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  The Shield of Heracles

  Hesiod

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  The Shield of Heracles is an archaic Greek epic poem that was attributed to Hesiod during antiquity. The subject of the poem is the expedition of Heracles and Iolaus against Cycnus, the son of Ares, who challenged Heracles to combat as Heracles was passing through Thessaly.It has been suggested that this epic may reflect anti-Thessalian feeling after the First Sacred War (595–585 BCE): in the epic, a Thessalian hero interfering with the Phocian sanctuary is killed by a Boeotian hero (Heracles), whose mortal father Amphitryon had for allies Locrians and Phocians. This was a pastiche made to be sung at a Boeotian festival at midsummer at the hottest time of the dogstar Sirios.To serve as an introduction, fifty-six lines have been taken from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. The late 3rd- and early 2nd-century BCE critic Aristophanes of Byzantium, who considered the Catalogue to be the work of Hesiod, noted the borrowing, which led him to suspect that the Shield was spurious.

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  Where There’s Muck There’s Bras:...

  Kate Fox

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  From rebels to writers, athletes to astronauts, join Kate Fox takes on an entertaining and eye-opening journey through the lives of these extraordinary women whose lives and achievements have too long been hidden.  
  From Cartimandua, the forgotten Iron Age Queen of the North, to Woodbine-smoking football player Lily Parr, Kate with her trademark wit and sense of fun, shows how these astonishing trailblazers laid the ground for modern stars from Victoria Wood to Little Mix. Nicola Adams, Betty Boothroyd and Helen Sharman all have these unsung northern champions to thank for paving their way. 
  Funny, enlightening and a call to arms, it’s perfect for a nation ready to rediscover its hidden heroes. 
  Kate Fox's exploration of these women's lives is a top-notch autobiography, shedding light on the political and social landscape of Britain. Their stories, intertwined with the history of Europe, are a testament to their resilience and their impact on the world. 
  For fans of Neil Oliver (The Story of the World in 100 Moments), David Sedaris (Happy-Go-Lucky), Eleanor Parker (Winters in the World), Katy Wix (The Methuen Book of Comic Monologues for Women), and Maggie O'Farrell (I Am, I Am, I Am). 
  HarperCollins 2022

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  After the Funeral - From their...

  Mary Butts

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  Mary Frances Butts was born on 13th December 1890 in Poole, Dorset. 
  Her early years were spent at Salterns, an 18th-century house overlooking Poole Harbour.  Sadly in 1905 her father died, and she was sent for boarding at St Leonard's school for girls in St Andrews. 
  Her mother remarried and, from 1909, Mary studied at Westfield College in London, and here, first became aware of her bisexual feelings.  She was sent down for organising a trip to Epsom races and only completed her degree in 1914 when she graduated from the London School of Economics.  By then Mary had become an admirer of the occultist Aleister Crowley and she was given a co-authorship credit on his ‘Magick (Book 4)’. 
  In 1916, she began the diary which would now detail her future life and be a constant reference point for her observations and her absorbing experiences. 
  During World War I, she was doing social work for the London County Council in Hackney Wick, and involved in a lesbian relationship.  Life changed after meeting the modernist poet, John Rodker and they married in 1918. 
  In 1921 she spent 3 months at Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Sicily; she found the practices dreadful and also acquired a drug habit.  Mary now spent time writing in Dorset, including her celebrated book of short stories ‘Speed the Plough’ which saw fully develop her unique Modernist prose style. 
  Europe now beckoned and several years were spent in Paris befriending many artists and writing further extraordinary stories.   
  She was continually sought after by literary magazines and also published several short story collections as books. Although a Modernist writer she worked in other genres but is essentially only known for her short stories.  Mary was deeply committed to nature conservation and wrote several pamphlets attacking the growing pollution of the countryside. 
  In 1927, she divorced and the following year her novel ‘Armed with Madness’ was published.  A further marriage followed in 1930 and time was spent attempting to settle in London and Newcastle before setting up home on the western tip of Cornwall.  By 1934 the marriage had failed. 
  Mary Butts died on 5th March 1937, at the West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance, after an operation for a perforated gastric ulcer. She was 46.

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  I Dream of Things That Never...

  Kenneth J Kunken

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  Paralyzed while playing college football in 1970, Ken Kunken battles back from the depths of depression and despair, earns four college degrees and becomes a well-respected assistant district attorney. 
  Ken believes that everyone has the inner strength to tackle what, to many, would seem to be almost insurmountable odds so that even the most difficult obstacles can be the springboard to the most satisfying success. But “I Dream of Things That Never Were” is about more than overcoming adversity. It is also a love story that leads Ken to marry the woman of his dreams and become the father of triplet boys. A true-life story that inspires and motivates others to fight for their dreams against overwhelming odds.

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  Airplane Mode - An Irreverent...

  Shahnaz Habib

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  Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals of Excellence 
   
   
   
  The conditions of travel have long been dictated by the color of passports and the color of skin. 
   
   
   
  The color of one's skin and passport have long dictated the conditions of travel.  For Shahnaz Habib, travel and travel writing have always been complicated pleasures. Habib threads the history of travel with her personal story as a child on family vacations in India, an adult curious about the world, and an immigrant for whom roundtrips are an annual fact of life. Tracing the power dynamics that underlie tourism, this insightful debut parses who gets to travel, and who gets to write about the experience. 
   
   
   
  Threaded through the book are inviting and playful analyses of obvious and not-so-obvious travel artifacts: passports, carousels, bougainvilleas, guidebooks, trains, the idea of wanderlust itself. Together, they tell a subversive history of travel as a Euro-American mode of consumerism—but as any traveler knows, travel is more than that. As an immigrant whose loved ones live across continents, Habib takes a deeply curious and joyful look at a troubled and beloved activity.

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  Brothers Grimm The: The True...

  Liam Dale

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  There is no one, the whole world over, who doesn’t enjoy a good story, and many of our best-loved traditional tales have been passed down through countless generations to the present day. This is especially true of the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, including such classics as “The Elves and the Shoemaker”, “Cinderella”, “Hansel and Gretel” and “Snow White”. But who were these famous brothers, and how did two studious young men who were destined to be Lawyers become perhaps the Greatest Storytellers the world has ever known? 
   
  All these questions and many more will be answered in this fascinating journal, looking at the lives and works of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and the magical quality of their unique literary talent.

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