The Vermilion Riddle

"To enter Faerie's blessed demesne four secrets must be found: the land unbound by time and space opens only to the one who knows the Light, the Song, and Mortal Gate." In the sheltered town of Carmel, women do not have a future outside of a good marriage. That future is threatened when Leah Edwards' father gambles away the family's livelihood and estate. She and her sisters must hurry to find husbands. Then August Fox, a Guardian from Cariath, comes to town and purchases a supposedly haunted manor. Charged to keep the peace between mortals and Faerie, the Guardians are the stuff of legend. After he stuns her with a marriage proposal, Leah reluctantly journeys to Cariath, discovering there is more to August and the legends than she guessed. Nimrod and his Oath-breakers betrayed the Guardians, seeking to solve an ancient riddle that would unlock the Faerie realm. Not all his followers share his desire for conquest. Benedict Fox, his second-in-command, has different motives. But as he continues fulfilling Nimrod's plan, Benedict hurtles towards a choice between saving his family and settling a personal vendetta. For Leah, August, and their allies, it is a race against time to solve the ancient riddle before the Oath-breakers, and reunite the Guardians to save the mortal realm. The war is never really over, and this time, the battle lines cut through blood ties and brotherhood.

From monumental church mosaics to fresco wall-paintings, the medieval period produced some of the most impressive art in history. But how, in a world without the array of technology and access to materials that we now have, did artists produce such incredible works, often on an unbelievably large scale? In The Riddle of the Image, research scientist and art restorer Spike Bucklow discovers the actual materials and methods that lie behind the production of historical paintings. Examining the science of the tools and resources, as well as the techniques of medieval artists, Bucklow adds new layers to our understanding and appreciation of paintings in particular and medieval art more generally. He uses case studies—including The Wilton Diptych, one of the most popular paintings in the National Gallery in London and the altarpiece in front of which English monarchs were crowned for centuries—and analyses of these works, presenting previously unpublished technical details that shed new light on the mysteries of medieval artists. The first account to examine this subject in depth for a general audience, The Riddle of the Image is a beautifully illustrated look at the production of medieval paintings.

The Vermilion Pencil is a romance novel that beautifully illustrates a colorful description of Chinese rural life. Its fast-paced plot focuses on the relationship and romance of a French missionary and the gorgeous young wife of a Chinese Viceroy. This gripping story contains some unique characters that complement each other. This novel was the first work of American author and adventurer Homer Lea, and it received instant critical appreciation. After returning to his country from China, Leo wrote this famous work and originally titled it, The Ling Chee, but changed it after his publisher insisted. He later wrote a dramatized version of his novel called The Crimson Spider. It is an insightful work that incredibly portrays rural life in China from the perspective of a US volunteer.

Just south of where the Yangtse River empties into the ocean lies the Province of the Winding Stream—venerable and beautiful, with a history written back almost to that long hour when the world was yet supposed to be unmade by the hand of God—a nebulous vapour adrift in the night. This province is one vast park of alternating hills and valleys, where peaks, cascades, and woodlands intervene in a fascinating confusion; where walled cities and temples rise majestically on all sides; where canals and watercourses, alive with boats, form a silvery network among fragrant hills and tree-hid hamlets, making it altogether just such a land as the imagination conceives belonging alone to the sunlit East. This province is like an endless garden; whereever the eye reaches is seen not only a luxuriant vegetation but one that has been tended and reared by man for his uses. Patches of pink orchard blossoms alternate with grey thickets of mulberry; clumps of feathery bamboo flutter as plumes by the edges of rice fields; plane trees with their snowy blossoms alternate with orchards of pumelo, while along the lower hills, forming wide and densely shaded tracts, spread groves of silvery olive and lichee with delicate pink leaves and strawberry-like fruit. Throughout all of these hills and orchards wind rivers, brooks, and canals, over-spanned at short intervals by high curved bridges of stone. Under their arches innumerable boats glide from dawn until night. In some places the country is covered with tea plantations, and from each willow-whipped cottage rises the fragrant breath of burning tea. Here and there on hills thick with cypress and pine are seen the carved gleaming roofs of temples, while on the paths leading to them every crag and turn has its miniature pagodas and grottoes. Again, the hills in many places are covered with groves of oil-bearing camelias, whose graceful shape and dark green foliage add an indescribable charm to the landscape. But Che Kiang is not more famous for the charm of its countryside than it is for the beauty of the women, who dwell among its hills and valleys, working in the midst of their tea shrubs, rearing cocoons, spinning silk; and are no more thought of than the azaleas that brighten the hillsides or the purple lanwhui that scatters its perfume on the bosom of the careless passing winds. In the Tien Mu Mountains, toward the southwestern part of the province, these women have a peculiar hauteur and independence of their own, a vivacity and laughter, which is found nowhere else in China. It was among these mountains and forests of the Tien Mu Shan that that tireless spider, Fate, set to weaving one of its innumerable webs of invisible strands: a net fragile yet terrible. Unseen or half seen, a spirit-glint in the azure heavens, it is a barrier through which and from which the little man-fly never breaks.

Puzzling the Reader establishes the place of charms and riddles in nineteenth-century British literature by exploring the literary and political work riddles performed at cultural thresholds: courtship, initiation, death rituals, moments of greeting, and intercultural relations. Furthermore, Puzzling the Reader investigates the new narrative genre that riddles uncover by transforming traditional narrative techniques. Far from disappearing from view, the oral tradition of the riddles rises into view alongside the literary narratives of William Blake, John Keats, and Charles Dickens. The folk tradition of the riddle is imported into print media and reaches its zenith in the nineteenth century. Through analyses of riddles in weekly literature and satire magazines, parlor game books, and popular collected riddles, such as Queen Victoria's «Windsor Enigma», this volume examines the literary and political roles riddles play as they migrate into mass print culture. Three crucial texts illustrate this argument: Blake's «Jerusalem», Keats's «The Eve of St. Agnes», and Dickens's Our Mutual Friend. Each is a work of formal experimentation and each typifies the full range of word play in the period. From Blake to Keats to Dickens, nineteenth-century British literature charts a «history» of the literary riddle.

A young orphan leaves for Calcutta, full of hope, to attend university there. But, on reaching the city, he finds he has been betrayed and left penniless and homeless by Jogin-Da, the guardian whom he respected and blindly trusted. Even as he scours the streets of Calcutta for shelter and sustenance, the young man finds himself drawn to the city's glorious past, and repelled by the religious prejudices and narrowmindedness of its residents. At university, too, he comes into conflict with his peers who thoughtlessly ape Western culture and ignore the best parts of their own traditions. In a time of gathering disillusionment and disappointment, the young man finds a mentor in an ageing professor, Profulla Babu, and love -- of a sort -- with his Latin tutor, Roma. He receives a chance at redemption, too, after he befriends Sisi-Magar, a tame porpoise in a temple pond, which he must set free in the Ganges.

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