Monsters under Glass PDF Download

Author: Jane Desmarais
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780239750
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Monsters under Glass explores our enduring fascination with hothouses and exotic blooms, from their rise in ancient times, through the Victorian vogue for plant collecting, to the vegetable monsters of twentieth-century science fiction and the movies, comics, and video games of the present day. Our interest in hothouses can be traced back to the Roman emperor Tiberius, but it was only in the early nineteenth century that a boom in exotic plant collecting and new glasshouse technologies stimulated the imagination of novelists, poets, and artists, and the hothouse entered the creative language in a highly charged way. Decadent writers in England and Europe—including Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde—transformed the hothouse from a functional object to a powerful metaphor of metropolitan life, sexuality, and being replete with a dark underside of decay and death; and of consciousness itself, nurtured and dissected under glass. In a study as wide-ranging, vivid, and beautiful as our beloved exotic blooms themselves, Jane Desmarais charts the history and influence of these humid, tropical worlds and their creations, providing a steamy window onto our recent past.

Author: David Drake
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 1429911743
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
The Fortress of Glass by David Drake is the first in the Crown of the Isles trilogy, which will conclude the epic Lord of the Isles series. A true trilogy, the action extends over the whole three-book arc. The Fortress of Glass begins the story of how the new kingdom of the Isles is finally brought into being by the group of heroes and heroines who have been central to all the books in the series. The group includes Prince Garric, heir to the throne of the Isles, his consort Liane, his sister Sharina, her herculean sweetheart Cashel, his sister Ilna, with her adopted child Merota and piratical Chalcus. On giant triremes filled with soldiers and diplomats, they journey to the small kingdoms of the Isles to confirm the succession of Garric and to subdue, if necessary, any local rulers too fond of their own kingship to pledge fealty to Garric. All this is being done in a time when the powers of magic in the Isles have flooded to a thousand-year peak, and even local magicians can perform powerful spells normally beyond their control. Fantastic forces from all angles try to keep them apart and unable to continue the reunification of the Isles. So separately and together, they must fight their way back to the same time and place to combat the mysterious and supernatural menace of The Green Woman in her Fortress of Glass. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Author: Denise Vega
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0553496557
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 41

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Book Description
For fans of How to Babysit a Grandpa comes a tongue-in-cheek story that is a step-by-step manual for putting your monster to bed. If you have a monster that won’t go to bed, don’t bother asking your parents to help. They know a lot about putting kids to bed, but nothing about putting monsters to bed. It’s not their fault; they’re just not good at it. Read this book instead. It will tell you what to feed your monster before bed (it’s not warm milk), and what to sing to your monster (it’s not a soothing lullaby), and what to read to your monster to send him off to dreamland in no time (the scarier, the better). Just make sure you don’t get too good at putting monsters to bed—or you might have a BIG problem on your hands! Praise for Zachariah OHora: “The text is pitch-perfect, and the art is its match.” —Chicago Tribune (Wolfie the Bunny) “Picture books with hip, quirky illustrations that are not just funny but also have plenty of heart are hard to find. The stylish My Cousin Momo by Zachariah OHora has it all.” —The Boston Globe (My Cousin Momo) [set star] “OHora’s acrylic paintings are the heart of this tale. They clearly show everyone’s feelings . . . and there are brilliant bits of humor and whimsy.” —School Library Journal, starred review (Wolfie the Bunny) “OHora could paint stones in the street and make them funny.” —Publishers Weekly (My Cousin Momo)

Author: Jay Kirk
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 9780312610739
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this epic account of an extraordinary life lived during remarkable times, Jay Kirk follows the adventures of legendary explorer and taxidermist Carl Akeley, who revolutionized taxidermy and environmental conservation and created the famed African Hall at New York's Museum of Natural History. Akeley risked death time and again in the jungles of Africa as he stalked animals for his dioramas and hobnobbed with outsized personalities of the era, such as Theodore Roosevelt and P. T. Barnum. Kingdom Under Glass is "a rollicking biography...an epic adventure...[and] a beguiling novelistic portrait of a man and an era straining to hear the call of the wild" (Publishers Weekly).

Author: Sarah J. Maas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1619630664
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
The heir of ash and fire bows to no one. A new threat rises in the third book in the #1 bestselling Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. Celaena Sardothien has survived deadly contests and shattering heartbreak, but now she must travel to a new land to confront her darkest truth. That truth could change her life-and her future-forever. Meanwhile, monstrous forces are gathering on the horizon, intent on enslaving her world. To defeat them, Celaena will need the strength not only to fight the evil that is about to be unleashed but also to harness her inner demons. If she is to win this battle, she must find the courage to face her destiny-and burn brighter than ever before. The third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass series continues Celaena's epic journey from woman to warrior.

Author: Andrea K Höst
Publisher: Andrea K Hösth
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Creatures from the Eferum are a world-wide problem: creeping through tears in the fabric of space, they feast on every unprotected human they can find. Tyrland has a solution in the Kellian: faster and stronger than humans, they are Tyrland's clawed, shadowy monster hunters. But no matter how faithfully they serve, or how true their sworn word, they are too different, too separate, to ever be entirely trusted. Rennyn Claire is a complication. Secretive and obscenely powerful, she knows entirely too much about a massive new threat to Tyrland's safety. Worst of all, she is linked to a past that the Kellian would rather forget. All three of these things – monsters, Kellian, and an entirely overpowered mage – are about to land in Kendall Stockton's lap. The last thing Kendall wants is to try to play conscience to someone who can swat her like a bug. But innocent lives are at stake, and no-one else seems willing to ask if what is necessary is the right thing to do. And who, exactly, is the monster? Keywords: fantasy, high fantasy, fantasy romance, epic fantasy, australian author

Author: Richard E. Gropp
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0345535642
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
One of the most hauntingly original dark fantasy debuts in years—perfect for fans of Lost and Mark Danielewski’s cult classic, House of Leaves. Something has happened in Spokane. The military has evacuated the city and locked it down. Even so, disturbing rumors and images seep out, finding their way onto the Internet, spreading curiosity, skepticism, and panic. For what they show is—or should be—impossible: strange creatures that cannot exist, sudden disappearances that violate the laws of physics, human bodies fused with inanimate objects, trapped yet still half alive. . . . Dean Walker, an aspiring photographer, sneaks into the quarantined city in search of fame. What he finds will change him in unimaginable ways. Hooking up with a group of outcasts led by a beautiful young woman named Taylor, Dean embarks on a journey into the heart of a mystery whose philosophical implications are as terrifying as its physical manifestations. Even as he falls in love with Taylor—a woman as damaged and seductive as the city itself—his already tenuous hold on reality starts to come loose. Or perhaps it is Spokane’s grip on the world that is coming undone. Now, caught up in a web of interlacing secrets and betrayals, Dean, Taylor, and their friends must make their way through this ever-shifting maze of a city, a city that is actively hunting them down, herding them toward a shocking destiny.

Author: Dan Jolley
Publisher: Graphic Universe ™
ISBN: 1467700460
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Staci Glass feels cursed-whenever there's a crisis, she's stuck in the middle. Now her best friend, Faith, has a new hobby, and against her better judgment, Staci conjures up the courage to go along. They join a trio of wannabe witches for a magical ceremony in an Incan history exhibit. Their chanting is loud enough to raise the dead, it seems. Why else would a shriveled-up mummy go missing-and a mysterious Incan prince suddenly appear? Prince Pachacutec-or "Chuck"-is a man with a past. He died tragically five hundred years ago, but that's all ancient history as far as Staci is concerned. He is everything she could want-kind, charming, and drop-dead gorgeous. But the witches aren't willing to live and let live. Will Staci fight for Chuck? Or do the witches have a point when they say reanimated corpses make bad boyfriends?

Author: Django Wexler
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101604298
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
An action-packed middle-grade fantasy with classic writing, a resourceful heroine, a host of magical creatures, and no shortage of narrow escapes—for fans of Story Thieves, Inkheart, Coraline, and Harry Potter. For Alice, danger threatens from inside the library as well as out. Having figured out the role her master and uncle, Geryon, played in her father's disappearance, Alice turns to Ending—the mysterious, magical giant feline and guardian of Geryon's library—for a spell to incapacitate Geryon. But, like all cats, Ending is adept at keeping secrets and Alice doesn't know the whole story. Once she traps Geryon with Ending's spell, there's no one to stop the other Readers from sending their apprentices to pillage Geryon's library. As Alice prepares to face an impending attack from the combined might of the Readers, she gathers what forces she can—the apprentices she once thought might be her friends, the magical creatures imprisoned in Geryon's library—not knowing who, if anyone, she can trust.

Author: Scala Arts Publishers
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781785510434
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
Delicate jellyfish and anemones, octopus, tentacled squid, and bizarre-looking soft-bodied sea creatures were meticulously recreated in glass by father and son artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka in the late nineteenth century. Renowned for their beauty and exacting detail, the Blaschka invertebrate models were commissioned by universities and museums throughout the world as teaching models for students of natural science and marine life. Illustrated here for the first time with breathtaking new photography are 60 of the most exquisite models from the exceptional collection of Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. Together with Harvard's famous Glass Flowers, a new exhibit of these restored glass animals now comprises the largest Blaschka collection on display in the world. Bursting with intricate details and stunning photography, this elegantly designed book will be a must for all those interested in marine biology, the delicate art of glass craftsmanship, the history of science, and the quiet beauty of the natural world."