Monsters

“The ending...is so unexpected that readers will eagerly anticipate [the] third volume.”—Kirkus Reviews Cole Harper is struggling to settle into life in Wounded Sky First Nation. He may have stopped a serial killer but the trouble is far from over. A creature lurks in the shadows of Blackwood Forest, the health clinic is on lockdown by a mysterious organization, and long-held secrets threaten to bubble to the surface. Can Cole learn the truth about his father's death? Why won't Choch give him a straight answer? Where the heck is Jayne? Oh, and high school sucks.

The Blair Witch Project meets Imaginary Girls in this story of sisterhood turned toxic, imaginary monsters brought to life, and secrets that won't stay buried. Sixteen-year-old Skye is done playing the knight in shining armor for her insufferable younger sister, Deirdre. And moving across the country seems like the perfect chance to start over as someone different. In their isolated new neighborhood, Skye manages to fit in, but Deirdre withdraws from everyone, becoming fixated on the swampy woods behind their house and building monstrous sculptures out of sticks and bones. Then Deirdre disappears. And when something awful comes scratching at Skye's window in the middle of the night, claiming Skye's the only one who can save Deirdre, Skye knows she will stop at nothing to bring her sister home.

From the serpentine "Champie" of Lake Champlain to the venerable "Nessie" of Loch Ness, extraordinary-and un-explained-creatures of the deep have been reported in sightings throughout the twentieth century. Now, two of the world's leading cryptozoological investigators provide a globetrotting field guide to when, where, and what kind of mysterious aquatic beasts have gripped the public—and sometimes the scientific—imagination. Filled with comprehensive drawings, classifications, and maps, their book offers an invaluable and unusual resource for the intrepidly curious to investigate these sightings firsthand or to simply enjoy the fascinating accounts that others have given.

A clear and engaging history of how left radicalism went wrong and how it can become what it must be again. Here Be Monsters speaks to a left that has forgotten its history, its potential, and its power. Gramsci spoke of a time of monsters or morbid symptoms. In the ancient world, monsters were not enemies, but rather divine warnings, symptoms of a world out of balance. Here Be Monsters meets these monsters and listens to what they have to tell us. Interweaving personal stories with engaging histories of political thought and the meanings of monsters, Rhyd Wildermuth reveals the roots of current identity conflicts and political contradictions in feminism, anti-racist theory, Marxism, Frankfurt School theorists, and the many other leftist attempts to put the world back into balance. The left has always been the province of dreamers and visionaries, or as Ursula K. Le Guin named them, “realists of a larger reality.” Here Be Monsters is an urgent and deeply engaging narrative to help us remember that reality once more.

A leading scholar explores what it means to dehumanize others—and how and why we do it. “I wouldn’t have accepted that they were human beings. You would see an infant who’s just learning to smile, and it smiles at you, but you still kill it.” So a Hutu man explained to an incredulous researcher, when asked to recall how he felt slaughtering Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. Such statements are shocking, yet we recognize them; we hear their echoes in accounts of genocides, massacres, and pogroms throughout history. How do some people come to believe that their enemies are monsters, and therefore easy to kill? In Making Monsters David Livingstone Smith offers a poignant meditation on the philosophical and psychological roots of dehumanization. Drawing on harrowing accounts of lynchings, Smith establishes what dehumanization is and what it isn’t. When we dehumanize our enemy, we hold two incongruous beliefs at the same time: we believe our enemy is at once subhuman and fully human. To call someone a monster, then, is not merely a resort to metaphor—dehumanization really does happen in our minds. Turning to an abundance of historical examples, Smith explores the relationship between dehumanization and racism, the psychology of hierarchy, what it means to regard others as human beings, and why dehumanizing others transforms them into something so terrifying that they must be destroyed. Meticulous but highly readable, Making Monsters suggests that the process of dehumanization is deeply seated in our psychology. It is precisely because we are all human that we are vulnerable to the manipulations of those trading in the politics of demonization and violence.

The aim of this book is to explore the realm of the imaginary world of Greek mythology and present the reader with a categorization of monstrosity, referring to some of the most noted examples in each category.

Sulley is the best Scarer in all of Monstropolis. With the help of his best pal Mike, Sulley brings back the most screams to the city to be converted into energy. But when Mike begins to wonder what it would be like to be a Scarer himself, he is determined to show Sulley he can be scary, too! There's just one problem: whenever he tries to scare Sulley, Sulley ends up laughing instead! Can Mike manage to scare Sulley, or will he be the jokester monster forever?

Meet the monsters in this who’s who of the baddest of the bad! Like those supernatural beasts everyone knows and fears—the bloodsucking vampire, Count Dracula, and that eight-foot-tall mash-up of corpses, Frankenstein’s Monster. Or that scariest of mummies, Cheops, who scientists revived after 4,700 years—big mistake! Or more horrifying yet, the Horla, an invisible, havoc-wreaking creature that herds humans like cattle and feeds of their souls. Drawn from the pages of classic books and tales as old as time, this frightfully exciting collection features 25 of the creepiest creatures ever imagined, from witches and werewolves to dragons and ghosts. Every monster is brought to life in a full-size full-color portrait that captures the essence of the beast, and in lively text that recounts the monster’s spine-tingling story. With sidebars that explore the history and the genre of each sourcebook, The Big Book of Monsters is an exciting introduction to literature and language arts.