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New Wave Clay unpicks the zeitgeist and aesthetic of an exciting discipline with intelligence, insight and indulgence. Against the backdrop of the digital age and shiny screens, a whole new generation of craftspeople, designers and artists are realizing the pleasure of working with clay and bringing a fresh perspective to the material. Today, there is a lively crossover between craft, design, sculpture and technology that is rethinking ceramics: what you can make with it, what it looks like and who makes it. New Wave Clay is a global survey of 55 imaginative ceramicists that are leading this craft revival. They include classically trained potters who create design-led pieces, product designers who use clay as a means of creative expression, as well as fine artists, architects, decorators, illustrators, sculptors and graphic designers. Their collective output goes far beyond pots into ceramic furniture, sculpture, murals, wall reliefs, small-scale architecture and 3D printing. The book is divided into four thematic sections and features special contributions from Edmund de Waal, Hella Jongerius, Grayson Perry, Martin Brudnizki and Sarah Griffin discussing craft, industry, ornament, decorating and collecting. New Wave Clay is an image-led, dynamic study of the exciting new generation jumpstarting this age-old art. Features - A 296-page survey of 55 international ceramicists who bridge the worlds of product design, interiors, fine art and luxury craftsmanship. - Four thematic chapters are accompanied by interviews and written contributions on the subject from designers, decorators and collectors. - Richly illustrated, New Wave Clay is an image-led, dynamic book that aims to demonstrate the contemporary condition of this age-old art. - Instead of focusing on traditional craft ware and functional pieces, this title focuses on the community of ceramicists who create design-led works.

I have never written down the answers to the deepest mysteries, nor will I ever... The philosopher Plato wrote these words more than two thousand years ago, following a perilous voyage to Italy -- an experience about which he never spoke again, but from which he emerged the greatest thinker in all of human history. Today, twelve golden tablets sit in museums around the world, each created by unknown hands and buried in ancient times, and each providing the dead with the route to the afterlife. Archaeologist Lily Barnes, working on a dig in southern Italy, has just found another. But this tablet names the location to the mouth of hell itself. And then Lily vanishes. Has she walked out on her job, her marriage, and her life -- or has something more sinister happened? Her husband, Jonah, is desperate to find her. But no one can help him: not the police, and not the secretive foundation that sponsored her dig. All Jonah has is belief, and a determination to do whatever it takes to get Lily back. But like Plato before him, Jonah will discover the journey ahead is mysterious and dark and fraught with danger. And not everyone who travels to the hidden place where Lily has gone can return.

This book continues Brother Tom-Nicholas' series on the lives of the saints. As in his first book, Calling All Saints, Brother Tom reveals how saints weren't stained-glass superhumans on pedestals, but hard-working men and women who did small things in a great way for the love of God. "I also wanted to write a book for all those who think organised religion is an absolute con... but just might be willing to read funny stories that sneak in a moral about following Christ. May these little stories give you the hope, the courage and the inspiration to try and become the hero or heroine that God knows you can be."

This is a comedy set in the Sunnyvoyde Residential Home. Wagner got it wrong. The Twilight of the Gods isn't really that cataclysmic. After all, there's a comfy chair, a welcoming fire and three meals a day.

Here are fifteen thrilling stories that have long been unabatedly popular with readers of all ages. Stories that are, in turn, dramatic, exciting, and eminently readable. These are stories that will transport readers to a long-forgotten world inhabited by some of history’s most notorious pirates—both fictional and real-life. These are tales of hidden treasures, kidnapping, murder, intrigue and betrayal—and above all else, adventure. Blackbeard, Long John Silver, buccaneers, and Captain Blood—long forgotten tales from such authors as Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Dolye, and James Fenimore Cooper—the gritty adventure and skullduggery of pirates that has been a staple of adventure tales for hundreds years. Pirates! continues the tradition. Readers will learn the pirate’s code from an actual 1700s document, that states, “If any man shall lose a Joint in times of an engagement, shall have 400 Pieces of Eight; if a limb, 800.” And “that Man that shall strike another whilst these Articles are in force, shall receive Mose’s Law [that is 40 stripes lacking one] on the Bare back.” Readers have long turned to the sea as a backdrop for escape. Who doesn’t love a tale of pirates, and duplicity, and hidden treasures? All of these stories have endured the test of time and await a new generation of readers.

When he died in 1983, Ross Macdonald was the best-known and most highly regarded crime-fiction writer in America. Long considered the rightful successor to the mantles of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and his Lew Archer-novels were hailed by The New York Times as "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American." Now, in the first full-length biography of this extraordinary and influential writer, a much fuller picture emerges of a man to whom hiding things came as second nature. While it was no secret that Ross Macdonald was the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar -- a Santa Barbara man married to another good mystery writer, Margaret Millar -- his official biography was spare. Drawing on unrestricted access to the Kenneth and Margaret Millar Archives, on more than forty years of correspondence, and on hundreds of interviews with those who knew Millar well, author Tom Nolan has done a masterful job of filling in the blanks between the psychologically complex novels and the author's life -- both secret and overt. Ross Macdonald came to crime-writing honestly. Born in northern California to Canadian parents, Kenneth Millar grew up in Ontario virtually fatherless, poor, and with a mother whose mental stability was very much in question. From the age of twelve, young Millar was fighting, stealing, and breaking social and moral laws; by his own admission, he barely escaped being a criminal. Years later, Millar would come to see himself in his tales' wrongdoers. "I don't have to be violent," he said, "My books are." How this troubled young man came to be one of the most brilliant graduate students in the history of the University of Michigan and how this writer, who excelled in a genre all too often looked down upon by literary critics, came to have a lifelong friendship with Eudora Welty are all examined in the pages of Tom Nolan's meticulous biography. We come to a sympathetic understanding of the Millars' long, and sometimes rancorous, marriage and of their life in Santa Barbara, California, with their only daughter, Linda, whose legal and emotional traumas lie at the very heart of the story. But we also follow the trajectory of a literary career that began in the pages of Manhunt and ended with the great respect of such fellow writers as Marshall McLuhan, Hugh Kenner, Nelson Algren, and Reynolds Price, and the longtime distinguished publisher Alfred A. Knopf. As Ross Macdonald: A Biography makes abundantly clear, Ross Macdonald's greatest character -- above and beyond his famous Lew Archer -- was none other than his creator, Kenneth Millar.

Traces the impact of invective poetics associated with early Greek iambic poetry on Roman imperial authors and audiences.