Fallen Words

A NEW COLECTION OF STORIES FROM THE FOREFATHER OF THE JAPANESE LITERARY COMICS MOVEMENT In Fallen Words, Yoshihiro Tatsumi takes up the oral tradition of rakugo and breathes new life into it by shifting the format from spoken word to manga. Each of the eight stories in the collection is lifted from the Edo-era Japanese storytelling form. As Tatsumi notes in the afterword, the world of rakugo, filled with mystery, emotion, revenge, hope, and, of course, love, overlaps perfectly with the world of Gekiga that he has spent the better part of his life developing. These slice-of-life stories resonate with modern readers thanks to their comedic elements and familiarity with human idiosyncrasies. In one, a father finds his son too bookish and arranges for two workers to take the young man to a brothel on the pretext of visiting a new shrine. In another particularly beloved rakugo tale, a married man falls in love with a prostitute. When his wife finds out, she is enraged and sets a curse on the other woman. The prostitute responds by cursing the wife, and the two escalate in a spiral of voodoo doll cursing. Soon both are dead, but even death can't extinguish their jealousy. Tatsumi's love of wordplay shines through in the telling of these whimsical stories, and yet he still offers timeless insight into human nature.

Praised as a “revelatory” book by The Wall Street Journal, this is the last and most personal work of Pulitzer Prize–winning author and historian Will Durant, discovered thirty-two years after his death. The culmination of Will Durant’s sixty-plus years spent researching the philosophies, religions, arts, sciences, and civilizations from across the world, Fallen Leaves is the distilled wisdom of one of the world’s greatest minds, a man with a renowned talent for rendering the insights of the past accessible. Over the course of Durant’s career he received numerous letters from “curious readers who have challenged me to speak my mind on the timeless questions of human life and fate.” With Fallen Leaves, his final book, he at last accepted their challenge. In twenty-two short chapters, Durant addresses everything from youth and old age to religion, morals, sex, war, politics, and art. Fallen Leaves is “a thought-provoking array of opinions” (Publishers Weekly), offering elegant prose, deep insights, and Durant’s revealing conclusions about the perennial problems and greatest joys we face as a species. In Durant’s singular voice, here is a message of insight for everyone who has ever sought meaning in life or the counsel of a learned friend while navigating life’s journey.

A truly original novel packed with humour, magic and mystery. A classic children?s adventure story. `He came on the shortest day of the year between the storms that carried the sea twenty miles inland and the great snow of that winter. But before his arrival there was an equally mysterious disappearance...? The first in a trilogy, THE MASTER OF THE FALLEN CHAIRS sees thirteen-year-old orphan Kim living with his elusive guardian, surly tutor and various servants in a grand but dilapidated old house called Skirl. When one of the servant girls goes missing, a dark cloud descends on the house. The arrival of a stranger in the dead of night plunges everything further into mystery, and introduces a bit of magic to the mix too... `He came on the shortest day of the year between the storms that carried the sea twenty miles inland and the great snow of that winter. But before his arrival there was an equally mysterious disappearance...? The first in a trilogy, THE MASTER OF THE FALLEN CHAIRS sees thirteen-year-old orphan Kim living with his elusive guardian, surly tutor and various servants in a grand but dilapidated old house called Skirl. When one of the servant girls goes missing, a dark cloud descends on the house. The arrival of a stranger in the dead of night plunges everything further into mystery, and introduces a bit of magic to the mix too...

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

1188 sermon suggestions -- One from every chapter in the Bible. Morgan's expositions sparkle as they enhance Bible texts from every chapter in the Bible. Concise and delightfully free of redundancy, these selections reveal the master expositor's keen, analytical insight into God's Word. To encourage preachers and Bible teachers to develop their own sermon and lesson themes creatively, the author mentions that these are sermon suggestions -- not sermons or sermon outlines. He intentionally left the notes untitled, "preferring to let the text of Scripture be their only caption." These penetrating truths, firmly anchored in Scripture, are best described by G. Campbell Morgan himself: On every page of...the "God-breathed Writings" there are many thoughts which stretch out like long, clear arms of light across the darkness, discovering things which otherwise were hidden, and often illuminating wider areas than those of the immediate context. They are searchlights. From the multitude of these, I have selected one in each chapter of the Bible. Perhaps the work will also serve to illustrate a method of showing how focal points of radiating light gather their radiance from the context.

Fate of the Fallen is the start of a brand new adventure from New York Times bestselling author Kel Kade Not all stories have happy endings. Everyone loves Mathias. Naturally, when he discovers it’s his destiny to save the world, he dives in head first, pulling his best friend Aaslo along for the ride. However, saving the world isn’t as easy, or exciting, as it sounds in the stories. The going gets rough and folks start to believe their best chance for survival is to surrender to the forces of evil, which isn’t how the prophecy goes. At all. As the list of allies grows thin, and the friends find themselves staring death in the face they must decide how to become the heroes they were destined to be or, failing that, how to survive. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

This book marries the several elements: a given text (1 Samuel), a focal character (King Saul), a spacious and creative theorist (Mikhail Bakhtin), a historical context (the collapse of monarchic Israel and the moment for return. The dilemma for the exile community is to return with royal leadership or without it); a reading challenge is: can a character be a cipher for a corporate experience (Saul represent the whole monarchic experience)? The author argues that the narrative of 1 Samuel may be read as a riddle propounding the complex story of Israel/Judah's experience with kings as an instruction for those pondering leadership choices in the sixth century. The work is an extended reflection on what went wrong with kings and why new leadership must be attempted. The extended riddle of Saul works to show how the life of the king is fundamentally destructive, not because any is malicious but because of many factors of weakness and inadequacy that will be familiar to readers.