Strange Practice

Strange Practice
Author: Vivian Shaw
Publisher: Orbit
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2017-07-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316434612

The first book in a delightfully witty fantasy series in which Dr. Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, must defend London from both supernatural ailments and a bloodthirsty cult. Greta Helsing inherited her family's highly specialized and highly peculiar medical practice. In her consulting rooms, Dr. Helsing treats the undead for a host of ills: vocal strain in banshees, arthritis in barrow-wights, and entropy in mummies. Although she barely makes ends meet, this is just the quiet, supernatural-adjacent life Greta's been groomed for since childhood. Until a sect of murderous monks emerges, killing human and undead Londoners alike. As terror takes hold of the city, Greta must use her unusual skills to stop the cult if she hopes to save her practice and her life. Praise for the Dr. Greta Helsing Novels: "An exceptional and delightful debut, in the tradition of Good Omens and A Night in the Lonesome October."―Elizabeth Bear, Hugo-award winning author "Shaw balances an agile mystery with a pitch-perfect, droll narrative and cast of lovable misfit characters. These are not your mother's Dracula or demons."―Shelf Awareness Dr. Greta Helsing Novels Strange Practice Dreadful Company Grave Importance

Dreadful Company

Dreadful Company
Author: Vivian Shaw
Publisher: Orbit
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2018-07-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316434647

A witty, charming fantasy adventure starring Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, whose family has been keeping the supernatural community not-alive and well for generations. When Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, is unexpectedly called to Paris to present at a medical conference, she expects nothing more exciting than professional discourse on zombie reconstructive surgery and skin disease in bogeymen―and hopefully at least one uneventful night at the Opera. Unfortunately for Greta, Paris happens to be infested with a coven of vampires -- and not the civilized kind. If she hopes to survive, Greta must navigate the darkest corners of the City of Lights, the maze of ancient catacombs and mine-tunnels underneath the streets, where there is more to find than simply dead men's bones. Praise for the Dr. Greta Helsing Novels: "An exceptional and delightful debut, in the tradition of Good Omens and A Night in the Lonesome October."―Elizabeth Bear, Hugo-award winning author "Shaw balances an agile mystery with a pitch-perfect, droll narrative and cast of lovable misfit characters. These are not your mother's Dracula or demons."―Shelf Awareness Dr. Greta Helsing Novels Strange Practice Dreadful Company Grave Importance

Grave Importance

Grave Importance
Author: Vivian Shaw
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0356508919

'This book is a joy to read, unlocking every bit of delicious promise in the premise' B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on Strange Practice MEET GRETA HELSING, DOCTOR TO THE UNDEAD In the hills above Marseille, Oasis Natrun is a highly secret health spa for mummies, equipped with the very latest therapeutic innovations both magical and medical. To Dr Greta Helsing, it sounds like paradise. But when she takes the job of interim clinical director, it isn't long before Greta finds herself faced with a medical mystery that will take all her diagnostic skill to solve. With help from her friends and colleagues - including demons, witches and the inimitable vampyre Sir Francis Varney - Greta must put a stop to this mysterious illness before anybody else crumbles to irreparable dust. Praise for the series: 'I loved every page of it . . . a spectacularly fun book' Powder and Page 'Balances an agile mystery with a pitch-perfect, droll narrative and a cast of loveable misfit characters' Shelf Awareness 'Shaw's elegant writing makes this series a standout in the genre' Booklist 'Packed with characters who are a pleasure to spend time with' ScifiNow

Strange Natures

Strange Natures
Author: Nicole Seymour
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2013-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252094875

In Strange Natures, Nicole Seymour investigates the ways in which contemporary queer fictions offer insight on environmental issues through their performance of a specifically queer understanding of nature, the nonhuman, and environmental degradation. By drawing upon queer theory and ecocriticism, Seymour examines how contemporary queer fictions extend their critique of "natural" categories of gender and sexuality to the nonhuman natural world, thus constructing a queer environmentalism. Seymour's thoughtful analyses of works such as Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues, Todd Haynes's Safe, and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain illustrate how homophobia, classism, racism, sexism, and xenophobia inform dominant views of the environment and help to justify its exploitation. Calling for a queer environmental ethics, she delineates the discourses that have worked to prevent such an ethics and argues for a concept of queerness that is attuned to environmentalism's urgent futurity, and an environmentalism that is attuned to queer sensibilities.

Strange Beauty

Strange Beauty
Author: Cynthia Jean Hahn
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2012
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0271050780

"A study of reliquaries as a form of representation in medieval art. Explores how reliquaries stage the importance and meaning of relics using a wide range of artistic means from material and ornament to metaphor and symbolism"--Provided by publisher.

Strange Birds

Strange Birds
Author: Celia C. Pérez
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0425290433

From the award-winning author of The First Rule of Punk comes the story of four kids who form an alternative Scout troop that shakes up their sleepy Florida town. * "Writing with wry restraint that's reminiscent of Kate DiCamillo... a beautiful tale." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review When three very different girls find a mysterious invitation to a lavish mansion, the promise of adventure and mischief is too intriguing to pass up. Ofelia Castillo (a budding journalist), Aster Douglas (a bookish foodie), and Cat Garcia (a rule-abiding birdwatcher) meet the kid behind the invite, Lane DiSanti, and it isn't love at first sight. But they soon bond over a shared mission to get the Floras, their local Scouts, to ditch an outdated tradition. In their quest for justice, independence, and an unforgettable summer, the girls form their own troop and find something they didn't know they needed: sisterhood.

Strange Situation

Strange Situation
Author: Bethany Saltman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2020-04-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0399181458

A full-scale investigation of the controversial and often misunderstood science of attachment theory, inspired by the author’s own experience as a parent and daughter. “A profound and beautiful work . . . searingly honest, brazenly fresh, and startlingly rich.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon When professional researcher and writer Bethany Saltman gave birth to her daughter, Azalea, she loved her deeply but felt as if something was missing. Looking back at her lonely childhood, dangerous teenage years, and love-addicted early adulthood, Saltman thought maybe she was broken. Then she discovered the science of attachment, the field of psychology that explores the question of why—from an evolutionary point of view—love exists between parents and children. Saltman went on a ten-year journey visiting labs, archives, and training sessions, while learning the meaning of “delight” from Mary Ainsworth, one of psychology’s most important but unsung researchers, who died in 1999. Saltman went deep into the history and findings from Ainsworth’s famous laboratory procedure, the Strange Situation, which, like an X-ray, is still used today by scientists around the world to catch a glimpse of the internal workings of attachment. In this simple twenty-minute procedure, a baby and a caregiver enter an ordinary room with two chairs and some toys. During a series of comings and goings, a trained observer studies the minutiae of the pair’s back-and-forth with each other. Through the science of attachment, what Saltman discovered was a radical departure from everything she thought she knew—about love and about her own family, her story, and herself. She was far from broken—she saw that love is too powerful to ever break. Strange Situation is a scientific, lyrical, life-affirming exploration of love. Not only will readers be taken on an emotional ride through one mother’s reckoning with her own past and her family’s future, but they will also be given the tools with which to better understand their own life histories and their relationships today. Praise for Strange Situation “A fascinating deep dive into attachment theory . . . Carefully researched and with copious endnotes, this is an excellent resource for anyone interested in child development.”—Publishers Weekly “Honest and complex . . . A thoughtful engagement with a topic that affects all parents.”—Kirkus Reviews

Strange Tools

Strange Tools
Author: Alva Noë
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2015-09-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1429945257

A philosopher makes the case for thinking of works of art as tools for investigating ourselves In his new book, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, Noë offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.

A Tiny Upward Shove

A Tiny Upward Shove
Author: Melissa Chadburn
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2022-04-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374716501

“Wild and ambitious . . . [with] something ablaze at its core. It burns.” —The New York Times Book Review A Tiny Upward Shove is inspired by Melissa Chadburn's Filipino heritage and its folklore, as it traces the too-short life of a young, cast-off woman transformed by death into an agent of justice—or mercy. Marina Salles’s life does not end the day she wakes up dead. Instead, in the course of a moment, she is transformed into the stuff of myth, the stuff of her grandmother’s old Filipino stories—an aswang, a creature of mystery and vengeance. She spent her time on earth on the margins; shot like a pinball through a childhood of loss, she was a veteran of Child Protective Services and a survivor, but always reacting, watching from a distance, understanding very little of her own life, let alone the lives of others. Death brings her into the hearts and minds of those she has known—even her killer—as she accesses their memories and sees anew the meaning of her own. In her nine days as an aswang, while she considers whether to exact vengeance on her killer, she also traces back, finally able to see what led these two lost souls to a crushingly inevitable conclusion. In A Tiny Upward Shove, the debut novelist Melissa Chadburn charts the heartbreaking journeys of two of society’s castoffs as they make their way to each other and their roles as criminal and victim. What does it mean to be on the brink? When are those moments that change not only our lives but our very selves? And how, in this impossible world, full of cruelty and negligence, can we rouse ourselves toward mercy?