Novelsmithing provides the beginning novelist, or perhaps even the experienced novelist who has lost his way, with a discussion of the underlying structure and methods of novel writing. Nowhere else can the aspiring author learn the skills necessary to achieve the organic unity of the novelist's divine trinity: character, conflict and theme, so necessary to a fine work of literature.

I've always viewed the constellations as rather paper doll-like, static images pinned against the blackness of the night sky, but a few evenings ago while surveying the heavens for a night's viewing, I spotted the star Sirius and started wondering about a passage in Euripides' play, "Iphigeneia at Aulis," that seemingly serves no narrative purpose. The tragedy concerns the Greek fleet prior to sailing for Troy to fight the Trojans and return Helen to Sparta. At the beginning of the play, A...

Brenda is sitting up in bed leaning against the headboard with the white sheet and pink quilt pulled to her neck. She's naked and has her right hand down between her legs and her left hand on her right nipple squeezing hard. She's also thinking hard about Norman Todd, so hard in fact sweat is breaking out on her forehead and in her armpits. Spit is filling her mouth so fast she has to keep swallowing to keep it from running down her chin. She's thinking of the future, on a fantasy date wit...

The burden of uemployment and disadvantage falls unequally on our divided society. It hits the urban poor most sharply. These people are robbed of choices which God wills for all human beings. The Gospel is both about changing people from inside out and changing the course of events to set people free. David Sheppard spent many years at the centre of urban life. He writes from first-hand experience from his ministry in London and Liverpool, offering still valuable insights into ecumenical ...

In the summer of 1816, five young people (Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori) came together on the shores of Lake Geneva to spend the summer. It would be one of the most important events in literary history and result in the creation of a work that would never go out of print. That work is the novel Frankenstein. This is the story of how it all happened, and the tragedy that struck in its aftermath. Painstakingly researched and thoroughly documente...

In this major study, so highly-rated at the time of publication (1974), David Sheppard, the then new Bishop of Liverpool, focuses on the big city and more particularly on those groups of citizens who feel most powerless and hemmed in. With themes as relevant today as they ever were, this is an essential title in understanding the role of the Church in inner-city life.

Available for the first time complete in one volume. Previously published in two volumes as Daughter of Darkness and The Dadouchos. In 480 BC, fifteen-year-old Melaina's biggest worry, she thinks, is wishing to follow Artemis and remain virgin when her mother and grandfather want her to marry and became a priestess. But when the Persians invade, the gods themselves have plans for Melaina, including carrying a divine child and divining for the Greek fleet in a battle to determine the salvat...

Steps Along Hope Street relates the life of David Sheppard, famous for being the keen sportsman who gave up a career in international cricket to become a vicar. He went on to pioneer the Church of England's social work in the inner city and wound up as the Bishop of Liverpool. Sheppard's book also reflects on the enormous changes within the Church of England in the last 50 years.Sheppard recounts his middle-class childhood and his privileged education at Sherborne and Cambridge. At...

This book is about pursuing sleep. It presents all the information you need to chase sleep all the way to Slumberland. It is not about tricking yourself into going to sleep. The method is based on scientific principles and decades of research. It builds off of what we know about the way the mind works. It does not involve medication. And it doesn't take weeks of learning before you can get started. You don't have to change your lifestyle. Read this today, use the method tonight.If ...

Anyone traveling to Greece should consider taking this book with them. It contains both archaeological and mythological information on most the major and some of the minor sites throughout Greece and the western coast of Turkey. Painstakingly researched and documented, 505 footnotes.It's a catalyst for the mixture of all the components of the existential traveling experience. The author, during the ten weeks of his journey (bus, train and ferry), ruminates over powerful events in hi...

Among the 5 finalists in the Faulkner Society Novel Competition. The Escape of Bobby Ray Hammer is a second generation "Grapes of Wrath" novel in that Bobby's parents migrated to California during the 1930s, the "Dust Bowl" days. Bobby is just entering his senior year in high school and eager to graduate and go on to college to get out of his rural farming community; however, he realizes that he must resolve family problems that originated, he believes, with the death of his older brother ...

In the late 1980s, David Sheppard and Derek Worlock formed an alliance of genuine Christian unity in Liverpool, then a city of strong sectarian loyalties and bitter deprivation. Their partnership was tried and tested in the furnace of an inner city close to bankruptcy. Working together as Anglican and Roman Catholic, the two bishops found a void at the heart of the city in crisis, a gap that had to be bridged by hands reaching not only across the torn community but also upwards to God. The...