Harold Frederic was for a long time known primarily as a writer of New York regional fiction and historical novels. His most outstanding and influential novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896) represents the first extended narrative in US literature of Irish-Catholic entry into American life. In 1995, a year short of that novel's centenary, Joyce Carol Oates wrote: "WHAT a wonderful novel is The Damnation of Theron Ware." Though raised in a German-American, Methodist environment in the Mohawk Valley of New York state, Frederic became intrigued with Ireland's people, politics, and history when post-Famine Irish began arriving in his hometown of Utica in the 1860s and 1870s. The Martyrdom of Mave and other Irish Stories gathers for the first time all of the Irish work Harold Frederic completed in his lifetime. He planned more, but died of a stroke in his early forties, in England, where he was employed as The New York Times London Correspondent. He had earlier written his publisher that he had been "toiling for years" on the archeology of the Iveagha (present Mizen) Peninsula in Cork, and that the projected book of historical fiction underway would be unique. The Martyrdom of Maev and Other Irish Stories brings together the four sixteenth-century stories that Frederic finished and published in magazines in 1895-96, and two of his stories set in the west of Ireland of the second-half of the nineteenth century. Taken together the stories track the ramifications of the Elizabethan invasions as they extend to the famine, evictions, and humiliations still plaguing the country just before the rise of Parnell. The dramatic title story involves young romance caught in the political unrest that begot the Land-League and portrays as well the adamant, menacing, sexual prohibitions prevailing in the rural Ireland of the late nineteenth century. Others portray life within the remote Gaelic clans of late medieval Ireland. All the stories reveal Frederic's brilliant prose talent-"The Path of Murtogh," for example, a starkly primitive revenge tale, is as dark and shocking as anything by Edgar Allen Poe. For those who like Harold Frederic's fiction, or who love dramatic tales set in Ireland, this collection makes for compelling reading.

This is a tongue-in-cheek informational book on how to create and publish your first eBook. Follow Jack along the creative process, from idea creation to work flow to proof-reading to making a cover and publishing your book. Will it help you sell a million copies? Probably not. But then again, buying a lottery ticket does not mean you'll win a million dollars either What you will win here is humor and some good publishing advice. You're bound to laugh as Jack humorously teaches you the tools of the trade, and you will learn a set of reliable skills from his lessons on writer's craft, how to market your book effectively, building a platform (following) before you release your first edition, and using literary devices to make your literature more compelling, all while sharing a graphic fairy tale story along the way. So, if you are an aspiring writer, jump on board Jack's journey through these unchartered waters and publish YOUR first book

For widower Steven Riley, dating in the 21st century was like navigating through unchartered waters. He soon learns that relationships in the New Age are swift, serious, and capricious. Therefore, rekindling an old flame, Susan Mitchell, his former high school sweetheart, seemed like a good way to cope with loneliness after his daughter, America Riley, marries then moves to another city. While Steven faces the melancholy of nostalgia, tantalized by the obsequiousness of Susan Mitchell, he finds that rekindling the golden moments with his first love comes at a cost. Haunted by the apparitions of Mercedes, his deceased wife, he must consequently choose between remaining faithful to Mercedes or to starting a new life with Susan. Meanwhile, America, and her soon to be husband, the prominent and intriguing young bachelor from Miami, Leonardo M. Satanas, will soon learn, as many newlyweds have, that newfound romances generally do not survive through the first season of this turbulent New Age. The young couple will be challenged by the temptations of infidelity and unarmed with naivety. On the contrary, Steven will soon realize that faithfulness has not evolved into a lost virtue, even in these Post-Modern times. For Steven, the test of faithfulness will become as present and as demanding today as it was when Mercedes was still alive. Caught between two worlds, his old-school sentiments and the opposition of contemporary dating standards, Steven will find himself in the center of a battle between two women who are fighting for him: mind, body, and soul. Will he choose to rekindle his old romance with Susan or will he remain faithful to his deceased wife forever? This is a metaphysical journey into faith and self-introspection, premised upon Steven's inquiry into the degradation of morality in America, his encounter with life after death, and a vow of everlasting love that may truly withstand the test of time.

Unearthing the fearful flesh and sinful skins at the heart of gothic horror, Jack Morgan rends the genre's biological core from its oft-discussed psychological elements and argues for a more transhistorical conception of the gothic, one negatively related to comedy. "The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film "dissects popular examples from the gothic literary and cinematic canon, exposing the inverted comic paradigm within each text.
Morgan's study begins with an extensive treatment of comedy as theoretically conceived by Suzanne Langer, C. L. Barber, and Mikhail Bakhtin. Then, Morgan analyzes the physical and mythological nature of horror in inverted comic terms, identifying a biologically grounded mythos of horror. Motifs such as sinister loci, languishment, masquerade, and subversion of sensual perception are contextualized here as embedded in an organic reality, resonating with biological motives and consequences. Morgan also devotes a chapter to the migration of the gothic tradition into American horror, emphasizing the body as horror's essential "place "in American gothic.
The bulk of Morgan's study is applied to popular gothic literature and films ranging from high gothic classics like Matthew Lewis's "The Monk," Ann Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho," Charles Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer," and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," to later literary works such as Poe's macabre tales, Melville's "Benito Cereno," J.S. Le Fanu's "Uncle Silas," H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth," Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hillhouse," Stephen King's "Salem's Lot," and Clive Barker's "The Damnation Game. "Considered films include "Nosferatu, Invasionof the Body Snatchers, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Night of the Living Dead, Angel Heart, The Stand," and "The Shining."
Morgan" "concludes his physical examination of the Gothic reality with a consideration born of Julia Kristeva's theoretical rubric which addresses horror's existential and cultural significance, its lasting fascination, and its uncanny positive--and often therapeutic--direction in literature and film.