Dark Ages Companion

A sourcebook for Vampire: The Dark Ages offers information on new bloodlines and their mystical disciplines, the roads of the Cainites, and other details about paganism and medieval Europe necessary to enhance play of the role playing game.

Jane Eyre meets Twilight in Dark Companion, a lush and romantic YA gothic tale about an orphaned girl who attends an exclusive private school and finds herself torn between the headmistress's two sons. Orphaned at the age of six, Jane Williams has grown up in a series of foster homes, learning to survive in the shadows of life. Through hard work and determination, she manages to win a scholarship to the exclusive Birch Grove Academy. There, for the first time, Jane finds herself accepted by a group of friends. She even starts tutoring the headmistress's gorgeous son, Lucien. Things seem too good to be true. They are. The more she learns about Birch Grove's recent past, the more Jane comes to suspect that there is something sinister going on. Why did the wife of a popular teacher kill herself? What happened to the former scholarship student, whose place Jane took? Why does Lucien's brother, Jack, seem to dislike her so much? As Jane begins to piece together the answers to the puzzle, she must find out why she was brought to Birch Grove—and what she would risk to stay there.... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In this indispensable book, urban visionary Jane Jacobs argues that as agrarianism gives way to a technology-based future, we’re at risk of cultural collapse. Jacobs—renowned author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities—pinpoints five pillars of our culture that are in serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation, and government; and the self-regulation of the learned professions. The corrosion of these pillars, Jacobs argues, is linked to societal ills such as environmental crisis, racism, and the growing gulf between rich and poor. But this is a hopeful book as well as a warning. Drawing on a vast frame of reference—from fifteenth-century Chinese shipbuilding to Ireland’s cultural rebirth—Jacobs suggests how the cycles of decay can be arrested and our way of life renewed. Invigorating and accessible, Dark Age Ahead is not only the crowning achievement of Jane Jacobs’ career, but one of the most important works of our time.

A compact collection of focused introductions to and inquiries into medieval England, representing both history and literature.

Updated with the latest archaeological research new chapters on the most influential yet widely unrecognised people of the British isles, In Search of the Dark Ages illuminates the fascinating and mysterious centuries between the Romans and the Norman Conquest of 1066. In this new edition, Michael Wood vividly conjures some of the most important people in British history such as Hadrian, a Libyan refugee from the Arab conquests and arguably the most important person of African origin in British history, to Queen Boadicea, the leader of a terrible war of resistance against the Romans. Here too, warts and all, are the Saxon, Viking and Norman kings who laid the political foundations of England: Offa of Mercia, Alfred the Great, Athelstan, and William the Conqueror, whose victory at Hastings in 1066 marked the end of Anglo-Saxon England. Reflecting the latest historical, textual and archaeological research, this revised and updated edition of Michael Wood's classic book overturns preconceptions of the Dark Ages as a shadowy and brutal era, showing them to be a richly exciting and formative period in the history of Britain.

The Eucharist in the European Middle Ages was a multimedia event. First and foremost it was a drama, a pageant, a liturgy. The setting itself was impressive. Stunning artwork adorned massive buildings. Underlying and supporting the liturgy, the art and the architecture was a carefully constructed theological world of thought and belief. Popular beliefs, spilling over into the magical, celebrated that presence in several tumultuous forms. Church law regulated how far such practice might go as well as who was allowed to perform the liturgy and how and when it might be performed. This volume presents the medieval Eucharist in all its glory combining introductory essays on the liturgy, art, theology, architecture, devotion and theology. Contributors include: Celia Chazelle, Michael Driscoll, Edward Foley, Stephen Edmund Lahey, Lizette Larson-Miller, Ian Christopher Levy, Gerhard Lutz, Gary Macy, Miri Rubin, Elizabeth Saxon, Kristen Van Ausdall and Joseph Wawrykow.

An introduction to medievalism offering a balance of accessibility and sophistication, with comprehensive overviews as well as detailed case studies.