In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka, Sweden, was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology, history and literature to reinvent her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined. Nancy Marie Brown links the Birka warrior, whom she names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines Hervor's adventures intersecting with larger-than-life but real women, including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, the Viking leader known as the Red Girl, and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervor's short, dramatic life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in the Viking Age is based not on data but on nineteenth-century Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys, Viking women in history, the sagas, poetry and myth carry weapons. In this compelling narrative, Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life.

In the early 1800's, on a Hebridean beach in Scotland, the sea exposed an ancient treasure cache: 93 chessmen carved from walrus ivory. Norse netsuke, each face individual, each full of quirks, the Lewis Chessmen are probably the most famous chess pieces in the world. Harry played Wizard's Chess with them in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Housed at the British Museum, they are among its most visited and beloved objects. Questions abounded: Who carved them? Where? Ivory Vikings explores these mysteries by connecting medieval Icelandic sagas with modern archaeology, art history, forensics, and the history of board games. In the process, Ivory Vikings presents a vivid history of the 400 years when the Vikings ruled the North Atlantic, and the sea-road connected countries and islands we think of as far apart and culturally distinct: Norway and Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, and Greenland and North America. The story of the Lewis chessmen explains the economic lure behind the Viking voyages to the west in the 800s and 900s. And finally, it brings from the shadows an extraordinarily talented woman artist of the twelfth century: Margret the Adroit of Iceland.

As the Revolution of 1848 ravages Europe, in Berlin, many young people take to the streets with other revolutionaries to oppose the Prussian soldiers waiting for them. Seething with resentment over the choking restrictions of press and speech, embargoes, taxation, over-population and lack of opportunities, ownership of land and enactment of laws by and for the nobility, these fearless revolutionaries take a stand to break away from the established government.

Hell-bent on controlling their own lives, Ernst von Kohl and Henri Ordeneaux, cousins and students at the University of Leipzig, fight together, side-by-side, protecting each other as they narrowly escape Berlin with their lives. They bring fehdegeist, the German spirit of endurance and constancy with them as they embark upon a long ship ride to Texas, where they are pioneers in a new land. Can their relationship survive the personal trials that await them?

As war rears its ugly head with the Civil War in the United States, the cousins must once again ardently defend their choices. Will Ernst, a leader in the community and opponent of slavery, consent to fight for the freedoms desired by the Confederacy, as he did in his homeland? Will Henri oppose his cousin?

Marie Browning pushes the envelope of Zentangle into the living dimension of color. Using easy to follow steps, Marie illustrates over 40 new tangles. More than simply coloring regions of a tangle design, this book offers lessons which enable even the novice artist to use a Tombow Dual Brush pen to color delightful Zentangle animals, plants and flowers.

"Oh God, Help Me My Grandson Killed My Son" is the heart-wrenching story of how my grandson killed my son. It tells the affects it had on me and my children. It was not easy to share my feelings and how hurt we were. I realized that it was God that kept us. My faith was on trial. Not only was my faith on trial but the love that I have for my grandson was also being tested. I didn't think I would make it through this horrible tragedy. But my faith stood the test of time. I forgave my grandson, I still love him and I still got a yet praise to give God.

'Richly imagined and elegantly told, with plenty of satisfying secrets, heartaches, and twists' SADEQA JOHNSON 'A spellbinding romp. The Montrose women will have you clutching your pearls on this rollercoaster of a debut' CAROLYN HUYNH 'Written with warmth and an eye for detail, Diane Marie Brown's Black Candle Women explores the bonds of family and the magical power of belief to transform our lives' SHAUNA J. EDWARDS & ALYSON RICHMAN .............................................................. 'All of you are cursed, you hear me? An ugly death for the ones with whom you fall in love' Generations of Montrose women - Augusta, Victoria, Willow - have lived together in their quaint two-story bungalow in California for years. They keep to themselves, never venture far from home, and their collection of tinctures and spells is an unspoken bond between them. But when seventeen-year-old Nickie Montrose brings home a boy for the first time, their quiet lives are thrown into disarray. For the other women have been withholding a secret from Nickie that will end her relationship before it's even begun: the decades-old family curse that any person they fall in love with dies. Their surprise guest forces each woman to reckon with her own past choices and mistakes. And as new truths about the curse emerge, the family is set on a collision course dating back to a voodoo shop in 1950s New Orleans's French Quarter-where a hidden story in a mysterious book may just hold the answers they seek in life and in love... Rich in its sense of character and place, Black Candle Women is a haunting and magical debut from a talented new storyteller.

Interrogating the relationship between women and psychosis from a variety of perspectives, this edited collection explores personal, literary, spiritual, psychological, biological, and psychodynamic approaches. The contributors reflect on medieval mystics and witches, postpartum psychosis, disordered eating, art and literature, feminism, and male/female differences in schizophrenia. Women with experience of psychosis, psychotherapists, and a shaman provide first-person accounts to give the book a personal grounding. Curated with the intent to expand the way we think about women and psychosis, the contributors to this collection recognize that "voices and visions" do not occur in a vacuum, but are experienced within, and are influenced by, particular socio-cultural contexts.

Women and the Psychosocial Construction of Madness focuses on the question of madness as it is experienced by women within gendered sociopolitical contexts. Contributors to this edited collection engage with a diverse range of topics, including black and ethnic minority women's experiences of psychosis, psychosis in transwomen, sexual trauma and psychosis, the doctor-patient relationship, and women's experiences of mental health treatment and recovery. Chapters span the disciplines of psychoanalysis, sociology, women's studies, critical theory, and madness studies.

This collection offers a diverse range of perspectives that seek to find meaning in madness. Mainstream biomedical approaches tend to interpret experiences commonly labelled "psychotic" as being indicative of a biological illness that can best be ameliorated with prescription drugs. In seeking to counter this perspective, psychosocial outlooks commonly focus on the role of trauma and environmental stress. Although an appreciation for the role of trauma has been critical in expanding the ways in which we view madness, an emphasis of this kind may nevertheless continue to perpetuate a subtle form of reductivism-madness continues to be understood as the product of a deficit. In seeking to move beyond causal-reductivism, this book explores a variety of perspectives on the question of finding inherent meaning in madness and extreme states. Contributors to this book are distinguished writers and researchers from a variety of international and interdisciplinary perspectives. Topics span the fields of depth psychology and psychoanalysis, creativity, Indigenous and postcolonial approaches, neurodiversity, mad studies, and mysticism and spirituality. This collection will be of interest to mental health professionals, students and scholars of the humanities and social sciences, and people with lived experience of madness and extreme states. Readers will come away with an appreciation of the more generative aspects of madness, and a recognition that these experiences may be important for both personal and collective healing.

Many popular recipes come from lineages that can be traced back for decades, even centuries. Festive cakes have been made in December for at least two thousand years. Using archaeological evidence and ancient books, the authors define the key ingredients of the cakes that would eventually be served on Twelfth Night, at the end of the Christmas season. From 17th century English cookbooks, they identify recipes that would have been made as twelfth cakes, full of expensive ingredients like raisins, almonds, sweet wine and candied peel, but made like fruit-breads, with yeast. In the 18th century, a revolution in mixing occurred. Ingredient proportions followed the new pound cake principle, and for the first time butter and sugar were creamed together. The Victorian age saw Twelfth Night customs give way to those associated with Christmas Day. The first English recipe to be called 'Christmas Cake' was Mrs Beeton's. In the colonies, growing demand for rich Christmas cakes resulted in the renaming of a range of recipes. Plum cakes, rich fruit cakes and wedding cakes were all co-opted as Christmas cakes. The Christmas cakes of the 20th century are a special focus of this book.Nine cake recipes feature here, four derived from pound cakes, and five highlighting new methods of mixing or new ingredients. Their family histories are tracked, but the authors also show how New Zealand cooks modified each recipe and developed new variations.

Interrogating the relationship between women and psychosis from a variety of perspectives, this edited collection explores personal, literary, spiritual, psychological, biological and psychodynamic approaches. Chapter themes include explorations of medieval mystics and witches, postpartum psychosis, disordered eating, art and literature, feminism, and male/female differences in schizophrenia. Women with lived experience of psychosis, psychotherapists, and a shaman provide personal accounts to ground the book in lived experience. Curated with the intent to expand the way we think about women and psychosis, the contributions to this title recognize that 'voices and visions' do not occur in a vacuum but are experienced within, and are influenced by, particular socio-cultural contexts.