Here are ten tall tales - stories set in times and lands that never were, but should have been. Join Jolly Jack Dancy's crew as they try to figure out what their captain has gotten them into this time. See Thomas "Windwagon" Smith race a Martian sandship across the red sands of Mars. Go shopping with a woman who knows all the best places to buy, even if they don't exactly exist. Visit Coney Island in 1905, where millionaire John Chester Glatfelter thinks he knows a new way to make people have fun. Meet a runaway elf, a demon too clever for his own good, a man who'd do anything to see an angel, and a magician whose demonstration of his talents works a little too well. And in two never-before-published stories, arrive three days late for a hanging that didn't go as planned, and learn why a girl with wings can't fly.

The old wizard wasn't exactly happy with Valder, who'd led his enemy to his hut. Now hut and magical supplies were destroyed. But he'd promised the young scout a magic sword to get him safely back to his own lines -- and a much-enchanted sword Valder would get! The resulting sword gave perfect protection -- sometimes! It could kill any man -- or even half demon. In fact, once drawn, it had to kill before it could be put down or sheathed. Army wizards told Valder that the sword would keep him alive until he'd drawn it 100 times; then it would kill him! It wouldn't prevent his being wounded, maimed or cut to pieces, but it wouldn't let him die. If his new job as Chief Assassin for the army didn't make him use up the spell, he'd be practically immortal. Not bad, it seemed. There had to be a catch somewhere. There was -- and it was a lulu!

Steve Dancy has married and settled down in San Diego. His wanderlust and violence discarded when he married Virginia, the past three years have been blissfully peaceful. Now with a two-year-old son, Steve invites his mother to meet the family in Monterey at the Hotel Del Monte, one of the finest resort hotels in the country, for a family holiday.

This volume highlights humour’s crucial role in shaping historical re-visions of the long nineteenth century, through modes ranging from subtle irony, camp excess, ribald farce, and aesthetic parody to blackly comic narrative games. It analyses neo-Victorian humour’s politicisation, its ideological functions and ethical implications across varied media, including fiction, drama, film, webcomics, and fashion. Contemporary humour maps the assumed distance between postmodernity and its targeted nineteenth-century referents only to repeatedly collapse the same in a seemingly self-defeating nihilistic project. This collection explores how neo-Victorian humour generates empathy and effective socio-political critique, dispensing symbolic justice, but also risks recycling the past’s invidious ideologies under the politically correct guise of comic debunking, even to the point of negating laughter itself. "This rich and innovative collection invites us to reflect on the complex and various deployments of humour in neo-Victorian texts, where its consumers may wish at times that they could swallow back the laughter a scene or event provokes. It covers a range of approaches to humour utilised by neo-Victorian writers, dramatists, graphic novelists and filmmakers – including the deliberately and pompously unfunny, the traumatic, the absurd, the ribald, and the frankly distasteful – producing a richly satisfying anthology of innovative readings of ‘canonical’ neo-Victorian texts as well as those which are potential generic outliers. The collection explores what is funny in the neo-Victorian and who we are laughing at – the Victorians, as we like to imagine them, or ourselves, in ways we rarely acknowledge? This is a celebration of the parodic playfulness of a wide range of texts, from fiction to fashion, whilst offering a trenchant critique of the politics of postmodern laughter that will appeal to those working in adaptation studies, gender and queer studies, as well as literary and cultural studies more generally." - Prof. Imelda Whelehan, University of Tasmania, Australia

From handshakes and toasts to chant and genuflection, ritual pervades our social interactions and religious practices. Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny. In this book, Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual practice and its study; she surveys the most influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our understanding of ritualism. Bell refuses to nail down ritual with any one definition or understanding. Instead, her purpose is to reveal how definitions emerge and evolve and to help us become more familiar with the interplay of tradition, exigency, and self-expression that goes into constructing this complex social medium.

Propelled by the magic of a genie, a ship carrying a gypsy witch, a beautiful Moorish princess, a young Jewish woman, and several nuns sails toward the kingdom of Prester John, a sanctuary for dragons, gryphons, fairies, and mermaids. Reprint.

Identifies some 1,700 works about African Americans. Entries include full bibliographic information as well as Library of Congress call numbers and location in 11 major university libraries. Entries are arranged by subjects such as art, civil rights, folk tales, history, legal status, medicine, music, race relations, and regional studies. First published in 1970 by the Library of Congress.