Spartacus is a little spider with big web-building problems, but when he devises a way to spin a mighty net, what may be the cost of his triumph?

With a romance brewing between him and Bethany, the discovery that his brother and sister are secretly king and queen of the Fairy world, plus the Stain brothers growing more and more underhanded, fourteen-year-old Erec is not in the right state of mind for his next two tasks.

As a third-grader who hates to read unwillingly looks at a book, the characters come alive and interest him so much that he begins to care about them and turn the pages.

New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Kirkus Reviews Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) Shortlisted for the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) A San Francisco Chronicle Holiday Gift Guide Selection A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A sweeping, "magisterial" history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists shows why Rome remains "relevant to people many centuries later" (Atlantic). In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.

Collects Amazing Spider-Man #584-588. Spidey's new world is rocked to its core! Who's been terrorizing people as Menace? Who's behind the Spider-Tracer Killings? Plus: Spidey teams up with the 44th president of the United States!

Gwen Stacy, the Spider-Woman of Earth-65, makes her sensational return! And she's picking up right where she left off, fighting crime through her home reality - unaware that it sits on the precipice of interdimensional calamity! Spider-Geddon is about to rock Gwen's world! Finding herself trapped in a parallel dimension as her friends and fellow Spiders are dying...with her teleporter watch destroyed and no way to get home...what can Gwen do to stop the Inheritors from wreaking havoc across the entire Web of Life and Destiny? And from out of the interdimensional chaos, she must face one of her deadliest enemies yet - the Gwen Goblin! With her life in jeopardy from all sides, is there a reason we're calling her Ghost-Spider?! COLLECTING: SPIDER-GWEN: GHOST-SPIDER 1-4

Discussing the state of play in contemporary popular culture, specifically the role of crime and crime control in the video game medium, this book discusses the criminological importance of video games. Pulling together an international group of scholars from Brazil, Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this edited volume analyzes a wide range of noteworthy video games, including Bioshock, Death Stranding, Diablo 2, Beat Cop, The Last of Us, Disco Elysium, Red Dead Redemption, P.T., Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and Grand Theft Auto. The book thus seeks to advance dialog on video games as important cultural artifacts containing significant insights regarding dominant perceptions, interests, anxieties, contradictions, and other matters of criminological interest. Covering policing, vigilantism, different forms of violence, genocide, mental illness, and criminological theory, Video Games, Crime, and Control will be of great interest to students and scholars of Criminology, Media Studies, and Sociology, specifically those focusing on Game Studies and Cultural Criminology.

On April 3rd, 1942, the Japanese infantry staged a major offensive against Allied troops in Bataan in the Philippine Islands. The invasion was led by General Masaharu Homma, who had already forced General Douglas MacArthur’s troops from Lingayen. The Japanese began to fire every half hour, increasing in intensity each time, while the defenders crouched down in their foxholes. At the same time the Japanese 22nd Air Brigade started dropping more than sixty tons of bombs. Dive bombers flew low to strafe troops and trenches. USAFFE Artillery and telephone lines were neutralized. Bamboo thickets, banyan trees, sugar cane fields were set ablaze. Then, as the dust cleared on April 9th—the anniversary of the death of legendary Emperor Jimmu, the first ruler to sit on the Japanese imperial throne— General Edward King of the United States Army Forces of the Far East surrendered to General Homma and the infamous Bataan Death March began. In this novel war, an evil wind, rages over a beautiful planet Earth. Like a scythe, it claims all the young men in their teens and twenties. This is the story of five on their journey to the end of the trail in the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.

How is a blockbuster made? All it takes is three days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Opening weekend at the height of the summer blockbuster season is a gruelling ordeal for studio execs and marketers. In Open Wide, Hayes and Bing take the reader behind the scenes during the first 72 hours of a film's release. They also explore the main phases in the life of a film and also offer a personal look at all the filmmakers, actors, producers and executives that help bring these films to the cinema. This really is the first book to examine, in depth, the importance of the opening weekend.

Considers the history of the American blockbuster—the large-scale, high-cost film—as it evolved from the 1890s to today. The pantheon of big-budget, commercially successful films encompasses a range of genres, including biblical films, war films, romances, comic-book adaptations, animated features, and historical epics. In Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History authors Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale discuss the characteristics, history, and modes of distribution and exhibition that unite big-budget pictures, from their beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the present. Moving chronologically, the authors examine the roots of today's blockbuster in the "feature," "special," "superspecial," "roadshow," "epic," and "spectacle" of earlier eras, with special attention to the characteristics of each type of picture. In the first section, Hall and Neale consider the beginnings of features, specials, and superspecials in American cinema, as the terms came to define not the length of a film but its marketable stars or larger budget. The second section investigates roadshowing as a means of distributing specials and the changes to the roadshow that resulted from the introduction of synchronized sound in the 1920s. In the third section, the authors examine the phenomenon of epics and spectacles that arose from films like Gone with the Wind, Samson and Deliliah, and Spartacus and continues to evolve today in films like Spider-Man and Pearl Harbor. In this section, Hall and Neale consider advances in visual and sound technology and the effects and costs they introduced to the industry. Scholars of film and television studies as well as readers interested in the history of American moviemaking will enjoy Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters.