Under Your Nose: The Pleasures and Politics of Smell

Dr Ally Louks

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Murder in the Mews

Agatha Christie

Are you ready for a question about each of the stories? How did a woman holding a pistol in her right hand manage to shoot herself in the left temple? What was the link between a ghost sighting and the disappearance of top secret military plans? How did the bullet that killed Sir Gervase shatter a mirror in another part of the room? And who destroyed the "eternal triangle" of love involving renowned beauty, Valentine Chantry? Hercule Poirot is faced with four mystifying cases: 1. Murder in the Mews, 2. The Incredible Theft, 3. Dead Man's Mirror, and 4. Triangle at Rhodes. Each of them is a miniature classic of characterization, incident, and suspense.

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The Song of Stork and Dromedary: A Novel

Anjet Daanje

A thrilling literary puzzle that explores the haunted life and mysterious afterlifes of a writer and her work. Who was Eliza May Drayden? Is she just the quiet, intensely private person she seems to all the world in her little village of Bridge Fowling in the shadow of the West Yorkshire hills—or is there more to her than meets the eye? It is only after her death that Haeger Mass, her one book—a dark and cryptic novel—assumes a life of its own. In each new chapter of this literary treasure hunt that spans almost three hundred years, we see the conundrum through the eyes of a new generation of characters, each providing competing and interlocking versions of the life—and cursed vision—of this Emily Brontë–like figure. Scholars immerse themselves in the mystery of her life and are led to ruin; the curse that hangs over her comes to visit a young couple; a mysterious diary emerges with her strange and indecipherable poetry and sketches. Elements and symbols repeat in relentless and varying combinations from one story to the next as the years pass: as if the truth at the center of her work is fighting to break free. The Song of Stork and Dromedary is a philosophical puzzle that unfolds with the exuberance of a historical romp, ingeniously pivoting from Gothic horror to quantum mechanics to memento mori. In this thrilling, recursive tale, Anjet Daanje gets to the frantically beating heart of why we tell stories, and how we try to create meaning with them in a world filled with brutality and death. Daanje has crafted a conundrum that is as diabolical as it is heartbreaking. When we finally open the box that contains the secret behind the life of Eliza May Drayden, what will we see there—a vision of heaven or a vision of hell?

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Bloodchild and Other Stories

Octavia E. Butler

A perfect introduction for new readers and a must-have for avid fans, this New York Times Notable Book includes "Bloodchild," winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula awards and "Speech Sounds," winner of the Hugo Award. Appearing in print for the first time, "Amnesty" is a story of a woman named Noah who works to negotiate the tense and co-dependent relationship between humans and a species of invaders. Also new to this collection is "The Book of Martha" which asks: What would you do if God granted you the ability—and responsibility—to save humanity from itself?Like all of Octavia Butler’s best writing, these works of the imagination are parables of the contemporary world. She proves constant in her vigil, an unblinking pessimist hoping to be proven wrong, and one of contemporary literature’s strongest voices. Bloodchild The evening and the morning and the night Near of kin Speech sounds Crossover Positive obsession Furor scribendi Amnesty The Book of Martha

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East of Eden

John Steinbeck

In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness. First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.

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Public Access Afterworld

Jane Schoenbrun

David Sawyer and Erin Morrison, two lonely, TV-obsessed suburban teenagers, watch the 2009 analog to digital transition in Erin's family basement. Beneath the static that follows the analog switch-off, Erin catches a glimpse of a mysterious universe, the so-called Public Access Afterworld. Soon after that, she vanishes - breaking David's heart and changing his life forever.Fourteen years later, Bethany Peters slaves away at megacorporation GlobalVill's bleak Austin campus. A trans woman and a content moderator working the night shift, she is confronted by an endless stream of the most hideous videos humanity has to offer. But gradually a pattern emerges from the ocean of digital violence in the form of a young streamer, JulesPAA, who slices into their arms in each video before calling out the same Public Access Afterworld.When Bethany ignores the guidance of her corporate overseers and sets out to rescue Jules, she begins an epic journey that sweeps from rural Texas to the heart of American darkness at 1940s Los Alamos - all the way back to that basement where David and Erin had first encountered a world at the edges of reality itself.Can Bethany travel beyond the gates of Public Access Afterworld? And will they ever be able to make it back?

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