Examining a seven year period in Ballard's career, from 1966 to 1973, this volume includes various original essays, two interviews with Ballard from the early 1970s and a selection of Ballard's works.

The spectre of Gilles de Rais, satanist and child-killer, eclipses French history like a dark star. A fallen general, once the champion of Jeanne d'Arc, de Rais' riches and experimentations led him to the very gates of Hell. The juxtaposition of de Rais' obscene crimes and insidious aristocratic glamour lodges him in our minds as some kind of medieaval Hannibal Lecter, and he is indeed believed to be the inspiration behind Perrault's classic fairytale of the serial wife-killer Bluebeard. SATANIC ALCHEMY is a testament to the enduring legend of Gilles de Rais and his status in the popular imagination as history's first ever Devil-worshipping serial killer. With essays from some of the most fertile imaginations of recent centuries - including J-K Huysmans, Georges Bataille and Valentine Penrose - as well as a complete chronology and register of people and places in de Rais' brief but cataclysmic existence, this book is a rich evocation of the perversely seductive aura, the satanic allure of the most intriguing figure in the annals of mass murder. Parts of this book previously appeared in Dark Star (Creation Books, 2005).

""I heard the warning: /'Here is the tigers' kingdom""--Yosano Tekkan For over one thousand years, the image of the tiger spread from Buddhist temple carvings to other artistic forms across China and Korea. The tiger became a favorite subject for Japanese painters at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Beginning with artists of the Kano and Rimpa schools and making an appearance in the art of notable painters like Katsu Gyokushu, Matsui Genchu, Kishi Ganku, and Maruyama Okyo, depictions of the tiger roamed freely through scrolls and screens for centuries. And as the creation of woodblock prints known as "nishiki-e "grew in popularity in the late Edo period, tigers began to stalk through the internationally respected designs of masters like Hokusai, Kuniyoshi, Kunisada, Yoshitoshi, and Kyosai.
In "Tiger," Candice Black brings together one hundred classic representations of this extraordinary predator from across the arts, including depictions from prints, screens, scrolls, woodblocks, and lithographs. With images dating from the late sixteenth century to 1901, this gorgeous production faithfully documents the work of dozens of prominent and lesser known Japanese artists and presents the most comprehensive visual anthology of this majestic beast ever available to an English language audience.