Almost everybody in town disliked Casey Ford. The people of Indigo, Texas, believed that the greedy landowner had decided to sell out the town, destroying it just as the small community was beginning to thrive. When Ford winds up dead at the wrong end of a shotgun, the suspect list is staggering. Fortunately, herbalist China Bayles has quietly decided to investigate and, with the help of her best friend Ruby, is probing where the town fathers dare not go.
Pre-Conquest attitudes towards the dying and the dead have major implications for every aspect of culture, society and religion of the Anglo-Saxon period; but death-bed and funerary practices have been comparatively and unjustly neglected by historical scholarship. In her wide-ranging analysis, Dr Thompson examines such practices in the context of confessional and penitential literature, wills, poetry, chronicles and homilies, to show that complex and ambiguous ideas about death were current at all levels of Anglo-Saxon society.
Added by: badaboom | Karma: 5366.29 | Fiction literature | 14 November 2010
8
Dying Inside
In 1972, the author, even then an acknowledged leader in the science fiction field, published a book that was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. More than three decades later, Dying Inside has stood the test of time and has been recognized as one of the finest novels the field has ever produced. Never wasting a word, Silverberg persuasively shows us what it would be like to read minds, painting an unforgettable portrait of a man shaped by that unique power; a power he is now inexorably losing.
Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11526.37 | Fiction literature | 13 November 2010
2
On the Decay of the Art of Lying
A very short but quite funny examination of the sad state ot that most noble and necessary art: lying. This short essay is in the same vein as Eramus's In Praise of Folly, and just as satisfying. Once again, Mark Twin is the master of essays, this time about lying. It's done in an over the top fashion, making you realize that we're all liars on a daily basis, and we do it reflexively but that it's a dying art. Twain argues that we don't lie for the right reasons, and we need to address that. The essay is a bit short but still poignant even today. Twain's at his best.
Added by: susan6th | Karma: 3133.45 | Fiction literature | 2 November 2010
3
Dying for Dinner
When Annie leaves the safety of her old bank job to become the full-time manager of her boyfriend’s restaurant, what’s meant to be the first day of the rest of her life might be the last day of someone else’s.