Dr. Bill Stuart has spent his life trying to find a cure for the aging process. In his seventh decade, he develops a drug that reverses aging in rats but gives them cancer. When his partner injects himself, it kills him. The police accuse Bill of causing his friends death. He injects himself in an attempt at suicide. Instead of dying, he suffers agonizing pain and collapses. He awakes two weeks later in the hospital burn unit. His body has gone through a metamorphosis, and he appears to be a young man. No one knows who he is, and he cannot divulge his identity because the police want to arrest him regarding the death of his partner. He flees from the police and from brutal men who know who he is and want to steal the formula of the drug.
Innovation-making is a classic theme in anthropology that reveals how people fine-tune their ontologies, live in the world and conceive of it as they do. This ethnographic study is an entrance into the world of Buryat Mongol divination, where a group of cursed shamans undertake the 'race against time' to produce innovative remedies that will improve their fallen fortunes at an unconventional pace. Drawing on parallels between social anthropology and chaos theory, the author gives an in-depth account of how Buryat shamans and their notion of fortune operate as 'strange attractors' who propagate the ongoing process of innovation-making. With its view into this long-term 'cursing war' between two shamanic factions in a rural Mongolian district, and the comparative findings on cursing in rural China, this book is a needed resource for anyone with an interest in the anthropology of religion, shamanism, witchcraft and genealogical change. Katherine Swancutt is a Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. She has carried out fieldwork on shamanic religion across Inner Asia, working among Buryats in northeast Mongolia and China since 1999, and among the Nuosu of Southwest China since 2007.
Even though James has just celebrated his eleventh birthday and his magical abilities have just awakened, he feels like the most unlucky boy on the planet. He's not just sulking for no good reason-he is actually cursed with bad luck. It's hereditary and his family has dealt with their misfortune for generations. With the help of his two best friends and a wise wereparakeet he has just inherited, James is determined to alter his fate and to make the very best of his situation.
For fans of Jonathan Tropper, Amy Tan, and Kevin Kwan, this “sharp, smart, and gloriously extra” (Nancy Jooyoun Kim, author of The Last Story of Mina Lee) novel follows a family of estranged Vietnamese women—cursed to never know love or happiness—as they reunite when a psychic makes a startling prediction. Everyone in Orange County’s Little Saigon knew that the Duong sisters were cursed. It started with their ancestor, Oanh, who dared to leave her marriage for true love—so a fearsome Vietnamese witch cursed Oanh and her descendants so that they would never find love or happiness, and the Duong women would only give birth to daughters. Oanh’s current descendant Mai Nguyen knows this curse well. She’s divorced, and after an explosive disagreement a decade ago, estranged from her younger sisters, Minh Pham (the middle and the mediator) and Khuyen Lam (the youngest who swears she just runs humble coffee shops and nail salons, not Little Saigon’s underground). Though Mai’s three adult daughters, Priscilla, Thuy, and Thao, are successful in their careers (one of them is John Cho’s dermatologist!), the same can’t be said for their love lives. Mai is convinced they might drive her to an early grave. Desperate for guidance, she consults Auntie Hua, her trusted psychic in Hawaii, who delivers an unexpected prediction: this year, her family will witness a marriage, a funeral, and the birth of a son. This prophecy will reunite estranged mothers, daughters, aunts, and cousins—for better or for worse. A multi-narrative novel brimming with levity and candor, “The Fortunes of Jaded Women pulls off the magic trick of being a heartfelt, multi-generational epic as well as a fast-paced, hilarious romp. It is your good fortune to have this novel in your hands” (Camille Perri, author of When Katie Met Cassidy).
Schmidt presents a bold yet refreshing prism of grace on each of the 150 most misinterpreted songs in all of Scripture. Countering the notion of the Psalms as meek, mild, and honey-coated, he tackles the despair and hurt of the psalmists head-on, wrestling intimately with some of his own dark places. The result is as if to see the Psalms for the first time -- or for the uninitiated, to see in them God's truth and wisdom for his people in all times and seasons.
"Cursed through a Fortune" is an interesting book that became written via the famous British creator George Manville Fenn, who is recognised for his work in adventure fiction inside the 1800s. The story was first posted in 1895 and is a combination of suspense and drama that indicates the characters' difficult journey. The story is focused on the principle character, Leslie Devorset, who gets caught in an internet of disaster and mystery. As the name shows, a terrible fortune becomes exciting cloth that impacts the characters' lives. As Fenn successfully weaves collectively factors of thriller, betrayal, and the outcomes of wealth, she creates a story that continues readers on the edge of their seats. Setting her stories in Victorian England, Fenn appears on the darker facet of humans and how social expectancies affect their lives. There are issues of morals, greed, and how destiny can change things at any time on this book. Fenn is a tremendous storyteller, and the manner he handles the complicated plot makes the book very exciting to read. "Cursed through a Fortune" is an amazing example of George Manville Fenn's skill at writing captivating testimonies that integrate motion with ethical reflection.
The Irish are renowned for their unrivaled capacity to spin a yarn and tell a story. They have a singular gift for gab and delight in the art of conversation. Being Irish means finding both humor and insight on life's roller coaster ride of highs and lows. Indeed, the Irish narrative is chock-full of wit, fellowship, and merriment, but it is also deeply rooted in a revolutionary past of severe hardship. This volume is an Irish treasure trove of words and sentiments for any and all occasions that both entertains and informs. Here are over 500 quotes that fall into the following categories: Blessings and Toasts; Drinking, Humorous, and Specialty Toasts; Saint Patrick, Saint Brigid, and Special Prayers, Curses, Proverbs, and Sayings; Poetry and Rhymes; He Said, She Said; and Ballads and Songs.
This volume in the long-running and acclaimed Shakespeare Dictionary series is a detailed, critical reference work examining all aspects of magic, good and evil, across Shakespeare's works. Topics covered include the representation of fairies, witches, ghosts, devils and spirits.
Beliefs, superstitions and tales about luck are present across all human cultures, according to anthropologists. We are perennially fascinated by luck and by its association with happiness and danger, uncertainty and aspiration. Yet it remains an elusive, ungraspable idea, one that slips and slides over time: all cultures reimagine what luck is and how to tame it at different stages in their history, and the modernity of the ‘long twentieth century’ is no exception to the rule. Apparently overshadowed by more conceptually tight, scientific and characteristically modern notions such as chance, contingency, probability or randomness, luck nevertheless persists in all its messiness and vitality, used in our everyday language and the subject of studies by everyone from philosophers to psychologists, economists to self-help gurus. Modern Luck sets out to explore the enigma of luck’s presence in modernity, examining the hybrid forms it has taken on in the modern imagination, and in particular in the field of modern stories. Indeed, it argues that modern luck is constituted through narrative, through modern luck stories. Analysing a rich and unusually eclectic range of narrative taken from literature, film, music, television and theatre – from Dostoevsky to Philip K. Dick, from Pinocchio to Cimino, from Curtiz to Kieślowski – it lays out first the usages and meanings of the language of luck, and then the key figures, patterns and motifs that govern the stories told about it, from the late nineteenth century to the present day.
