'A uniquely companionable - and, yes, neglected - round-midnight voice, smoky but sharp-edged, knowing but knowledgeable, world-weary but worldly-wise as it muses on love, war, politics, music and ideas. Direct in its imagery, dryly aphoristic in its humour, and possessing a terrific gift for metaphor.' - Peter Goldsworthy

'That night I didn't sleep a wink. It wasn't the bedbugs that kept me awake, it was Europe, the horror and misery, which penetrated it through and through.' Henry Miller's Nexus was censored fifty years ago, while Miller and his publishers fought for freedom of speech. Nexus II was never published, and looks at his first trip to Paris and Europe in 1928, a world on the edge of the great depression. Paris 1928 collates these unpublished memoirs as Henry Miller wished, together with the cens...

The history of women in medieval Wales before the English conquest of 1282 is one largely shrouded in mystery. This misfortune touches even the most well-known royal woman of the time, Joan of England (d. 1237), the wife of Llywelyn the Great of Gwynedd, illegitimate daughter of King John and half-sister to Henry III. With evidence of her hand in thwarting a full scale English invasion of Wales to a notorious scandal that ended with the public execution of her supposed lover by her husband...

The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation by Upton Sinclair is a scathing critique of organized religion as an institution entangled with wealth, power, and class oppression. Sinclair argues that religious establishments often serve the interests of the rich, legitimizing social inequality and discouraging reform. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, he exposes financial corruption, dogma, and the exploitation of faith for profit. From mainstream denomination...

Now a CBS All Access series: “A riveting tale of rocketry, the occult, and boom-and-bust 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles” (Booklist).The Los Angeles Times headline screamed: ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION. The man known as Jack Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform a derided sci-fi plotline into actuality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a de...

Explore the grizzly tale of Charleston's most infamous serial killers from the beginning of their reign of horror till their eventual incarceration and execution.In 1819, a young man outwitted death at the hands of John and Lavinia Fisher and sparked the hunt for Charleston's most notorious serial killers. Former homicide investigator Bruce Orr follows the story of the Fishers, from the initial police raid on their Six Mile Inn with its reportedly grisly cellar to ...