Description: In this suite of dramatic monologues, David Denny reimagines the ancient folktale of Jonah by listening to the voices of its many characters. Jonah and God, of course, remain the two principal players, to be sure. But in Man Overboard we also hear from the sailors of the Tarshish-bound cargo carrier, the storm that overtakes them, the great fish who gives sanctuary to the irascible prophet, indeed the ocean itself, as well as the merchants, courtiers, plants, animals, and king of Nineveh. Drawing upon a close reading of the biblical text, the Jewish tradition of Midrash, and a...

Imagine a quiet Advent sitting beside a crackling fire preparing for a festive and sacred Twelve Days of Christmas. The authors take you there and beyond. There's something for everyone: young or old, whether you go to church or not. The tone is mystical and down-to-earth. Poetry, illustrations and essays, rituals and blessings, prayers and practical advice, even book, music and movie reviews help you celebrate a soulful season of glad songs, from the dark stillness of Advent through Christmas, the New Year and Epiphany, on to the welcome light of a candle on a cold February night.

The title comes from a news item on a strategically important railway line blocked by a wayward 4x4 car.. Did the owner take the claims that this car will go anywhere too literally? - whatever, the line was blocked and the resulting delay felt across the local rail network was yet another opportunity for David to put his flexible fingers to the small key board of his mobile phone and share his personal world of railway travel with the rest of us as he attempted to commute to work in Manchester from Stafford, his home station.

In a wide range of genres, from mythic parable to gritty realism, these twenty stories explore the most intimate encounters between husbands and wives, parents and children, lovers and strangers. In one story, an ex-movie stuntman relives watery memories of pleasure and panic from the arid terrain of his afterlife. In another, a precocious ten-year-old girl composes an email plea for reconciliation to her estranged grandfather. In yet another, a retired midwestern couple face existential crisis in a Hawaiian paradise. Blending terror and delight, dissolution and renewal, each vivid tale...

The Danish director Lars von Trier is undoubtedly one of the world's most important and controversial filmmakers, and arguably so because of the depiction of women in his films. He has been criticized for subjecting his female characters to unacceptable levels of violence or reducing them to masochistic self-abnegation, as with Bess in Breaking the Waves, 'She' in Antichrist and Joe in Nymphomaniac. At other times, it is the women in his films who are dominant or break out in violence, as in his adaptation of Euripides' Medea, the conclusion of Dogville and...

Desert Voices is a song from the edge. It celebrates the amorous frontier between two "desert rats" and an arid landscape of sand, sky, and giant cactus. It celebrates friendships between Abrahamic brothers and sisters who have spent too much time demonizing each other. It mourns the lives lost along the border of Israel and Palestine and honors non-violent sowers of hope. It sings from the death bed, from the poverty of the Cross, the universal desert of impermanence that may be the shadow of eternal life. Attracted by beauty and responding to sorrow, Tessa Bielecki and David Denny offer...