Devon Sanders, a private investigator known for his efficiency and discretion, is determined to become a master wizard. He returns to the paranormal university ready to learn magic and uncover the history of the castle. Unfortunately, life at Quintessence is never that easy. When a student dies of no apparent cause, the search for a witness leads Devon to discover there are more secrets buried under Quintessence than he ever realized. To save the paranormal world he is now part of, he will face an enemy that can use his own power against him. Devon must rely on more than his exceptional intuition to solve this case. Magic is elemental.
Sakima, New York, a sleepy, idyllic city nestled in the Hudson Valley, a place where everyone knows each other, families look after the highly prized community garden, and the crime rate is so low that Dr. Laura Powell, the police department’s medical examiner, spends most of her time tending to her own private medical practice. That changes drastically the day a local high school student is found dead, an apparent suicide. Called in to perform the autopsy, Laura uncovers a strange growth inside the body, composed of a mysterious substance she can’t identify. Enlisting the aid of her scientist ex-boyfriend, Booker Coates, Laura launches an investigation that leads to a horrifying discovery. Something deadly has taken root in Sakima, an organism whose toxic influence spreads like a disease through the population, dangerously altering minds and dominating wills, a ruthless intelligence that demands obedience. As more and more townspeople fall under its control, forming violent mobs to seek out those who remain uninfected, Laura and Booker must find a way to stop it before they become its next victims. But how can they stop something they don’t understand? With The Hungry Earth, Nicholas Kaufmann, co-author of the bestselling horror novel 100 Fathoms Below with Steven L. Kent, launches a chilling new series of science thrillers featuring Medical Examiner Laura Powell. ***** “Nicholas Kaufmann’s The Hungry Earth is required reading for anyone who loves tightly plotted horror. It’s a gleeful throwback to the best body horror of the '80s, updated with a modern premise. His best work to date. Devour it, before it devours you!” - Sarah Langan, bestselling author of Good Neighbors
A novel on the Great Famine in 1840s Ireland in which a million people died. The events are portrayed through the eyes of Turlough Walsh, a modern-day Dublin accountant transported back in time.
This collection of contemporary postcolonial plays demonstrates the extraordinary vitality of a body of work that is currently influencing the shape of contemporary world theatre. This anthology encompasses both internationally admired 'classics' and previously unpublished texts, all dealing with imperialism and its aftermath. It includes work from Canada, the Carribean, South and West Africa, Southeast Asia, India, New Zealand and Australia. A general introduction outlines major themes in postcolonial plays. Introductions to individual plays include information on authors as well as overviews of cultural contexts, major ideas and performance history. Dramaturgical techniques in the plays draw on Western theatre as well as local performance traditions and include agit-prop dialogue, musical routines, storytelling, ritual incantation, epic narration, dance, multimedia presentation and puppetry. The plays dramatize diverse issues, such as: *globalization * political corruption * race and class relations *slavery *gender and sexuality *media representation *nationalism
The relationship between Johannesburg’s Market Theatre and the economic and political forces of South Africa's apartheid regime was both complex and somewhat ambiguous. The theatre's two founders, Mannie Manim and Barney Simon, however, from idealistic beginnings managed to steer their experimental enterprise around pitfalls ranging from censorship, boycotts and recuperation by big business to the difficulties encountered in finding black authors, let alone black audiences. If the place occupied by the Market institution in apartheid society is emphasized throughout the present study, its contribution to the aesthetic of resistance is also underlined through detailed criticism of the plays and authors dominating the theatre. Pieter-Dirk Uys, Barney Simon's workshop plays and, among others, Black Consciousness plays are subjected to various methods of theatre performance analysis. The reckoning that had to come in the early 1990s revealed itself as globally positive; the reasons for this may be found in the updated concluding part of Playing the Market, which is composed of more general essays (including one on the vibrant Junction Avenue Theatre Company) on how the theatre scene in contemporary South Africa started to change. A postscript reveals more specific aspects of the Market situation in the late 1990s when its hegemony in the New South Africa was already being questioned.
These five plays by one of South Africa’s foremost black playwrights were written between 1979 and 1986, a period in the country’s history marked by intense repression and escalating violence. Several of Maponya's works fell foul of the censorship system. The works included in this collection - ‘The Hungry Earth’, ‘Dirty Work’, ‘Gangsters’, ‘Umongikazi/The Nurse’ and ‘Jika’ – look at topics such as the lives of miners, apartheid in hospitals, and the workings of the security apartheid state and its agents. His plays are multilingual, using agitprop and physical theatre techniques. Maponya won the 1985 Standard Bank Young Artists award. Doing Plays for a Change: Five Works is introduced by Professor Ian Steadman, former Head of the Drama Department of the University of the Witwatersrand, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
“Nicholas Kaufmann offers up an unputdownable blend of gruesome body horror and fast-paced suspense.” – Ray Garton, author of Live Girls and Ravenous Medical Examiner Dr. Laura Powell didn't think anything could be more frightening than what she uncovered in an autopsy a year ago. Yet, in this chilling sequel to Nicholas Kaufmann’s bestselling The Hungry Earth, the cause of death is literally petrifying. When a completely petrified corpse ends up on her autopsy table, Laura is convinced it must be a fossil, but the evidence says otherwise. Impossibly, the man on her table died in a car crash earlier that day. But what could cause a human body to transform so quickly from flesh to a hard stonelike substance? Laura’s investigation takes her out of her hometown of Sakima, New York, and into dangerous new territory. From the streets of Valley Grove, home to a fundamentalist religious sect under the thumb of a brutal, vindictive leader, to the bowels of Thurmond Biotech, a secretive pharmaceutical company hellbent on developing the first anti-aging miracle drug, what she unearths is far more terrifying than she could have imagined. Vicious, deadly creatures are preying on the people of Valley Grove, killing them with a highly toxic venom that ravages and transforms their bodies in horrifying ways. As the creatures claim more victims, striking from out of the darkness with lightning-fast speed, Laura must find a way to stop them before they spread to the rest of the Hudson Valley. But will her search for answers put her in even more danger by sending her into the heart of the creatures’ den? With The Stone Serpent, multiple award-nominated author Nicholas Kaufmann delivers another gripping thriller in the Dr. Laura Powell series.
This volume is a collection of essays that explore aspects of popular culture in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia. These writings examine such topics as the degree of state control over theatre, the interaction - or lack of it - between high and popular culture, the struggle to define meaningful cultural forms in the wake of a dominating and exclusive colonial culture and the contribution of women. What emerges is a strong sense of regional concerns shared by the Southern African cultures under discussion, the contributors also give voice to crucial differences and debates on the nature of contemporary theatre and performance and the links with popular culture, politics and nation.
