Forbidden Rain

Journey back to Oz with Dori and Emma, along with old favorites like Scraps and Polychrome, as they travel through the skies over Oz. There's a plot afoot with a dastardly villain who kidnapped Princess Dorothy in Smith's first book. It'll take Glinda, Rikk the Nome, Dori, Emma, Scraps, and many more to contend with this threat ... even a shaggy dog named "Dad!"

"This is a careful and innovative consideration of a remarkable and enduring Native American ritual. Zogry reflects deeply, critically, and sensibly on an amazing array of issues of theoretical interest to the study of religion, culture, game, ritual, secrecy, colonial contact, and even the impact of tourism on culture. An important and informative work."---SAM D. GILL, University of Colorado at Boulder "Zogry presents a very well researched, ethically grounded, and theoretically informed study of Anetso, the Cherokee ball game, which will instruct students of Native American religions, Cherokee traditions and history, and the anthropology of sport. A valuable book that is based on impressive archival and ethnographic work."---Michael d. Mcnally, Carleton College Anetso, a centuries-old Cherokee ball game still played today, is a vigorous, sometimes violent activity that rewards speed, strength, and agility. At the same time, it is the focus of several linked ritual activities. Is it a sport? Is it a religious ritual? Could it possibly be both? Why has it lasted so long, surviving through centuries of upheaval and change? Based on his work in the field and in the archives, Michael J. Zogry argues that members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation continue to perform selected aspects of their cultural identity by engaging in anetso, itself the hub of an extended ceremonial complex, or cycle. Historically, this complex has featured virtually every activity that Cherokee people and non-Cherokee observers have identified as elemental to Cherokee "religion" or "ritual," However, interpreted as "game" within a broader framing of "religion," anetso simultaneously resists and problematizes such classifications. A precursor to lacrosse, anetso appears in all manner of Cherokee cultural narratives and has figured prominently in the written accounts of non-Cherokee observers for almost three hundred years. The anetso ceremonial complex incorporates a variety of activities that, taken together, complicate standard scholarly distinctions such as game versus ritual, public display versus private performance, and tradition versus innovation. Thus examination of this Cherokee bail game and the ceremonial complex that it anchors provides a striking opportunity for a rethinking of the understanding of ritual and performance as well as their relationship to cultural identity. Zogry draws on extensive cultural consultation with members of the Cherokee community in western North Carolina, undertaken with the approval of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation Tribal Council, as well as thorough archival research, to offer a sharp reappraisal of scholarly discourse on the Cherokee religious system, with particular focus on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation.

Fates and Furies meets Melancholia in this ominous and absorbing debut novel about marriage and motherhood in a time of ecological collapse, as mothers around the world begin to mysteriously vanish from their homes Ada—a woman from Montreal living reluctantly in Michigan—vanishes from her bed one night while her husband Danny is asleep beside her, her young son, Gilles, in the next room. Desperate to locate Ada before Gilles understands what has happened, Danny begins a search. But the feds are already involved: across the country and around the world, mothers are vanishing from their homes. Where did Ada go? What has she gone through? And how does the mystery relate to the forest that she seemed magnetically drawn to? Confronting the role of motherhood and the meaning of home in the wreckage of capitalism and climate change, The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman is that rare, dazzling debut that is both thrilling and profound. It is a mystery, a play on myths of metamorphosis, and above all, a story of love—between husband and wife, mother and child—deeply troubled by the future we face.

In this book, D. Z. Zhong establishes a methodological principle for cross-cultural research, called anthropological fideism. While anthropologists take for granted that natives don't really believe the unintelligible or inexplicable things they say, and what they say should express a deeper social meaning, Zhong contends that if we have a translation manual that can interpret a foreign language, and if natives are asserting honestly, then what natives say still express natives' belief, no matter how absurd it seems. His anthropological fideism entails that in fact we can, and indeed we should, happily live with others' differences while taking them literal.

A Blushing Bay Prequel Novella After a rough year, Jillian Maready is overdue for a relaxing weekend getaway. Where better to find that than Blushing Bay, North Carolina where her family vacationed growing up? When she sets sail on her own, however, she ends up stranded on a deserted island in the middle of one of the biggest storms of the summer—and in the arms of her sexy childhood crush. As part of the Coast Guard Reserve, Gabe Sawyer is used to search and rescues. After learning that his sister’s best friend is in trouble, he doesn’t hesitate to brave the storm to find her. With the raging seas too volatile to navigate back, Gabe is in over his head when he and Jillian must spend one hot summer night surviving the storm together—and giving in to their sizzling attraction. But what happens when the sun comes back out?