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  Cleopatra - Her History Her Myth

  Francine Prose

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  A feminist reinterpretation of the myths surrounding Cleopatra casts new light on the Egyptian queen and her legacy 
   
  The siren passionately in love with Mark Antony, the seductress who allegedly rolled out of a carpet she had herself smuggled in to see Caesar, Cleopatra is a figure shrouded in myth. Beyond the legends immortalized by Plutarch, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, and others, there are no journals or letters written by Cleopatra herself. All we have to tell her story are words written by others. 
   
  What has it meant for our understanding of Cleopatra to have had her story told by writers who had a political agenda, authors who distrusted her motives, and historians who believed she was a liar? Francine Prose delves into ancient Greek and Roman literary sources, as well as modern representations of Cleopatra in art, theater, and film. She challenges the common narratives driven by orientalism and misogyny and offers a new interpretation of Cleopatra’s history from the lens of our own era.

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  Standing in a Field with Horses

  Maeve Birch

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  A memoir of equine connection. 
  If you're not "boss mare" material, can you still work with horses? This was the question Maeve faced each time she interacted with a horse. If it wasn't in her nature to dominate this animal, could she be around them and still stay true to herself? The equestrian world shouted in unison, "Get after him! Tell him who's boss!" Yet Maeve couldn't. When she did, it grated against her soul. Could she successfully navigate a life with equines if her leadership looked different? 
  In this moving memoir, Maeve Birch explores the dynamics between traditional horse handling and her communications with horses, which often didn’t align with what she was taught. In the stories shared, human issues such as codependency, lack of boundaries, impatience, violence, and fear crop up again and again, shaping horse and human relationships. Standing in a Field With Horses provides a window into the mind, spirituality, and social undercurrents of a woman trapped between obedience and self-expression along with the horses. Will she be able to stand in the current or will she be pulled under? 
  As horse care and training evolve, so too do the humans who cherish their hooved companions. The two are inescapably linked together, both in the physical realm and in spirit. In the future, will we break horses to fit us and our human world, or will we allow them to guide us into new worlds, new ways of existing and experiencing? The horses have a lot to say if we are still enough to perceive their whispers through the demands of our human psyche. A new way of being with horses is on the horizon. The hoofbeats approach. Come, stand in a field, and listen closely… You may hear more than you expect.

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  Jena 1800 - The Republic of Free...

  Peter Neumann

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  Around the turn of the nineteenth century, a steady stream of young German poets and thinkers coursed to the town of Jena to make history. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had dealt a one-two punch to the dynastic system. Confidence in traditional social, political, and religious norms had been replaced by a profound uncertainty that was as terrifying for some as it was exhilarating for others. Nowhere was the excitement more palpable than among the extraordinary group of poets, philosophers, translators, and socialites who gathered in this Thuringian village. 
   
   
   
  Jena became the place for the young and intellectually curious, the site of a new departure, of philosophical disruption. Influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, then an elder statesman and artistic eminence, the leading figures among the disruptors—the translator August Wilhelm Schlegel; the philosophers Friedrich "Fritz" Schlegel and Friedrich Schelling; the dazzling, controversial intellectual Caroline Schlegel, married to August; Dorothea Schlegel, a poet and translator, married to Fritz; and the poets Ludwig Tieck and Novalis—resolved to rethink the world, to establish a republic of free spirits. They didn't just question inherited societal traditions; with their provocative views of the individual and of nature, they revolutionized our understanding of freedom and reality.

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  Casting the Runes - From their...

  M R James

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  Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. 
  James was born on 1st August 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was Curate but at age 3 the family went to live at Livermere, near Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia.  
  From early childhood he had a passion for mediaeval books and antiques. He was educated initially as a boarder at Temple Grove School in East Sheen, west London, before gaining a scholarship to Eton and thence Cambridge where he gained a double first, becoming a distinguished linguist and mediaevalist.  
  Before the Great War vacations were usually spent touring Europe absorbing cultures and references for his later writing. 
  A man of enormous knowledge it was said he timed his breakfast egg whilst he completed the Times crossword.  
  Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic cliches and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting.  Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. 
  Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times. 
  James was also a medievalist scholar and translator whose work remains highly respected. He was also Provost of Eton College between 1918 and 1936. 
  M R James died on 12th June 1936 at Eton in Buckinghamshire.  He was 73.

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  The Eyes Have It - A seemingly...

  Philip K. Dick

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  Philip Kindred Dick was born in 1928.  Widely considered one of the greatest science fiction writers, his talents were immense but he lived almost his whole life on the edge of poverty. Born prematurely on December 16, 1928 his twin sister died which caused a shadow over the rest of his life.  Many of his works would refer to the ‘phantom twin’.  Bizarrely her tiny body was buried in Colorado where her parents also had Phillips name inscribed on the tombstone. Eventually upon his death in 1982 he too was interred in the same plot. Phillip sold his first short story in 1951 and then became a full time writer selling his first novel in 1955.  He wrote continually and whilst considered a genius of the science fiction genre he was ignored by the mainstream.  Now of course much of his work is turned into films and he is rightly lauded.  All his work is at times visionary, and haunting dealing with many themes. Dick wrote of his work. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real."

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  Puff adders in the panicum - An...

  Andrew Hutchinson

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  A collection of true auctioneering stories. Cattle, property and wildlife adventures, beat the drum in this African roller-coaster of adrenaline, danger and envy. From the first chant, to the last lot, the stage is set for for a fast paced narrative, full of action, power-plays and latent deception.

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