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  Northanger Abbey

  Jane Austen

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  Jane Austen's first novel—published posthumously in 1818—tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen's fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abbey, Catherine eventually triumphs, blossoming into a discerning woman who learns truths about love, life, and the heady power of literature. The satirical novel pokes fun at the gothic novel while earnestly emphasizing caution to the female sex.

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  The Scaremongerer - From their...

  Ford Maddox

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  Ford Madox Ford was born Ford Hermann Hueffer on 17th December 1873 in Wimbledon, London, England.    
  Today he is best known for one book, ‘The Good Soldier’, which is regularly held to be one of the 100 greatest novels of all time.  But, rather unfairly, the breadth of his career has been overshadowed.  He wrote novels as well as essays, poetry, memoirs and literary criticism. Today he is well-regarded but known only for a few works rather than the grand arc of his career. 
  Ford collaborated with Joseph Conrad on three novels but would later complain that, as with all his collaborators, and those he so readily championed, his contribution was overshadowed by theirs.  
  He founded The English Review and The Transatlantic Review which were instrumental in publishing and promoting the works of so many authors and movements. 
  During WWI he initially worked on propaganda books before enlisting. Ford was invalided back to Britain in 1917, remaining in the army and giving lectures until the War’s end. After a spell recuperating in the Sussex countryside he lived mostly in France during the 1920s.  
  He published the series of four novels known as Parade’s End, between 1924 and 1928. These were particularly well-received in America, where Ford spent much of his time from the later 1920s to his death in 1939. 
  His last years were spent teaching at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan. 
  His poetry is an excellent example of his talents.  His evocation of the horrors of War are outstanding examples of the time and have become greatly admired.  
  Ford Madox Ford died on 26th June 1939 at Deauville, France at the age of 65.

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  Kublai Khan: The Life and Legacy...

  Editors Charles River

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  Aside from Genghis, the most famous of the Mongolian rulers was Genghis’s grandson, Kublai Khan, who was raised as Mongolian in the traditional way, but also exposed to Chinese culture. Kublai’s father Tolui made sure all of his sons could ride and hunt, but he was apparently also concerned that they understood the characteristics and possibilities of the more settled regions under Mongolian rule. Thus, while Kublai and his brothers were still boys, his grandfather Genghis arranged a great Mongolian hunt. This traditional event involved many thousands of riders starting in a great circle and gradually moving into the center, driving the game in front of them. It was a hunt, but it was also a traditional kind of practice military exercise. Kublai killed a couple of small animals, and Genghis is reported to have been pleased with his grandsons.  
  	As Great Khan, Kublai Khan ruled the Mongolian Empire from his capital in modern-day Beijing, with a court that included Mongolians, Arabs, and Persians from throughout his empire. While Genghis may have been a warrior, Kublai was a man of culture, intellect and curiosity, and his court was a luxurious one rich in art, music, and goods. Under his reign, trade along the Silk Road was both easier and more efficient than ever before. Toll gates were removed, and traders could move freely from place to place. It was said that even women could travel safely with goods without fear of harm.  
  	Kublai was clearly an influential ruler, but what helped his legacy endure was that he hosted the famous Italian traveler Marco Polo, who stayed in China for years and described what he saw in detail. When Marco Polo’s travelogue was published back in Europe, it immediately became one of the most famous works on the continent, and while modern historians still debate which parts were factual and fictional, there can be no question that Kublai Khan was a monumental leader in Asia. 

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  Worthy of the Event - An Essay

  Vivian Blaxell

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  A trans essayist with a checkered past takes on the big questions of human existence 
   
  Move over Michel de Montaigne, there's a new girl in town 
   
  An ABA Indie Next Pick • A San Francisco Chronicle Women's History Month Book Pick • An Allstora Queer History 101 Book Club Pick 
   
  Set against a backdrop of trans life that begins with her own transition in the 1960s, Vivian Blaxell takes us on a witty and expansive sweep through history, from Australia to Japan, to Hawai'i to Mexico, to heretofore unmapped regions of the mind. In seven devastatingly intelligent parts, her essay covers a vast range in time and space—from the arson of a Japanese temple to a transformative encounter with a coral reef, from Nietzsche and Hegel to Indigenous metaphysics, from a perplexing relationship with a beautiful man to the unknowable minds of animals. Fleshy and philosophical, searching and exalted, utterly distinctive and assured, Worthy of the Event belatedly establishes Vivian Blaxell as one of the major writers of her generation.

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  A Scene from the Ghetto of...

  Rainer Maria Rilke

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  René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke was born into a troubled marriage on the 4th December 1875 in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  His mother, having previously lost a baby girl, would dress the young boy up in girl’s clothing.   
  Later his father dispatched him to a military academy at age 10 but after a miserable 5 years the young Rilke left due to illness and instead entered first Prague and then Munich and finally Berlin university to study art history, philosophy and literature. 
  His initial forays into literature was in poetry.  His intense, mystical and lyrical style was much admired and over time inspired many in succeeding generations.    
  His short prose collection ‘Stories of God’, written in an impassioned burst over several nights was published in 1900 and offers a beguiling view of much of Rilke’s influences and outlook.  
  The following year he married the pioneering sculptor and artist Clara Westhoff.  The union produced one child, a daughter Ruth.   
  He lived in Paris for most of the Century’s first decade where he mixed with many great minds of the time.  Although he continued to write he also worked as a secretary to the sculptor, Rodin.   
  It was only after they settled in Switzerland in 1919 that his writing output was in full flow.  Here he wrote profusely in both German and French, which included much on his previous travels, his left-wing sympathies, his religious and existential thoughts, all part of a unique and consummate style. 
  From 1923 on, Rilke increasingly struggled with his health which was now in constant decline and often spent time rehabilitating at a sanatorium.   
  Rainer Maria Rilke died of leukaemia on the 29th December 1926 in Montreux, Switzerland.  He was 51.

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  Unholy silence the - a true...

  DOUG OWEN, J.M. HARLOW (FOREWORD)

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  The Unholy Silence is a harrowing true account of one family’s descent into spiritual warfare after moving into a seemingly ordinary home in Idaho. What began as a fresh start quickly spiraled into a nightmare of ghostly apparitions, shattered mirrors, demonic voices, and eerie manipulations that targeted their children, faith, and sanity. 
  Told with raw honesty and emotional depth, this memoir follows the author—a devoted husband, father, and Catholic—as he battles unseen forces that twist reality, test his beliefs, and slowly dismantle the life he built. From a terrifying mockery of his daughter to unholy rituals discovered in the shadows, every chapter peels back another layer of haunting. 
  But perhaps the most chilling aspect of all is the silence—the silence of the Church, of friends, of reason—and the silence that falls when the attacks stop… after he gives up fighting. 
  This is not a tale of victory. This is a reckoning. 
  Perfect for readers of real-life paranormal encounters, spiritual memoirs, and psychological horror grounded in truth, The Unholy Silence will stay with you long after the final page.

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