Flowers of Fire

Sample

Pierre Louÿs

This was "the only only complete English version extant" of a novel originally in French about a courtesan living in ancient Alexandria. The book is lavishly illustrated, but is sloppy in other ways. For instance, every time there is a full page illustration (and there are many) the page numbering skips, and the margins of the page are not evenly wide. This is the kind of book that you had to cut the pages with a knife before you could read it. You could call the story erotica, but it is no worse than The Decameron or Chaucer. It must have been pretty hot reading in 1906. The book has a page stating "This Edition on Large Paper is limited to 1000 copies of which this is No......" but nobody bothered to fill in the number, so I would guess that more than 1,000 of these were printed.

Sample

Howard Andrew Jones

When a stranger begs the vizier of ninth-century Baghdad to protect a bejeweled tablet and is murdered before he can explain, the scholar Dabir pursues suspicions that the subsequently stolen tablet may unlock secrets to the lost city of Ubar.

Sample

John Peffer-Engels

Describes the history and customs of the Edo of Benin who live in the rain forest of Nigeria and are known for their ivory and brass art.

Sample

Jeannette Batz Cooperman

The Broom Closet explores the sacred, psychological, erotic, and sometimes murderous power of housework, using surprising examples from postfeminist novels by Louise Erdrich, Mary Gordon, Toni Morrison, Marge Piercy, Jane Smiley, and Amy Tan. By juxtaposing the novels and their authors' lives with general social and historical context, the book outlines the many ways domestic ritual continues to shape women's consciousnessand either foil or reflect women's creativity.