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      • Trusted Partner
        Teaching, Language & Reference
        October 2023

        Crafting crime fiction

        by Henry Sutton

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2023

        Border images, border narratives

        The political aesthetics of boundaries and crossings

        by Johan Schimanski, Jopi Nyman

        This interdisciplinary volume explores the role of images and narratives in different borderscapes. Written by experienced scholars in the field, Border images, border narratives provides fresh insight into how borders, borderscapes, and migration are imagined and narrated in public and private spheres. Offering new ways to approach the political aesthetics of the border and its ambiguities, this volume makes a valuable contribution to the methodological renewal of border studies and presents ways of discussing cultural representations of borders and related processes. Influenced by the thinking of philosopher Jacques Rancière, this timely volume argues that narrated and mediated images of borders and borderscapes are central to the political process, as they contribute to the public negotiation of borders and address issues such as the in/visiblity of migrants and the formation of alternative borderscapes. The contributions analyse narratives and images in literary texts, political and popular imagery, surveillance data, border art, and documentaries, as well as problems related to borderland identities, migration, and trauma. The case studies provide a highly comparative range of geographical contexts ranging from Northern Europe and Britain, via Mediterranean and Mexican-USA borderlands, to Chinese borderlands from the perspectives of critical theory, literary studies, social anthropology, media studies, and political geography.

      • Trusted Partner
        Crime & mystery
        2013

        Women who Kill

        by Sylvia Arvizu

        The author spent 15 years in prison. She interviewed most of her inmates about the crimes for which they were imprisoned for, selected the best stories, and narrated them as brilliant true crime stories told during their everyday life of imprisonment. At the same time, she shows how commiting a crime was the only way to escape from an oppresing living conditions. Every story dives into the human condition and its social restrains, in magnificent story-telling techniques not exent of a sour sense of humour.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2012

        Gender, crime and empire

        convicts, settlers and the state in early colonial Australia

        by Kirsty Reid, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie, Martin Hargreaves

        Between 1803 and 1853, some 80,000 convicts were transported to Van Diemen's Land. Revising established models of the colonies, which tend to depict convict women as a peculiarly oppressed group, Gender, crime and empire argues that convict men and women in fact shared much in common. Placing men and women, ideas about masculinity, femininity, sexuality and the body, in comparative perspective, this book argues that historians must take fuller account of class to understand the relationships between gender and power. The book explores the ways in which ideas about fatherhood and household order initially informed the state's model of order, and the reasons why this foundered. It considers the shifting nature of state policies towards courtship, relationships and attempts at family formation which subsequently became matters of class conflict. It goes on to explore the ways in which ideas about gender and family informed liberal and humanitarian critiques of the colonies from the 1830s and 1840s and colonial demands for abolition and self-government. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Gender, crime and empire

        Convicts, settlers and the state in early colonial Australia

        by Kirsty Reid, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie, Martin Hargreaves

        Between 1803 and 1853, some 80,000 convicts were transported to Van Diemen's Land. Revising established models of the colonies, which tend to depict convict women as a peculiarly oppressed group, Gender, crime and empire argues that convict men and women in fact shared much in common. Placing men and women, ideas about masculinity, femininity, sexuality and the body, in comparative perspective, this book argues that historians must take fuller account of class to understand the relationships between gender and power. The book explores the ways in which ideas about fatherhood and household order initially informed the state's model of order, and the reasons why this foundered. It considers the shifting nature of state policies towards courtship, relationships and attempts at family formation which subsequently became matters of class conflict. It goes on to explore the ways in which ideas about gender and family informed liberal and humanitarian critiques of the colonies from the 1830s and 1840s and colonial demands for abolition and self-government.

      • Trusted Partner
        Fiction
        2022

        The End of the Desert

        by Said Khatibi

        On a nice fall day of 1988, Zakiya Zaghwani was found lying dead at the edge of the desert, giving way to a quest to discover the circumstances surrounding her death. While looking for whoever was involved in the death of the young singer, nearby residents discover bit by bit their involvement in many things other than the crime itself. ///The story takes place in a town near the desert. And as with Khatibi’s previous novels, this one is also marked by a tight plot, revolving around the murder of a singer who works in a hotel. This sets off a series of complex investigations that defy easy conclusions and invite doubt about the involvement of more than one character. /// Through the narrators of the novel, who also happen to be its protagonists, the author delves into the history of colonialism and the Algerian War of Independence and its successors, describing the circumstances of the story whose events unfold throughout the month. As such, the characters suspected of killing the singer are not only accused of a criminal offense, but are also concerned, as it appears, with the great legacy that the War of Independence left, from different aspects.///The novel looks back at a critical period in the modern history of Algeria that witnessed the largest socio-political crisis following its independence in 1988. While the story avoids the immediate circumstances of the war, it rather invokes the events leading up to it and tracks its impact on the social life, while capturing the daily life of vulnerable and marginalized groups. /// Nonetheless, those residents’ vulnerability does not necessarily mean they are innocent. As it appears, they are all involved in a crime that is laden with symbolism and hints at the status of women in a society shackled by a heavy legacy of a violent, wounded masculinity. This approach to addressing social issues reflects a longing to break loose from the stereotypical discourse that sets heroism in a pre-defined mold and reduces the truth to only one of its dimensions.

      • Trusted Partner
        Crime & mystery
        February 2014

        The Untouched Crime

        by Zijin Chen

        A mystery novel by Zijin Chen, a web celebrity famous for serial detective stories. The Untouched Crime tells a story about hunting the serial killer who tends to leave a fingerprint and a note saying “Catch Me!” at each crime scene. Except for these, there isn’t any other clues. Who is the murderer? Why the murder claimed that he kills for saving lives?

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2025

        Beyond the antislavery haven

        Slavery in early Canadian print culture, 1789–1889

        by Ellie Bird

        This book challenges the idealised narrative of Canada as an antislavery haven for self-liberated people to explore Canada's complicated relationship with slavery. Examining advertisements, abolitionist texts and narratives about slavery in Canadian newspapers and the texts that were printed alongside them, it shows how Canadian readers and enslavers developed an image of themselves as belonging to an antislavery community even while recognising their own complicity in slavery. The book explores narratives that depict the lives of Black settlers in Canada and how slave narratives circulated in Canada. Canada's relationship with slavery is far more complicated than seeing it as either an antislavery haven or a slaveholding space. Canada was connected to Britain, France, the Caribbean and the United States and this was central to how Canadians and Canadian readers fashioned their self-image in relation to slavery.

      • Fiction

        Casta Diva

        by Alejandra Ángeles

        Alejandra Ángeles' first novel, "Casta Diva," also published by Fondo Blanco in 2023, is set in Mexico City and tells the story of two young women, Ágata and Catalina, who share the same dream: to become opera singers. This raises the question: what does it take to be an opera Diva? Ágata doesn't quite know, but she yearns to find out. Her questioning also touches Catalina, who senses the answer and plans the journey. Ágata has the voice, but not the character. Catalina, on the other hand, has the voice, the character, and the cunning to navigate the challenging operatic environment. Ágata comes from a small family background, while Catalina... Catalina brings the music, which will become an accomplice and intertwine their lives. Choruses, cantatas, zarzuelas, and operas will stage the situations they must face behind the scenes to secure a place at the Opera of Bellas Artes, and with it, the opportunity for something much greater.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 2023

        Suicide and the Gothic

        by William Hughes, Andrew Smith

        Suicide and the Gothic is the first protracted study of how the act of self-destruction recurs and functions within one of the most enduring and popular forms of fiction. Comprising eleven original essays and an authoritative introduction, this collection explores how the act of suicide has been portrayed, interrogated and pathologised from the eighteenth century to the present. The featured fictions embrace both canonical and the less-studied texts and examine the crisis of suicide - a crisis that has personal, familial, religious, legal and medical implications - in European, American and Asian contexts. Featuring detailed interventions into the understanding of texts as temporally distant as Thomas Percy's Reliques and Patricia Highsmith's crime fictions, and movements as diverse as Wertherism, Romanticism and fin-de-siècle decadence, Suicide and the Gothic provides a comprehensive and compelling overview of this recurrent crisis in fiction and culture.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2023

        Worrier state

        Risk, anxiety and moral panic in South Africa

        by Nicky Falkof

        Risk, anxiety and moral panic are endemic to contemporary societies and media forms. How do these phenomena manifest in a place like South Africa, which features heightened insecurity, deep inequality and accelerated social change? What happens when cultures of fear intersect with pervasive systems of gender, race and class? Worrier state investigates four case studies in which fear and anxiety appear in radically different ways: the far right myth of 'white genocide'; so-called 'Satanist' murders of young women; an urban legend about township crime; and social theories about safety and goodness in the suburbs. Falkof foregrounds the significance of emotion as a socio-political force, emphasising South Africa's imbrication within globalised conditions of anxiety and thus its fundamental and often-ignored hypermodernity. The book offers a bold and creative perspective on the social roles of fear and emotion in South Africa and thus on everyday life in this complex place.

      • Trusted Partner
        October 2023

        Post-Mortem

        Autopsy stories: the unusual experiences of a pathologist

        by Roland Sedivy

        — True crime stories from the morgue — Famous deaths and autopsy stories resolved, such as Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and the case of Anne Greene, who survived her execution by hanging The post-mortem examination. A glimpse inside the interior of the human being. Many find the idea fascinating; for others it is creepy or even repugnant. There are still numerous myths and horror stories surrounding the autopsy, many of them associated with primal human fears such as that of being buried alive, which have existed since Antiquity. It is precisely for this reason that it is important to carry out the post-mortem examination with the utmost conscientiousness. Pathologist Roland Sedivy provides an exciting insight into his profession. Profound and with tremendous humour, he tells us about the early days of the autopsy, and shares with us some macabre and some mysterious cases.

      • Trusted Partner

        Bloodlust

        by Mervin Malonzo (author and illustrator)

        Tabi Po tells the story of Elias, a neophyte aswang (flesh-eating humanoid creature). Born from a tree during the country’s Spanish era, Elias embarks on a journey with two older aswangs in the quest to understand their true nature. Along the way, Elias meets Salome, a sex slave of the friars, and falls for her. In the middle of a rising revolution, Elias is forced to face his own battles– his love for Salome and her pursuit of vengeance versus his hunger for flesh, the growing rift between himself and his two aswang mentors, the society’s stigma with their kind, and the battle with his own inner demons.

      • Trusted Partner
        July 2024

        Tainted Mind

        A psychological Thriller. Dr. Evelin Wolf and Alex Gutenberg 3

        by Roxann Hill, Paul Wagle, Rebecca Steinberg, John Julian, Nicholas Mockridge, Marty Sander, Alexios Saskalidis

        The most dangerous people are those you trust. The dismembered body of a young woman is discovered in a forest near Hamburg. Her remains give a terrifyingly vivid account of the unimaginably cruel torture she suffered before her death. She won't be the only victim. Within a very short period of time, more women are discovered. Assistant District Attorney Alex Gutenberg and criminal psychologist Dr. Evelin Wolf feverishly try everything to bring down the serial killer before he takes his next victim. A clue leads them to a severely mentally disturbed inmate of an asylum for the criminally insane. He seems to be the key to solving the current crimes. But the interned remains silent. Evelin has only one chance: She must succeed in penetrating the inmate's tainted mind. But the price is high. Evelin tracks down a terrible secret and suddenly finds her own life at stake…

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        July 2022

        Nordic Gothic

        by Maria Holmgren Troy, Johan Hõglund, Yvonne Leffler, Sofia Wijkmark

        Nordic Gothic traces Gothic fiction in the Nordic region from its beginnings in the nineteenth century, with a main focus on the development of Gothic from the 1990s onwards in literature, film, TV and new media. The volume gives an overview of Nordic Gothic fiction in relation to transnational developments and provides a number of case studies and in-depth analyses of individual narratives. It creates an understanding of this under-researched cultural phenomenon by showing how the narratives make visible cultural anxieties haunting the Nordic countries, their welfare systems, identities and ideologies. Nordic Gothic examines how figures from Nordic folklore function as metaphorical expressions of Gothic themes and Nordic settings are explored from perspectives such as ecocriticism and postcolonialism. The book will be of interest to researchers and post- and- undergraduate students in various fields within the Humanities.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2022

        Beef, Bible and bullets

        Brazil in the age of Bolsonaro

        by Richard Lapper, Leighton Pugh

        Backed by Brazil's wealthy agribusiness groups, a growing evangelical movement, and an emboldened military and police force, Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019. Driven by the former army captain's brand of controversial, aggressive rhetoric, the divisive presidential campaign saw fake news and misinformation shared with Bolsonaro's tens of millions of social media followers. Bolsonaro promised simple solutions to Brazil's rising violent crime, falling living standards and widespread corruption, but what has emerged is Latin America's most right-wing president since the military dictatorships of the 1970s. Famous for his racist, homophobic and sexist beliefs and his disregard for human rights, the so-called 'Trump of the Tropics' has established a reputation based on his polemical, sensationalist statements. Written by a journalist with decades of experience in the field, Beef, Bible and bullets is a compelling account of the origins of Brazil's unique brand of right-wing populism. Lapper offers the first major assessment of the Bolsonaro government and the growing tensions between extremist and moderate conservatives.

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