Katy Soar

From the sun-seared shores of the Aegean to the misty bogs of ancient England, the dark tendrils of mythological gods and monsters have remained embedded in the minds of those who once believed, and throughout the past two centuries have inspired a haunting sub-genre of uncanny fiction.

Collecting up strange tales of legendary Greco-Roman figures, pagan deities of Old Britain and godlings and abominations from the world's pantheons returning to wreak havoc on modern civilization, this new anthology presents a thrilling array of weird fiction touched by the otherworldly and eternal mystique of myth, lore and legends.

Katy Soar’s follow-up to one of the most popular series titles, Circles of Stone, published in December 2023, this anthology features classic stories from writers such as Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen alongside the rare and unusual from the pulps and magazines of the British Library’s collections.

British Library Tales of the Weird

Return of the Ancients: Unruly Tales of the Mythological Weird

In the wood the grey stone rose from the grass, and she cried out and ran back in panicked terror. 'What a silly little girl,' the nurse had said. 'It's only the... stone.'

Standing stones, stone circles, tumps, barrows and ancient clearings still remain across the British Isles, and though their specific significance may be obscured by the passing of time, their strange allure and mysterious energy persist in our collective consciousness.

Assembled here in tribute to these relics of a lost age are accounts of terrifying spirits haunting Stonehenge itself, stories of awful fates for those who impose modernity on the sacred sites and grim tales in which unwitting trespassers into the eternal rites of pagan worship find themselves part of an enduring legacy of blood. To represent the breadth of the sub-genre, authors include Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood and Rosalie Muspratt alongside lesser-known writers from the periodicals and journals of the British Library collections.

Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites

Circles of Stone

Amara Thornton

Stories of Archaeology and the Supernatural

Strange Relics

John Eade

Paul-François Tremlett

Linda van de Kamp

Martijn Oosterbaan

Joana Bahia

This book explores the proliferation and spread of Brazilian-born religious forms and practices throughout the world. The global diffusion of Brazilian religions provides an excellent lens to understand contemporary religious forms. As the book shows, religious movements as diverse as Santo Daime, Candomblé, Capoeira, John of God, and Brazilian style Pentecostalism and Catholicism, have become immensely popular in many places outside Brazil. This global spread is not merely the result of Brazilian migrants taking their religions abroad, it is also due to global media and to spiritual seekers, travelling to and from Brazil. Global Trajectories of Brazilian Religion demonstrates that in a dynamic space of historical and cultural production, Brazil is imagined and re-created as an authentic, spiritual, and sensual place that functions as the center for various global religions. To understand the new cross-fertilizations between religion, life-style, tourism and migration, this book introduces the notion of 'Lusospheres', a term that refers to the historical Portuguese colonial reach, yet signals the contemporary modes of cultural interaction in a different geo-political age.

Lusospheres

Global Trajectories of Brazilian Religion

Zena Kamash

Leen Van Broeck

This book adds to the scant academic literature investigating how comics transmit knowledge of the past and how this refraction of the past shapes our understanding of society and politics in sometimes damaging ways. The volume comes at these questions from a specifically archaeological perspective, foregrounding the representation and narrative use of material cultures. It fulfils its objectives through three reception studies in the first part of the volume and three chapters by comic creators in the second part. All six chapters aim to grapple with a set of central questions about the power inherent in drawn images of various kinds.

Comics and Archaeology

Katy Soar

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