The formation of the Hellhounds was the greatest bane to the Golden Ones, its creation drenched in bloodshed and war. What began as a group of friends who strove for a brighter tomorrow would lead to its ruination. Their neon city, Dithyramb, that once boasted a life of prosperity would collapse under the dreams it created. The price of hope was none other than death. Saveas, Amare, Qolani, Olan, and Galtai were childhood friends. They once ran around the city, lost in all that the world gave them. In the face of everything, they used to be inseparable as their lives unfolded. Never once did the thought cross their minds that they would stand at the forefront of war. The nature of the city showed its true colors. From the dark clutches of the Solar's shadow, a voice called to them. From its whispers came the notion of change. All it took was a single spark. An uprising that would change their world forever.

Entheogens and the Development of Culture makes the radical proposition that mind-altering substances have played a major part not only in cultural development but also in human brain development. Researchers suggest that we have purposely enhanced receptor sites in the brain, especially those for dopamine and serotonin, through the use of plants and fungi over a long period of time. The trade-off for lowered functioning and potential drug abuse has been more creative thinking--or a leap in consciousness. Experiments in entheogen use led to the development of primitive medicine, in which certain mind-altering plants and fungi were imbibed to still fatigue, pain, or depression, while others were taken to promote hunger and libido. Our ancestors selected for our neural hardware, and our propensity for seeking altered forms of consciousness as a survival strategy may be intimately bound to our decision-making processes going back to the dawn of time. Fourteen essays by a wide range of contributors—including founding president of the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology of Religion section Michael Winkelman, PhD; Carl A. P. Ruck, PhD, Boston University professor of classics and an authority on the ecstatic rituals of the god Dionysus; and world-renowned botanist Dr. Gaston Guzma, member of the Colombian National Academy of Sciences and expert on hallucinogenic mushrooms—demonstrate that altering consciousness continues to be an important part of human experience today. Anthropologists, cultural historians, and anyone interested in the effects of mind-altering substances on the human mind and soul will find this book deeply informative and inspiring.

Good is a construct. Evil is a virus. The Starship Sa Niro and the Starship Sß Oubliette were in orbit around a black hole, one afternoon... by the end of the day, the crews of both starships were dead, victims of a single killer: Captain Alpha Raine. Raine claims he's acting under the command of a voice emanating from the black hole: Mr Modo. No one believes him.Everyone knows that things go into black holes; nothing comes out. But something inexplicable has been happening to Raine, and whatever it is seems to be spreading. An historian studying serial killers from the 21st century interviews him... and then nearly kills someone herself. It becomes increasingly undeniable that there's something inside that black hole... and it's found a way out...

Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind showcases the leading contributors to the field, debating the major questions in philosophy of mind today. Comprises 20 newly commissioned essays on hotly debated issues in the philosophy of mind Written by a cast of leading experts in their fields, essays take opposing views on 10 central contemporary debates A thorough introduction provides a comprehensive background to the issues explored Organized into three sections which explore the ontology of the mental, nature of the mental content, and the nature of consciousness

An up to date and comprehensive overview of the philosophy and neuroscience movement. At the heart of the movement is the conviction that basic questions about human cognition can be answered only by a philosophically sophisticated grasp of neuroscience's insights into the processing of information by the human brain.

A vibrant, kaleidoscopic improvisation on the broken body and questing spirit, from "one of the wisest and most insightful poets in the country" (Ron Charles, Washington Post Book Club). "I was living in a high-maintenance loneliness," Alice Fulton writes of a devastating accident, and her poems express both reverence and impatience as they search for a brightness palpable as the dark. The result is a brilliant coloratura on the senses. Fulton evokes phantom aromas of vanished perfumes, flowers fragrant only at night, and the ozone scent of snow; marvels at velvet paintings and chimerical colors outside the spectrum; and riffs on a mixtape of ambient sounds: applause, clinking glasses, spectral voices on the radio, and the whispers of a mother to her children. Coloratura On A Silence Found In Many Expressive Systems extends these tactile mysteries to existential questions of invisible miracles, connection, and faith in the face of silence: "By praying you, I create you," the poet informs an elusive God. Reveling in the stunning possibilities of language, Fulton seeks joy to counteract trauma and grief, empathizes with the silent pathos of animals, and finds solace in art, friendship, and the mysterious power of gifts. Without denying suffering, this enthralling volume extends a fervent prayer for gratitude and healing.

Mates, Mermaids, & Murder. Cats and water don’t mix. Tigers aren’t meant to be dragged to the bottom of the sea, even if it’s to solve a murder. But that itch to claw my way to the surface—it’s blown away by an entirely different desire. She has unearthly silver hair and violet eyes…not to mention the tail of a fish. But my tiger roars to claim this mermaid, fins and scales and whatever else comes along with her. We come from different worlds, but fate forces us together. If we can't solve this murder, there will be war. If we don't hurry, I'll lose her forever. Quick Bites are stand alone stories you can devour in a flash. Expect short, steamy shifter romance, edge-of-your-seat action, scorching love scenes, and a happily ever after. Additional Keywords: shifter, shapeshifter, tiger, mermaid romance, paranormal romance, pnr, alpha, fantasy romance, magic

These poems sing the body’s fierce desire to live forever and the mind’s almost-sacred wonder that it was ever here at all. But free of what Whitman called the fear of knowing, they can hear the hum of time’s seamless disappearance, riding the spinning tendrils of the mystery of silence that, like brief flowering seasons on high mountain meadows, try to make less seem more, for “surely there are men who’ve made their art out of no tragic war, lovers of life, impulsive men who look for happiness and sing when they’ve found it.” They search for covenants of faith without borders, gods without omniscience, and unbloody sacraments that seek protection from nature’s deadly indifference.

Stitched together over five years of journaling, Obiter Dicta is a commonplace book of freewheeling explorations representing the transcription of a dozen notebooks, since painstakingly reimagined for publication. Organized after Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia, this unschooled exercise in aesthetic thought--gleefully dilettantish, oftentimes dangerously close to the epigrammatic--interrogates an array of subject matter (although inescapably circling back to the curiously resemblant histories of Western visual art and instrumental music) through the lens of drive-by speculation. Erick Verran's approach to philosophical inquiry follows the brute-force literary technique of Jacques Derrida to exhaustively favor the material grammar of a signifier over hand-me-down meaning, juxtaposing outer semblances with their buried systems and our etched-in-stone intuitions about color and illusion, shape and value, with lessons stolen from seemingly unrelatable disciplines. Interlarded with extracts of Ludwig Wittgenstein but also Wallace Stevens, Cormac McCarthy as well as Roland Barthes, this cache of incidental remarks eschews what's granular for the biggest picture available, leaving below the hyper-specialized fields of academia for a bird's-eye view of their crop circles. Obiter Dicta is an unapologetic experiment in intellectual dot-connecting that challenges much long-standing wisdom about everything from illuminated manuscripts to Minecraft and the evolution of European music with lyrical brevity; that is, before jumping to the next topic.

Window Rock, Arizona, is the last known location of Honor Roberts, who vanished when she was just thirteen. It was her only sanctuary from the Breed research that would surely have ended in her death—one such insidious experiment should, indeed, have killed her. That she lived is both a miracle—and a great mystery. Stygian’s mission is to find Honor Roberts, no matter the cost. Now, with the help of Liza Johnson, assistant to the chief of the Navajo Nation, he is closer than ever to his goal. But will the discovery of Honor Roberts mean the destruction of the mating heat that has developed between Stygian and Liza?