The Beetle is the celebrated Victorian horror story by Richard Marsh, originally published in serialized form in 1897, which at first enjoyed even greater popularity than Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published in the same year.The Beetle tells the tale of an evil Ancient Egyptian spirit seeking revenge on an up-and-coming British politician, Paul Lessingham. The shape-shifting creature that pursues Lessingham is possessed of hypnotic powers and takes different ...

As plants see it, humans are not the masters of the Earth but only one of its most unpleasant and irksome residents. They have been on the planet for only about 300,000 years ago (nothing compared to the three billon years of plant evolution), yet have changed the conditions of the planet so drastically as to make it a dangerous place for their own survival. It's time for the plants to offer advice.In this playful, philosophical manifesto, Stefano Mancuso, expert on plant intellige...

Awakening to China's Rise provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of how Europe's major powers have responded to the re-emergence of China as a great power in world politics since the end of the Cold War. To do so, it puts forward a unique cross-regional comparison of how the major European powers (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) have confronted Chinese assertiveness both in the Asia-Pacific and in Europe. Firstly, it analyzes their response to China's increasing...

Nuclear physics began long before the identification of fundamental particles, with J. J. Thomson's discovery of the electron at the end of the nineteenth century, which implied the existence of a positive charge in the atom to make it neutral. In this Very Short Introduction, Frank Close gives an account of how this area of physics has progressed, including the recognition of how heavy nuclei are built up in the cores of stars and in supernovae, the identification of quarks and g...

Mitochondria are tiny structures located inside our cells that carry out the essential task of producing energy for the cell. They are found in all complex living things, and in that sense, they are fundamental for driving complex life on the planet. But there is much more to them than that.Mitochondria have their own DNA, with their own small collection of genes, separate from those in the cell nucleus. It is thought that they were once bacteria living independent lives. Their ens...

The Sumerians, the pragmatic and gifted people who preceded the Semites in the land first known as Sumer and later as Babylonia, created what was probably the first high civilization in the history of man, spanning the fifth to the second millenniums BC. This book is an unparalleled compendium of what is known about them.Professor Kramer communicates his enthusiasm for his subject as he outlines the history of the Sumerian civilization and describes their cities, religion, literatu...

The crew of H. M. Submarine Rugged are on a high-stakes, high seas mission.Mediterranean, 1942. Britain is at war with Germany.Responsible for protecting British convoys in the Channel in a small Chaser, young Peter Sinclair, R. N., is thrown head-first into the horrors of war.Sent to serve in H. M. Submarine Rugged, defending convoys delivering food and supplies to the besieged island of ...

A human history of one of the planet's most iconic lakes, and the civilizations that surrounded its shoresThe Dead Sea is a place of many contradictions. Hot springs around the lake are famed for their healing properties, though its own waters are deadly to most lifeforms—even so, civilizations have built ancient cities and hilltop fortresses around its shores for centuries. The protagonists in its story are not only Jews and Arabs, but also Greeks, Nabataeans, Rom...

It was a time of revolution. The Roman Revolution describes the little known "crisis of the third century", and how it led to a revolutionary new Roman Empire. Long before the more famous collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, in the years between AD 235-275, barbarian invasions, civil war, and plague devastated ancient Rome. Out of this ordeal came new leaders, new government, new armies, and a new vision of what it was to be Roman. Best remem...

A classic and innovative work of feminist science-fiction and a definitive novel in the slipstream genre.In Ice, Anna Kavan's haunting and surreal novel, the narrator and a man known as 'the warden' search for an elusive girl in a frozen, seemingly post-nuclear, apocalyptic landscape. The country has been invaded and is being governed by a secret organisation. There is destruction everywhere; great walls of ice overrun the world. Together with the narrator, the reader is swept into...

Like its predecessor, Death on the Pearl River**, this thrilling murder mystery promises to "deliver a multitude of pleasures!" (**The New York Times).Ben Canaan is riding high on the recent string of cases he has solved successfully on the payroll of Her Majesty's Executive. Then a notorious crime boss is found murdered on the city streets, the latest in a series of brutal killings targeting the most powerful men...

In a magisterial work, Jaan Puhvel unravels the prehistoric Indo-European origins of the traditions of India and Iran, Greece and Rome, of the Celts, Germans, Balts, and Slavs. Utilizing the methodologies of historical linguistics and archaeology, he reconstructs a shared religious, mythological, and cultural heritage. Separate chapters on individual traditions as well as on recurrent themes—god and warrior, king and virgin, fire and water—give life to Comparative Mythology as bot...