Praying for an end to the Dust Bowl. Until the day the people of Elysium are chosen by two sisters: Life and Death. And the Sisters like to gamble against each other with things like time, and space, and human lives. Elysium is to become the gameboard in a ruthless competition between the goddesses. The Dust Soldiers will return in ten years' time, and if the people of Elysium have not proved themselves worthy, all will be slain. Nearly ten years later, seventeen-year-old Sal Wilkinson is called upon to lead Elysium as it prepares for the end of the game. But then an outsider named Asa arrives at Elysium's gates with nothing more than a sharp smile and a bag of magic tricks, and they trigger a terrible accident that gets both Sal and Asa exiled into the brutal Desert of Dust and Steel. There Sal and Asa stumble upon a gang of girls headed by another exile: a young witch everyone in Elysium believes to be dead. As the apocalypse looms, they must do more than simply tip the scales in Elysium's favor—only by reinventing the rules can they beat Life and Death at their own game in this exciting fantasy debut.

What happens when put-upon prostitutes and workhouse inmates take revenge, or when a royal corpse goes walkabout? Why do the dead call to us, and who are they anyway? These twelve stories, written by a life-long Londoner, introduce us to the dead of London. We hear their voices, and through them we understand our place within the ongoing narrative of history. Just as we remember them, so one day we will be remembered. The author draws on London's folk history, each story being based on a place or institution which has been part of the local history he has learned since childhood. As such, each one bears a ring of authenticity, both in its historical detail and in its place in London's story.

Drawing on the unfamiliar genre of the death liturgy, he arrives at a remarkably comprehensive view of the religion of death in ancient Egypt.

Video games are a global phenomenon, international in their scope and democratic in their appeal. This is the first volume dedicated to the subject of apocalyptic video games. Its two dozen papers engage the subject comprehensively, from game design to player experience, and from the perspectives of content, theme, sound, ludic textures, and social function. The volume offers scholars, students, and general readers a thorough overview of this unique expression of the apocalyptic imagination in popular culture, and novel insights into an important facet of contemporary digital society.

One of the most impressive facts about death today is how much and in how many different ways various aspects of death and dying are undergoing dramatic changes. Edwin Shneidman has compiled this volume to give the reader a broad-ranging view of current trends in thanatology. The result is a remarkable compendium of pertinent insights upon which to build an understanding of death in our time - death as it relates to our comprehension of ourselves and our fellow beings. Edwin S. Shneidman, Ph. D., was Professor of Thanatology (the study of death and its surrounding circumstances, as in forensic medicine) and Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Life-Threatening Behavior at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Why does Bassanio compare himself to Jason? What is Hecuba to Hamlet? Is the mechanicals' staging of the Pyramus and Thisbe story funny or sad? This dictionary elucidates Shakespeare's use of mythological references in an early modern context, while bringing them to life for today's audiences and readers, at a time of renewed critical interest in the reception of the classics and fascination with classical mythology in popular culture. It is also a precious tool for practitioners who may not always know quite what to make of mythological references. Mythological figures, creatures, places and stories crowd Shakespeare's plays and poems, featuring as allusions, poetic analogies, inset shows, scene settings and characters or plots in their own right. Most of these references were familiar to Shakespeare's spectators and readers, who knew them from the writings of Ovid, Virgil and other classical authors, or indirectly through translations, commentaries, ballads and iconography. This dictionary illustrates how, far from being isolated, a mythological reference may resonate with the poetics of the text and its structure, cast light on characters and contexts, and may therefore be worth exploring onstage in a variety of ways. The 200 headings correspond to words and names actually used by Shakespeare: individual figures (Dido, Venus, Hercules), categories (Amazons, Centaurs, nymphs, satyrs), places (Colchos, Troy). Medium and longer entries also cover early modern usage and critical analysis in a cross-disciplinary approach that includes reception, textual, performance, gender and political studies.

Review: "More than 100 scholars contributed to this carefully researched, well-organized, informative, and multi-disciplinary source on death studies. Volume 1, "The Presence of Death," examines the cultural, historical, and societal frameworks of death, such as the universal fear of death, spirituality and varioius religions, the legal definition of death, suicide, and capital punishment. Volume 2, "The Response to Death," covers such topics as rites and ceremonies, grief and bereavement, and legal matters after death."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004.

In cultures throughout human history people have believed that some part of themselves continued to exist after they died. Part of that belief is that living can influence what happens to the dead in the afterlife, and the dead can return from the afterlife to affect the living. Death Gods: An Encyclopedia of the Rulers, Evil Spirits, and Geographies of the Dead describes the many ways the afterlife—especially that part of the afterlife commonly known as Hell—has been characterized in myths from around the world. The hundreds of entries provide readers with a guide to the afterlife as portrayed in these myths - its geography, its rulers, its inhabitants, how they got there, and what happens after their arrival. While the Devil is a prominent resident and ruler of the afterworld in many religions, especially Christianity, this book examines many other versions of Hell whether presided over by the Devil, Hades, or one of the many other rulers of the dead. Death Gods provides concise encyclopedic entries on all aspects of the mythology of the afterlife: The underworlds form the myths of cultures from across the globe—for example, Xibalba, the underworld of the Quiche Maya; Di Yu, the underground realm of the dead in Chinese mythology; the gods and demons of the afterlife—the Hindu god of death and justice Yama; Ahriman, the evil twin of the benevolent god Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrian mythology; Buso, the invisible ghouls who haunt graveyards and feed on human corpses in Philippine mythology. The volume includes an extensive bibliography of the most useful resources for understanding the mythology of death and the afterlife.