The Tyranny of Ghosts

The Tyranny of Ghosts
Author: Tom Davies
Publisher:
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2006-10
Genre: Actresses
ISBN: 9780955353901

Lisa Moran is one of the most famous and unhappy actresses in London. She lives alone in her great house in Cheyne Walk where, as a modern Madame Bovary, she spends most of her time plotting how to acquire yet more money, fame and sex. Her life both darkens and brightens when she meets Daniel Jenkins, an odd young Welsh writer.

The Tyranny of Ghosts

The Tyranny of Ghosts
Author: Don Bassingthwaite
Publisher:
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2010
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0786955066

Geth and his allies have fled the city of Rhukaan Draal, after failing to dethrone Lhesh Tariic, and reach out to the Kech Volaar for help. There they seek information on how to destroy the enigmatic Rod of Kings. Original.

An Unkindness of Ghosts

An Unkindness of Ghosts
Author: Rivers Solomon
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1617755990

A breathtaking science fiction debut from a worthy successor to Octavia Butler. —One of Esquire magazine’s 50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time “Solomon debuts with a raw distillation of slavery, feudalism, prison, and religion that kicks like rotgut moonshine . . . Stunning.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She’s used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she’d be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot—if she’s willing to sow the seeds of civil war.

Come on All You Ghosts

Come on All You Ghosts
Author: Matthew Zapruder
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Total Pages: 115
Release: 2012-12-11
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1619320606

"Charming, melancholy, hip."—Publishers Weekly, starred review "Zapruder's innovative style is provocative in its unusual juxtapositions of line, image and enjambments. . . . Highly recommended."—Library Journal Matthew Zapruder's third book mixes humor and invention with love and loss, as when the breath of a lover is compared to "a field of titanium gravestones / growing warmer in the sun." The title poem is an elegy for the heroes and mentors in the poet's life—from David Foster Wallace to the poet's father. Zapruder's poems are direct and surprising, and throughout the book he wrestles with the desire to do well, to make art, and to face the vast events of the day. Look out scientists! Today the unemployment rate is 9.4 percent. I have no idea what that means. I tried to think about it harder for a while. Then tried standing in an actual stance of mystery and not knowing towards the world. Which is my job. As is staring at the back yard and for one second believing I am actually rising away from myself. Which is maybe what I have in common right now with you . . . Matthew Zapruder holds degrees from Amherst College, UC Berkeley, and the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of two previous books, including The Pajamaist, which won the William Carlos Williams Award and was honored by Library Journal with a "Best Poetry Book of the Year" listing. He lives in San Francisco and is an editor at Wave Books.

Ghosts of Empire

Ghosts of Empire
Author: Kwasi Kwarteng
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 590
Release: 2012-02-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610391217

Kwasi Kwarteng is the child of parents whose lives were shaped as subjects of the British Empire, first in their native Ghana, then as British immigrants. He brings a unique perspective and impeccable academic credentials to a narrative history of the British Empire, one that avoids sweeping judgmental condemnation and instead sees the Empire for what it was: a series of local fiefdoms administered in varying degrees of competence or brutality by a cast of characters as outsized and eccentric as anything conjured by Gilbert and Sullivan. The truth, as Kwarteng reveals, is that there was no such thing as a model for imperial administration; instead, appointees were schooled in quirky, independent-minded individuality. As a result the Empire was the product not of a grand idea but of often chaotic individual improvisation. The idiosyncrasies of viceroys and soldier-diplomats who ran the colonial enterprise continues to impact the world, from Kashmir to Sudan, Baghdad to Hong Kong.

How Sex Got Screwed Up: The Ghosts that Haunt Our Sexual Pleasure - Book Two

How Sex Got Screwed Up: The Ghosts that Haunt Our Sexual Pleasure - Book Two
Author: Jon Knowles
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 1034
Release: 2019-03-31
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1622734165

The ghosts that haunt our sexual pleasure were born in the Stone Age. Sex and gender taboos were used by tribes to differentiate themselves from one another. These taboos filtered into the lives of Bronze and Iron Age men and women who lived in city-states and empires. For the early Christians, all sex play was turned into sin, instilled with guilt, and punished severely. With the invention of sin came the construction of women as subordinate beings to men. Despite the birth of romance in the late middle ages, Renaissance churches held inquisitions to seek out and destroy sex sinners, all of whom it saw as heretics. The Age of Reason saw the demise of these inquisitions. But, it was doctors who would take over the roles of priests and ministers as sex became defined by discourses of crime, degeneracy, and sickness. The middle of the 20th century saw these medical and religious teachings challenged for the first time as activists, such as Alfred Kinsey and Margaret Sanger, sought to carve out a place for sexual freedom in society. However, strong opposition to their beliefs and the growing exploitation of sex by the media at the close of the century would ultimately shape 21st century sexual ambivalence. Book Two of this two-part publication traces the history of sex from the Victorian Era to present day. Interspersed with ‘personal hauntings’ from his own life and the lives of friends and relatives, Knowles reveals how historical discourses of sex continue to haunt us today. This book is a page-turner in simple and plain language about ‘how sex got screwed up’ for millennia. For Knowles, if we know the history of sex, we can get over it.

The Ghosts of Europe

The Ghosts of Europe
Author: Anne Porter
Publisher: D & M Publishers
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2010-09-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1553656377

One of the country’s most distinguished writers and publishers returns to her roots to explore the consequences of democracy in the former Habsburg lands. In 1989 the Berlin Wall was dismantled. Communism gave way to democracy. Since that time the former borderlands of the long defunct Hapsburg Empire and the more recently dispersed Soviet Empire have been trying to invent their own versions of democracy and market-driven economics. But these experiments have led to a widening gap between rich and poor. The worldwide economic crisis has severely tested Central Europe’s determination to live peaceably, and there are many disquieting signs of old hatreds and racial tensions returning. Author Anna Porter travels through the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to speak with leading intellectuals, politicians, former dissidents and the champions of aggrieved memories. She interviews great figures of the revolution (Václav Havel, Adam Michnik, George Konrád) and its new custodians, among them Radek Sikorski and Ferenc Gyurcsány, and also examines the younger generation with little or no experience of Communism and no interest in its aftermath. She visits Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, Prague’s Jewish Museum and Hungary’s House of Terror, each an attempt to reckon with dark episodes of history.

King Leopold's Ghost

King Leopold's Ghost
Author: Adam Hochschild
Publisher: Picador
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2019-05-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1760785202

With an introduction by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver In the late nineteenth century, when the great powers in Europe were tearing Africa apart and seizing ownership of land for themselves, King Leopold of Belgium took hold of the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. In his devastatingly barbarous colonization of this area, Leopold stole its rubber and ivory, pummelled its people and set up a ruthless regime that would reduce the population by half. . While he did all this, he carefully constructed an image of himself as a deeply feeling humanitarian. Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize in 1999, King Leopold’s Ghost is the true and haunting account of this man’s brutal regime and its lasting effect on a ruined nation. It is also the inspiring and deeply moving account of a handful of missionaries and other idealists who travelled to Africa and unwittingly found themselves in the middle of a gruesome holocaust. Instead of turning away, these brave few chose to stand up against Leopold. Adam Hochschild brings life to this largely untold story and, crucially, casts blame on those responsible for this atrocity.

Balkan Ghosts

Balkan Ghosts
Author: Robert D. Kaplan
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1466868309

From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic. This new edition of Balkan Ghosts includes six opinion pieces written by Robert Kaplan about the Balkans between 1996 and 2000 beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo war, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power.