Publisher: Booklassic
A set of Christmas and antislavery poems published by Thomas Hill (1818-1891) for the Boston antislavery fair. Digitized by the Antislavery Literature Project.
In 1988, Sloan Hadfield’s brother Ridge went fishing with their father and never came home. Their father, a good-natured Vietnam veteran prone to violent outbursts, was arrested and charged with murder. Ridge’s body was never recovered, and Sloan’s mother—a brilliant ornithologist—slowly descended into madness, insisting her son was still alive. Now, twenty years later, Sloan’s life is unraveling. In the middle of a bitter divorce, she’s forced to return to her rural Texas hometown when her mother is discharged from a mental health facility. Overwhelmed by memories and unanswered questions, Sloan returns to the last place her brother was seen all those years ago: Crow’s Nest Creek. There, she is shocked to hear a crow muttering the same syllable over and over: Ridge, Ridge, Ridge. When the body of another boy is found, Sloan begins to question what really happened to her brother all those years ago. What she discovers will shock her small community and turn her family upside down. A River of Crows is a tale of family secrets, deception, and revenge perfect for fans of Julia Heaberlin and Jennifer Hillier. Praise for A River of Crows “In A River of Crows, Shanessa Gluhm spins a complex web of murder and family revelation that propels the reader forward at a breakneck pace. Just when you think you know where the story is headed, she reveals another thread. If you haven’t yet read Shanessa Gluhm, you need to put her on your to-be-read list.”—Allen Eskens, USA Today bestselling author of The Life We Bury “A twisted family dynamic and complex personal history combine with a touch of romance . . . grabs on with the opening pages and holds a reader tight to the very end.”—Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell, author of All We Buried and the Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet) series “. . . one of the strongest new voices in mysteries. [Gluhm] has invented what could be a new genre: the family-driven mystery.”—Rob Samborn, author of The Prisoner of Paradise and Painter of the Damned “. . . peels away layers of family secrets in this dual timeline narrative, right up until the climatic final reveal, a twist that truly surprised me.”—Laura Kemp, award-winning author of the Lantern Creek Series “. . . a thought-provoking story of revelation, family ties, discovery, and murder. Readers who choose A River of Crows for its mystery will find an unexpected draw and value in the emotional components which keep the plot action-packed and charged with transformation.”—D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review "Shanessa Gluhm, with literary panache, expertly shows what happens when a family strays from respect and honesty, with the consequence of it all, as dark as a crow’s wing, unfurling, touching, and changing everything and everyone in its path."—Lone Star Literary Life “Like the tumultuous river flowing at the center of this gripping tale, Shanessa Gluhm has crafted a pulsating story that is just waiting to pull you into its chilling depths and slowly reveal all its darkest secrets”—Indies TodayShow book
This poetry collection by the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author presents selections from across fifty years of verse—plus more than seventy new poems. Though internationally celebrated for her imaginative fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin started out as a poet, and since 1959 has never ceased to publish poems. Finding My Elegy distills her life's work in verse, offering a selection of the best from her six earlier volumes of poetry as well as powerful new poems written in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The fruit of over a half century of writing, the seventy selected and seventy-seven new poems consider war and creativity, motherhood and the natural world, and glint with humor and vivid beauty. These moving works of art are a reckoning with a whole life. "She never loses touch with her reverence for the immense what is.” —Margaret AtwoodShow book
This collection explores the creative space of poetry as a means to unravel feelings evoked by the violence of war or by everyday traumatic events. One may come to terms with uncomfortable, including unspeakable, feelings by describing them with imagery from nature and one’s immediate environment. By participating in grieving, the self can better face any lingering effects of trauma. In this creative space, dramatic speakers retell stories and give vent to contradictory feelings through silences and free play. Their accounts attest to the dappled beauty of the human condition even if the full nature, scope and effects of traumatic memories are always beyond their grasp.Show book
The Rape of Lucrece (1594) is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Lucretia. In his previous narrative poem, Venus and Adonis (1593), Shakespeare had included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, in which he promised to compose a "graver labour". Accordingly, The Rape of Lucrece has a serious tone throughout. The poem begins with a prose dedication addressed directly to the Earl of Southampton, which begins, "The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end." It refers to the poem as a pamphlet, which describes the form of its original publication of 1594. The dedication is followed by "The Argument", a prose paragraph that summarizes the events preceding the start of the poem, which begins in media res. The poem contains 1,855 lines, divided into 265 stanzas of seven lines each. The meter of each line is iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme for each stanza is ABABBCC, a format known as "rhyme royal", which has been used by Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton and John Masefield. The poem is set just before the establishment of the Roman Republic in 509 BC. The poem's locations are Rome, Ardea, twenty-four miles south of Rome, and Collatium, ten miles east of Rome. One evening, at the town of Ardea, where a battle is being fought, two leading Roman soldiers, Tarquin and Collatine, are talking. Collatine describes his wife, Lucrece, in glowing terms—she is beautiful and chaste. The following morning, Tarquin travels to Collatine's home. Lucrece welcomes him. Tarquin entertains her with stories of her husband's deeds on the battlefield. Tarquin spends the night, and is torn by his desire for Lucrece. His desire overcomes him, and he goes to Lucrece's chamber, where she is asleep. He reaches out and touches her breast, which wakes her up. She is afraid. He tells her that she must give in to him, or else he will kill her. He also threatens to cause her dishonor by murdering a slave and placing the two bodies in each other's arms, and then he would claim that he killed her because he discovered them in this embrace. If she would give in to him, Tarquin promises to keep it all secret. Lucrece pleads with him to no avail. He rapes her. Full of shame and guilt, Tarquin sneaks away. Lucrece is devastated, furious and suicidal. She writes a letter to her husband, asking him to come home. When Collatine gets home, Lucrece tells him the whole story, but doesn't say who did it. Collatine demands to know. Before she tells him, Lucrece gets the soldiers, who are also there, to promise to avenge this crime. She then tells her husband who did it, and she immediately pulls out a knife, stabs herself and dies. Collatine's grief is great—he wants to kill himself, as well. His friend, Brutus, suggests that revenge is a better choice. The soldiers carry Lucrece's body through the streets of Rome. The citizens, angered, banish Tarquin and his family.Show book
Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, first published in a 1609 quarto entitled Shakespeares Sonnets. Venus and Adonis is a poem written in 1592–1593 and published in 1609. It recounts Venus' attempts to woo Adonis, their passionate coupling, and Adonis' rejection of the goddess, to which she responds with jealousy, with tragic results. The Rape of Lucrece, published in 1594, is a narrative poem focusing on the rape and tragic death of the title character and on the revenge that follows. The Passionate Pilgrim, published in 1599, is an anthology of 20 poems collected and published by William Jaggard that were attributed to "W. Shakespeare" on the title page, only five of which are considered authentically Shakespearean. These are two sonnets, later to be published in the 1609 collection of Shakespeare's sonnets, and three poems extracted from the play Love's Labour's Lost. The Phoenix and the Turtle, first published in 1601, is an allegorical poem about the death of ideal love, widely considered to be one of his most obscure works and has led to many conflicting interpretations. The poem describes a funeral arranged for the deceased Phoenix and Turtledove, the latter a traditional emblem of devoted love. A Lover's Complaint is a narrative poem published as an appendix to the original edition of Shakespeare's sonnets. It is given the title "A Lover's Complaint" in the book, which was published in 1609. William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.Show book
Perhaps no other great poet in English Literature has been so differently judged at different times as Alexander Pope. Accepted almost on his first appearance as one of the leading poets of the day, he rapidly became recognized as the foremost man of letters of his age. He held this position throughout his life, and for over half a century after his death his works were considered not only as masterpieces, but as the finest models of poetry. With the change of poetic temper that occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century Pope's fame was overshadowed. The romantic poets and critics even raised the question whether Pope was a poet at all. And as his poetical fame diminished, the harsh judgments of his personal character increased. It is almost incredible with what exulting bitterness critics and editors of Pope have tracked out and exposed his petty intrigues, exaggerated his delinquencies, misrepresented his actions, attempted in short to blast his character as a man.Show book
