The Comfort Of Kin

In The Comfort of Kin Monika Schreiber presents a study of the social and religious life of the Samaritans, a minority in modern Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Utilizing approaches ranging from anthropological theory and method to comparative history and religion, she approaches this community from diverse empirical and epistemic angles. Her account of the Samaritans, usually studied for their Bible and their role in ancient history, is enriched by a thorough treatment of the Samaritan family, a powerful institution rooted in notions of patrilineal descent and perpetuated in part by consanguineous marriage (which differs from incest in degree rather than in kind). Schreiber also discusses how the tiny community is affected by its demographic predicament, intermarriage, and identity issues.

In The Comfort of Kin Monika Schreiber presents a study of the social and religious life of the modern Samaritans, with an emphasis on the kinship system and marriage patterns of the community.

The story of three generations of a Cape Breton family, beginning in Glace Bay in the 1930s and ending in Round Island in 2011.

At the end of life, our comfort lies mainly in relationships. In this book, Daniel Miller, one of the world's leading anthropologists, examines the social worlds of people suffering from terminal or long-term illness. Threading together a series of personal stories, based on interviews conducted with patients of an English hospice, Miller draws out the implications of these narratives for our understanding of community, friendship, and kinship, but also loneliness and isolation. This is a book about people's lives, not their deaths: about the hospice patients rather than the hospice. It focuses on the comfort given by friends, carers and relatives through both face-to-face relations and, increasingly, online communication. Miller asks whether the loneliness and isolation he uncovers is the result of a decline of English patterns of socialising, or their continuation. This moving and deeply humane book combines warmth and sharp observation with anthropological insight and practical suggestions for the use of media by the hospice. It will be of interest not only to students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, social policy and media and cultural studies, but also to healthcare professionals and, indeed, to anyone who would like to know more about the role of relationships in the final stage of our lives.

A novel by the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of THE TURTLE BOY. On a scorching hot summer day in Elkwood, Alabama, Claire Lambert staggers naked, wounded, and half-blind away from the scene of an atrocity. She is the sole survivor of a nightmare that claimed her friends, and even as she prays for rescue, the killers -- a family of cannibalistic lunatics -- are closing in. A soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder returns from Iraq to the news that his brother is among the murdered in Elkwood. In snowbound Detroit, a waitress trapped in an abusive relationship gets an unexpected visit that will lead to bloodshed and send her back on the road to a past she has spent years trying to outrun. And Claire, the only survivor of the Elkwood Massacre, haunted by her dead friends, dreams of vengeance... a dream which will be realized as grief and rage turn good people into cold-blooded murderers and force alliances among strangers. It's time to return to Elkwood. In the spirit of such iconic horror classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance, Kin begins at the end and studies the possible aftermath for the survivors of such traumas upon their return to the real world -- the guilt, the grief, the thirst for revenge -- and sets them on an unthinkable journey... back into the heart of darkness.

This text argues for a new understanding of the relation between nineteenth-century realist literary form and the socially dense environments of modernity.

A major backlist sleeper! 130,000 sold-to-date! A feminist sci-fi novel. The kin of Ata live only for "the dream". Into their midst comes a desperate man who is first subdued and then led on a spiritual journey that, sooner or later, all of us make.

“Personable characters and superb storytelling make this an excellent choice. . . . Essential for Pern fans of all ages.”—Library Journal (starred review) The son of a miner, Kindan has no expectations for any other life. He loves his lessons with the camp’s harper, but music isn’t part of a miner’s future. He also enjoys helping out with the camp’s watch-wher— a creature distantly related to dragons and uniquely suited to work in dark, cold spaces—but even that important job can’t promise a future above the ground. Then disaster strikes. In one terrible instant, Kindan loses his family and the camp loses its watch-wher. It will take a new friendship and a new responsibility to teach Kindan that even a seemingly impossible dream is never out of reach . . . and that light can be found in the deepest darkness. “A guaranteed pleaser [in] one of SF’s most splendid and longest-lived sagas.”—Booklist “Another delightful entry in the Pern series.”—Publishers Weekly