Alua Arthur

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real about the End

A deeply transformative memoir that reframes how we think about death and how it can help us lead better, more fulfilling and authentic lives, from America's preeminent death doula. "By envisioning who I want to be on my deathbed, I invited life in." --Alua Arthur For her clients and everyone who has been inspired by her humanity, Alua Arthur is a friend at the end of the world. As our country's leading death doula, she's spreading a transformative message: thinking about your death--whether imminent or not--will breathe wild, new potential into your life. Warm, generous, and funny AF, Alua supports and helps manage end-of-life care on many levels. The business matters, medical directives, memorial planning; but also honoring the quiet moments, when monitors are beeping and loved ones have stepped out to get some air--or maybe not shown up at all--and her clients become deeply contemplative and want to talk. Aching, unfinished business often emerges. Alua has been present for thousands of these sacred moments--when regrets, fears, secret joys, hidden affairs, and dim realities are finally said aloud. When this happens, Alua focuses her attention at the pulsing center of her clients' anguish and creates space for them, and sometimes their loved ones, to find peace. This has had a profound effect on Alua, who was already no stranger to death's periphery. Her family fled a murderous coup d'état in Ghana in the 1980s. She has suffered major, debilitating depressions. And her best friend and brother-in-law died of lymphoma. Advocating for him in his final months is what led Alua to her life's calling. She knows firsthand the power of bearing witness and telling the truth about life's painful complexities, because they do not disappear when you look the other way. They wait for you. Briefly Perfectly Human is a life-changing, soul-gathering debut, by a writer whose empathy, tenderness, and wisdom shimmers on the page. Alua Arthur combines intimate storytelling with a passionate appeal for loving, courageous end-of-life care--what she calls "death embrace." Hers is a powerful testament to getting in touch with something deeper in our lives, by embracing the fact of our own mortality. "Hold that truth in your mind," Alua says, "and wondrous things will begin to grow around it."

Briefly Perfectly Human

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David Sedaris

Random pages have small wrinkle spots (see last 2 photos). 

"David Sedaris's ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art," (The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this remarkable new book.
Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life-having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds-to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" (Seattle Times).

Praise for When You Are Engulfed in Flames:

"Older, wiser, smarter and meaner, Sedaris...defies the odds once again by delivering an intelligent take on the banalities of an absurd life." --Kirkus Reviews

This latest collection proves that not only does Sedaris still have it, but he's also getting better....Sedaris's best stuff will still--after all this time--move, surprise, and entertain." --Booklist

Table of Contents:

It's Catching
Keeping Up
The Understudy
This Old House
Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?
Road Trips
What I Learned
That's Amore
The Monster Mash
In the Waiting Room
Solutions to Saturday's Puzzle
Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool
Memento Mori
All the Beauty You Will Ever Need
Town and Country
Aerial
The Man in the Hut
Of Mice and Men
April in Paris
Crybaby
Old Faithful
The Smoking Section

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

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Esther Joy Archer

Holly Adams Easley

The book comes in a case and includes example tarot cards in the back (24 cards, never been used). Because of the material of the case, there are marks that can be seen in the sun/specific lighting. See photos. 

Oversized Hardcover (4 to 6 lbs)

Demystifying the Art and Arcana, Deck by Deck

With warmth and wisdom, authors Holly Adams Easley and Esther Joy Archer delve into the fascinating history and stories behind centuries of tarot artwork in The History of Tarot Art.

The History of Tarot Art

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Laetitia Barbier

Dents on edges. Small mark on back cover. 

A Visual Archive

A stunning visual history of tarot Used for self-exploration or divination, tarot has, for more than 500 years, been the most popular and accessible of all esoteric tools, looming large in today's mainstream culture. Why? Because the cards are inexpensive and easy to carry--a perfect traveling companion and, therefore, an invitation to a journey inward and out. Humans are drawn to playing games and feel driven to find meaning in the chaos of paradoxical signs. The vivid iconography of the "Arcanas" speak to us like no other language, moving us to the core, weaving through each card a universal story, a metaphorical pathway of transformation. This 400-page book presents--for the first time--a close look at 500 years of figurative card decks created or used for fortune telling, divinations, and oracle purposes, and explores, one card at the time, their iconographic roots at the crossroads of the medieval imaginarium, Western esoteric wisdom, folklore, and also contemporary art and pop culture. With hundreds of images drawn from more than 100 decks, rarely published and often forgotten in library archives, this book offers the first visual history of tarot.

Tarot and Divination Cards

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Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism

Small dents on top edge of front and back cover. 

The Book of Symbols combines original and incisive essays about particular symbols with representative images from all parts of the world and all eras of history. The highly readable texts and over 800 beautiful full-color images come together in a unique way to convey hidden dimensions of meaning. Each of the ca. 350 essays examines a given symbol's psychic background, and how it evokes psychic processes and dynamics. Etymological roots, the play of opposites, paradox and shadow, the ways in which diverse cultures have engaged a symbolic image-all these factors are taken into consideration.
Authored by writers from the fields of psychology, religion, art, literature, and comparative myth, the essays flow into each other in ways that mirror the psyche's unexpected convergences. There are no pat definitions of the kind that tend to collapse a symbol; a still vital symbol remains partially unknown, compels our attention and unfolds in new meanings and manifestations over time. Rather than merely categorize, The Book of Symbols illuminates how to move from the visual experience of a symbolic image in art, religion, life, or dreams to directly experiencing its personal and psychological resonance.
The Book of Symbols sets new standards for thoughtful exploration of symbols and their meanings, and will appeal to a wide range of readers: artists, designers, dreamers and dream interpreters, psychotherapists, self-helpers, gamers, comic book readers, religious and spiritual searchers, writers, students, and anyone curious about the power of archetypal images.

The Book of Symbols. Reflections on Archetypal Images

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Lisa Perrin

Holly Frey

Maria Trimarchi

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Illustrated True Stories of Dangerous Women

"This lavishly illustrated book by Lisa Perrin introduces more than 25 infamous women poisoners, exploring the circumstances and skill sets that led them to lives of crime. Learn about popular poisons throughout history and their deadly effects, and explore the common motives that drove these women to commit their dastardly deeds. You might find yourself rooting for some of them-like Sally Bassett, who helped poison her granddaughter's enslavers in Bermuda, or the Angel Makers of Nagyrév, who helped women get rid of their abusive husbands. Other stories, though-including that of Yiya Murano, one of Argentina's most notorious swindlers and serial killers, or the terrifying Nurse Jane Toppan-may prove less palatable"--

The League of Lady Poisoners

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Doug Stewart

Some wear along the edges of the dust cover. 

A Tale of Forgery and Folly

Discusses the forgeries of William Henry Ireland, who produced letters, poetry, and a full-length play attributed to William Shakespeare, and describes the antiquarian fad culture that embraced the forgeries.

The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare

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Charles Nicholl

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Murder of Christopher Marlowe

A brilliant mix of detective story, history and biography. In 1593, the controversial young playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a Deptford lodging house and the official account -- a violent quarrel over the bill -- has long been regarded as dubious.

The Reckoning

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Colin Dickey

Light wear around the edges and on the bottom edge of the pages. 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained

America's favorite cultural historian and author of Ghostland takes a "thought-provoking and delicoiusly unsettling" (Publisher's Weekly) tour of the country's most persistent "unexplained" phenomena

In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational--in fringe--is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures.

Enter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today's Illuminati is yesterday's Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America's wildest fringe beliefs--from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extra-terrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining "evidence" of the great Kentucky Meat Shower--investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable.

The Unidentified

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Erika Engelhaupt

Dust cover has a tear on the corner. There is staining on the inside of the dust cover and the inside of the back cover, please see photos. 

Adventures from the Dark Side of Science

Uses humour and real science to illuminate the gross, strange, morbid, and outright absurd realities of our bodies, our earth, and our universe.

Gory Details

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Eileen Ormsby

Some wear on the edges and corners. Back cover has a crease on corner. 

Hitmen for Hire, Drugs for Sale. Inside the Dangerous World That Lurks Beneath the Bright, Friendly Light of Your Internet Screen

Dark...

A kingpin willing to murder to protect his dark web drug empire. A corrupt government official determined to avoid exposure. The death of a dark web drugs czar in mysterious circumstances in a Bangkok jail cell, just as the author arrives there.

Who is Variety Jones and why have darknet markets ballooned tenfold since authorities shut down the original dark web drugs bazaar, Silk Road? Who are the kingpins willing to sell poisons and weapons, identities and bank accounts, malware and life-ruining services online to anyone with a wallet full of Bitcoin?

Darker...

A death in Minnesota leads detectives into the world of dark web murder-for-hire where hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin is paid to arrange killings, beatings and rapes. Meanwhile, the owner of the most successful hitman website in history is threatening the journalists who investigate his business with a visit from his operatives - and the author is at the top of his list.

Darkest...

People with the most depraved perversions gather to share their obscene materials in an almost inaccessible corner of the dark web. A video circulates and the pursuit of the monsters responsible for 'Daisy's Destruction' lead detectives into the unimaginable horror of the world of hurtcore.

There's the world wide web - the internet we all know that connects us via news, email, forums, shopping and social media. Then there's the dark web - the parallel internet accessed by only a select few. Usually, those it connects wish to remain anonymous and for good reason.

Eileen Ormsby has spent the past five years exploring every corner of the Dark Web. She has shopped on darknet markets, contributed to forums, waited in red rooms and been threatened by hitmen on murder-for-hire sites. On occasions, her dark web activities have poured out into the real world and she has attended trials, met with criminals and the law enforcement who tracked them down, interviewed dark web identities and visited them in prison.

This book will take you into the murkiest depths of the web's dark underbelly: a place of hitmen for hire, red rooms, hurtcore sites and markets that will sell anything a person is willing to pay for - including another person. The Darkest Web.

Darkest Web

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Siddhartha Mukherjee

A Biography of Cancer

A historical assessment of cancer addresses both the courageous battles against the complex disease and the misperceptions and hubris that have compromised modern understandings, providing coverage of such topics as ancient-world surgeries and the developments of present-day treatments.

The Emperor of All Maladies

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Walter Isaacson

There is a small tear on one page and a small fold on the corner of the next page. 

Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

"A gripping account of how the pioneering scientist Jennifer Doudna, along with her colleagues and rivals, launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and enhance our children"--

The Code Breaker

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Jorge L. Contreras

The top of the pages has started to slightly darken from the sun. 

Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA

In this riveting, behind-the-scenes courtroom drama, a brilliant legal team battles corporate greed and government overreach for our fundamental right to control our genes. When Chris Hansen, an ACLU lawyer, learned that the US government was issuing patents for human genes to biotech companies, his first thought was: How can a corporation own what makes us who we are? Then he discovered that women were being charged exorbitant fees to test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer - all because Myriad Genetics had patented the famous BRCA genes. So he sued them. The Genome Defense gives us a front-row seat as Hansen and a team of ACLU lawyers, along with a committed group of activists, scientists, and physicians, take their one-in-a-million case all the way to the US Supreme Court. Jorge L. Contreras, an attorney at the forefront of genetics law, interviews more than a hundred key players as he lays out the groundbreaking legal strategy to challenge human gene patents. The culmination of years of work, his book is both an intimate look at the cancer survivors whose lives have been affected by this case and a sweeping investigation into the fallout from our technological age of discovery. Like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Genome Defense is a powerful and compelling story about how society struggles to balance scientific advancement, corporate profits, and the rights of all people.

The Genome Defense

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David Bainbridge

There is a small piece torn from the front cover. The last page is slightly ripped from the spine. 

The Art of Animal Anatomy

A lavishly illustrated compendium of the art and history of animal anatomy from antiquity to today For more than two thousand years, comparative anatomy—the study of anatomical variation among different animal species—has been used to make arguments in natural philosophy, reinforce religious dogma, and remind us of our own mortality. This stunningly illustrated compendium traces the intertwined intellectual and artistic histories of comparative anatomy from antiquity to today. Stripped Bare brings together some of the most arresting images ever produced, from the earliest studies of animal form to the technicolor art of computer-generated anatomies. David Bainbridge draws on representative illustrations from different eras to discuss the philosophical, scientific, and artistic milieus from which they emerged. He vividly describes the unique aesthetics of each phase of anatomical endeavor, providing new insights into the exquisite anatomical drawings of Leonardo and Albrecht Dürer in the era before printing, Jean Héroard’s cutting and cataloging of the horse during the age of Louis XIII, the exotic pictorial menageries of the Comte de Buffon in the eighteenth century, anatomical illustrations from Charles Darwin’s voyages, the lavish symmetries of Ernst Haeckel’s prints, and much, much more. Featuring a wealth of breathtaking color illustrations throughout, Stripped Bare is a panoramic tour of the intricacies of vertebrate life as well as an expansive history of the peculiar and beautiful ways humans have attempted to study and understand the natural world.

Stripped Bare

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Hayao Miyazaki

Some marks and wear on edges of pages. One page corner folded. 

Japan's most popular filmmaker speaks on life, love, and the world of anime.

The Starting Point...of the Greatest Career in Animation HistoryIn the first two decades of his career, filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki laid the groundwork for his legendary movies. Starting Point is a collection of essays, interviews, and memoir that go back to the roots of Miyazaki's childhood, the formulation of his theories of animation, and the founding of Studio Ghibli.Before directing such acclaimed films as Spirited Away, Miyazaki was just another salaried animator, but with a vision of his own. Follow him as he takes his first steps on the road to success, experience his frustrations with the manga and animation industries that often suffocate creativity, and realize the importance of bringing the childhood dreams of the world to life.Starting Point: 1979-1996 is not just a chronicle of the life of a man whose own dreams have come true, it is a tribute to the power of the moving image.

In the first two decades of his career, filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki laid the groundwork for his legendary movies. Starting Point is a collection of essays, interviews, and memoirs that go back to the roots of Miyazaki's childhood, the formulation of his theories of animation, and the founding of Studio Ghibli.

Before directing such acclaimed films as Spirited Away, Miyazaki was just another salaried animator, but with a vision of his own. Follow him as he takes his first steps on the road to success, experience his frustrations with the manga and animation industries that often suffocate creativity, and realize the importance of bringing the childhood dreams of the world to life.

Starting Point: 1979-1996 is not just a chronicle of the life of a man whose own dreams have come true, it is a tribute to the power of the moving image.

Starting Point: 1979-1996

48c206a2-e8f2-4517-a0a8-d0c96b778255-1

Liz Scheier

A Memoir

Liz Scheier’s darkly funny and touching memoir—with shades of Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle and Mira Bartók’s The Memory Palace—of growing up in ’90s Manhattan with a brilliant, mendacious single mother Scheier’s mother Judith was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—a violent and abusive liar whose hold on reality was shaky at best. On an uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room to tell her two important things: one, she had been married for most of Scheier’s life to a man she’d never heard of, and two, the man she’d told Scheier was her father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up. Those two big lies were the start, but not the end; it took dozens of smaller lies to support them, and by the time she was done she had built a farcical, half-true life for the two of them, from fake social security number to fabricated husband. One hot July day twenty years later, Scheier receives a voicemail from Adult Protective Services, reporting that Judith has stopped paying rent and is refusing all offers of assistance. That call is the start of a shocking journey that takes the Scheiers, mother and daughter, deep into the cascading effects of decades of lies and deception. Never Simple is the story of learning to survive—and, finally, trying to save—a complicated parent, as feared as she is loved, and as self-destructive as she is adoring.

Never Simple

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Peter Ackroyd

The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors

"An extraordinary book . . . Peter Ackroyd is arguably the most talented and prolific writer working in Britain today." --Daily Express (UK)

In Foundation, acclaimed historian Peter Ackroyd tells the epic story of England itself. He takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death, in 1509, of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He describes the successive waves of invaders who made England English, despite being themselves Roman, Viking, Saxon, or Norman French.

With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place and his acute eye for the telling detail, Ackroyd recounts the story of warring kings, of civil strife, and foreign wars. But he also gives us a vivid sense of how England's early people lived: the homes they built, the clothes they wore, the food they ate, even the jokes they told. All are brought to life in this history of England through the narrative mastery of one of Britain's finest writers.

Foundation

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William J. Bernstein

Financial Bubbles, End-Times Manias, and the Reasons People Go Mad in Groups

From the award-winning author of A Splendid Exchange, a fascinating new history of financial and religious mass manias over the past five centuries

The Delusions of Crowds

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Carol Mack

Dinah Mack

Wear along edges. The back cover has a crease. 

Explains how to identify the many species of demons, where to find them, and the traditional ways of appeasing or dispelling them

A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels and Other Subversive Spirits

ba5930ae-306c-4b19-a679-306ce2c0060a-1

L.m. Arroyo

There are marks/stains on the front and back covers that will not wipe off. 

An Exploration of Indigenous Beliefs and Cultures

Native American Spiritualism

1bf6cae0-ef68-453d-9bf7-db0286763127-0

Tim Mackintosh-Smith

No Author Listed

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Travels in Dictionary Land

Our ideas of the Arabian Peninusula have been hijacked: by images of the desert, by oil, by the Gulf War. But there is another Arabia. For the Classical geographers Yemen was a fabulous land where flying serpents guarded sacred incense groves. Medieval Arab visitors told of disappearing islands and menstruating mountains. Vita Sackville-West found Aden 'precisely the most repulsive corner of the world'. Arguably the most fascinating but least known country in the Arab world, Yemen has a way of attracting comment that ranges from the superficial to the wildly fictitious. In Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land, Tim Mackintosh-Smith writes with an intimacy and depth of knowledge gained through over twenty years among the Yemenis. He is a travelling companion of the best sort - erudite, witty and eccentric. Crossing mountain, desert, ocean and three millennia of history, he portrays hyrax hunters and dhow skippers, a noseless regicide, and a sword-wielding tyrant with a passion for Heinz Russian salad. Yet even the ordinary Yemenis are extraordinary: their family tree goes back to Noah and is rooted in a land which, in the words of a contemporary poet, has become the dictionary of its people. Every page of this book is dashed - like the land it describes - with the marvellous.

Yemen

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Mark Kurlansky

Wear along edges and on spine. There is a name sticker on the inside cover. 

A World History

“Kurlansky finds the world in a grain of salt.” - New York Times Book Review An unlikely world history from the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. Populated by colorful characters and filled with an unending series of fascinating details, Salt is a supremely entertaining, multi-layered masterpiece.

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