Best Selling Books by David Adams

This study of domestic homicide in America examines the lives and moitvation of men who kill their intimate partners.

Spout the Dragon Becomes a Firefighter By: David Adams Spout isn’t your ordinary fire breathing dragon, he is a unique water dragon. His water ability sets him apart from the other dragons. He learns being different from his peers isn’t always easy, but being true to yourself is more important. When the forest is on fire, Spout decides to help the firefighters. He realizes that being unique can lead to extraordinary dreams.

Leeming illustrates the various rites of passage of the mythic universal hero, from birth to childhood, through trial and quest, death, descent, rebirth, and ascension. The arrangement of texts by themes such as "The Descent to the Underworld" and "Resurrection and Rebirth" strip mythic characters of their national and cultural "masks" to reveal their archetypal aspects. Real figures, including Jesus and Mohammed, are also included to underline the theory that myths are real and can be applied to real life. This updated edition includes additional myths, as well as Navajo, Indonesian, Indian, Chinese, and African tales.

Examines the universal themes of myths from cultures ranging from ancient Egypt and Greece to Christianity and modern science, analyzing how different cultures and societies have addressed fundamental human concerns and experiences.

Annotation - A fascinating account of Britain''s mythic traditions.

Anyone who has ever tied a blood knot in a leader or spun a line on the reel, felt the tug of a salmon or seen the glimmer of a brook trout in the early morning sun, understands that fishing is more than a sport. It is, for many, a way of life. In Lines on the Water, we are reminded why this is so. Writing with the same mastery that has won him praise for his fiction, Richards takes us—even those unfamiliar with days spent in chilly waters—on an unforgettable journey to the famed Miramichi River. Casting new light on the mysterious and elegant world of fly fishing, it teems with lore and wisdom, humor, and most of all, passion.

Now in its third edition, A Handbook of Diction for Singers is a complete guide to achieving professional levels of diction in Italian, German, and French. Combining traditional approaches in the teaching of diction with new material not readily available elsewhere, author David Adams presents the sounds of each language in logical order, along with essential information on matters such as diacritical marks, syllabification, word stress, and effective use of the variety of foreign-language dictionaries. A Handbook of Diction for Singers places particular emphasis on the characteristics of vowel length, the sequencing of sounds between words, as well as the differences between spoken and sung sounds in all three languages, all while taking care to clarify concepts typically difficult for English-speaking singers. This revised third edition offers significantly expanded coverage of each language as well as a new chapter that introduces readers to the specific sounds unique to those languages. The result is a concise yet thorough treatment of the three major languages of the classical vocal repertory, and an invaluable reference for vocalists and voice teachers.

This handbook for aspiring lawyers coaches them to make the most of law school by taking charge of their education and burgeoning careers early on. It provides current and future law students with invaluable information about the law school application process, financing law school, selecting classes, evaluating study groups, developing effective exam-taking strategies, choosing extracurricular activities and summer jobs, preparing for the bar exam, and balancing school with family life. Demonstrated are the ways in which students can begin to think like practising lawyers and attain experience in law school that is relevant, practical, and essential to practising law in the real world.

Mercy Among the Children received effusive praise from the critics, was nominated for a Governor General’s Award and won the Giller Prize. It was named one of 2000’s best books, became a national bestseller in hardcover for months, and would be published in the US and UK. It is seen, however, as being at odds with literary fashion for concerning itself with good and evil and the human freedom to choose between them — an approach that puts Richards, as Maclean’s magazine says, firmly in the tradition of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Author Wayne Johnston recounts hearing Richards read in 1983 and being struck by his unqualified love for every one of his characters, even though “it was not then fashionable to love your characters”. Pottersfield Portfolio editor Tony Tremblay calls Richards the most misunderstood Canadian writer of the century, and a “great moralist”, comparing him to Morley Callaghan, Kafka and Melville. As a boy, Sydney Henderson thinks he has killed Connie Devlin when he pushes him from a roof for stealing his sandwich. He vows to God he will never again harm another if Connie survives. Connie walks away, laughing, and Sydney embarks upon a life of self-immolating goodness. In spite of having educated himself with such classics as Tolstoy and Marcus Aurelius, he is not taken seriously enough to enter university because of his background of dire poverty and abuse, which leads everyone to expect the worst of him. His saintly generosity of spirit is treated with suspicion and contempt, especially when he manages to win the love of beautiful Elly. Unwilling to harm another in thought or deed, or to defend himself against false accusations, he is exploited and tormented by others in this rural community, and finally implicated in the death of a 19-year-old boy. Lyle Henderson knows his father is innocent, but is angry that the family has been ridiculed for years, and that his mother and sister suffer for it. He feels betrayed by his father’s passivity in the face of one blow after another, and unable to accept his belief in long-term salvation. Unlike his father, he cannot believe that evil will be punished in the end. While his father turns the other cheek, Lyle decides the right way is in fighting, and embarks on a morally empty life of stealing, drinking and violence. A compassionate, powerful story of humanity confronting inhumanity, it is a culmination of Richards’ last seven books, beginning with Road to the Stilt House. It takes place in New Brunswick’s Miramichi Valley, like all of his novels so far, which has led some urban critics to misjudge his work as regional — a criticism leveled at Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad and Emily Bronte in their own day. Like his literary heroes, Richards aims to evoke universal human struggles through his depiction of the events of a small, rural place, where one person’s actions impact inevitably on others in a tragic web of interconnectedness. The setting is extremely important in Richards’ work, “because the characters come from the soil”; but as British Columbia author Jack Hodgins once told Richards, “every character you talk about is a character I''ve met here in Campbell River”.

David Leeming and Jake Page gather some seventy-five of the most potent and meaningful of these tales in an extraordinary rich and readable introduction of this divine figure as she has emerged from prehistory to the present.

Works such as Joseph Conrad''s Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Virginia Woolf''s The Voyage Out, E. M. Forster''s A Passage to India, and Evelyn Waugh''s A Handful of Dust explore the relationship between Britain and its colonies when the British Empire was at its height. David Adams observes that, because of their structure and specific literary allusions, they also demand to be read in relation to the epic tradition. The elegantly written and powerfully argued Colonial Odysseys focuses on narratives published in English between 1890 and 1940 in which protagonists journey from the familiar world of Europe to alien colonial worlds. The underlying concerns of these narratives, Adams discovers, are often less political or literary than metaphysical: in each of these fictions a major character dies as a result of the journey, inviting reflection on the negation of existence. Repeatedly, imaginative encounters with distant, uncanny colonies produce familiar, insular presentations of life as an odyssey, with death as the home port. Expanding postcolonial and Marxist theories by drawing on the philosophy of Hans Blumenberg, Adams finds in this preoccupation with mortality a symptom of the failure of secular culture to give meaning to death. This concern, in his view, shapes the ways modernist narratives reinforce or critique imperial culture—the authors project onto British imperial experience their anxieties about the individual''s relation to the absolute.

Cave paintings at Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain, fraught with expression thousands of years later; point to an early human desire to form a cultural identity. In The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, David Leeming explores the role of mythology, or myth-logic, in history anddetermines that the dreams of specific cultures add up to a larger collective story of humanity. Stopping short of attempting to be all-inclusive, this fascinating volume will nonetheless be comprehensive, opening with an introduction exploring the nature and dimensions of myth and proposing adefinition as a universal language. Briefly dipping into the ways our understanding of myth has changed from Aristotle and Plato to modern scholars such as Joseph Campbell, the introduction loosely places the concept in its present context and precedes articles on influential mythologists andmythological approaches that appear later in the Companion.The main body of Leeming''s work consists of A-Z entries covering all aspects of mythology, including substantial essays on the world''s major mythological traditions (Greek, Native American, Indian, Japanese, Sumerian, Egyptian), mythological types and motifs (Descent to the Underworld, the Hero, theTrickster, Creation, the Quest), mythological figures (Odysseus, Zeus, Osiris, Spider Woman, and Inanna) as well as numerous interrelated subjects such as fairy tales and legends. The Companion also locates myth in our lives today, relating it to language patterns, psychology, religion, politics,art, and gender attitudes. Many of the better-known and more significant myths are vividly retold in this volume that will be illustrated with maps, more than 70 black and white images, and eight pages of color highlighting the central role art has often played in the transmission and perpetuationof myth. Following the entries, a rich section of appendices will include family trees of the major pantheons, equivalency charts for the gods of Greece and Rome, Babylon and Sumer, as well as other traditions, an extensive bibliography, and an index.

Although there are many histories of war, this is the first history of the culture of war. Drawing on anthropological, sociological and historical data, it traces all aspects of the the culture of war in its evolution from prehistory to the present time. It concludes that the history of the state has been the increasing monopolization of the culture of war, to the point that the state is incapable of promoting a culture of peace. This book is part of a trilogy along with World Peace through the Town Hall: A Strategy for the Global Movement for a Culture of Peace and the utopian novella, I Have Seen the Promised Land. Together they put forward a comprehensive and feasible plan to achieve world peace. They are based on the author''s responsibility for the United Nations International Year for the Culture of Peace (2000), the Manifesto 2000 signed by 75 million people, and the United Nations Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace.

David Adams Richards’ Governor General’s Award-winning novel is a powerful tale of resignation and struggle, fierce loyalties and compassion. This book is the first in Richards’ acclaimed Miramichi trilogy. Set in a small mill town in northern New Brunswick, it draws us into the lives of a community of people who live there, including: Joe Walsh, isolated and strong in the face of a drinking problem; his wife, Rita, willing to believe the best about people; and their teenage daughter Adele, whose nature is rebellious and wise, and whose love for her father wars with her desire for independence. Richards’ unforgettable characters are linked together in conflict, and in inarticulate love and understanding. Their plight as human beings is one we share.

We have shown you the focus of PEACE, and through that we invite you to look at YOUR DIVINE PLAN, and to work with it through both your energy bodies and your physical bodies, by HARMONIZING the CONSCIOUSNESS and the MIND in a single purpose of PEACEFUL BEINGNESS !! The more you radiate the ESSENCE OF PEACE from within yourself, the greater the PEACE that will be achieved on the Planet itself. From a tiny acorn the oak Tree will grow! And from your INDIVIDUAL LIGHT OF PEACE, the greater Planetary PEACE will grow. This is the message I took to the BLUE PLANET eons of time ago. It is the message that I bring to YOU now. It is for YOU to determine if you run with it or ignore it, individually or collectively. I merely offer an alternative .. PEACE, LOVE AND HARMONY IN ALL HEARTS AND MINDS. From Sananda, January 21, 2001

At age ninety-five, Judge Edward Dimock, patriarch of his family and the man who defended accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss in the famous 1950 Cold War “trial of the century,” is writing his memoir at his fabled Catskill retreat, Hermitage, with its glorious Italian Renaissance ceiling. Judge Dimock is consumed with doubts about the troubling secrets he’s kept to himself for over fifty years—secrets that might change both American history and the lives of his entire family. Was his client guilty of spying for Stalin or not? And if guilty, did Hiss’s crimes go far beyond his perjury conviction—a verdict that divided the country for a generation? u200bDimock enlists his grandson, George Altmann, a brilliant Princeton astrophysicist, in the quest for truth. Reluctantly, George finds himself drawn into the web of deceit that has ravaged his family, his curiosity sparked by a string of clues found in the Judge’s unpublished memoir and in nine pencil sketches of accused Soviet agents pinned to an old corkboard in his grandfather’s abandoned office. Even more dismaying, the drawings are by George’s paternal grandfather and namesake, a once-famous painter who covered the Hiss trial as a courtroom artist for the Herald Tribune, only to die in uncertain circumstances in a fall from Woodstock’s Fishkill Bridge on Christmas Eve 1949. Many of the suspected spies also died from ambiguous falls (a KGB specialty) or disappeared behind the Iron Curtain—and were conveniently unable to testify in the Hiss trial. George begins to realize the immensity of what is at stake: deceptive entanglements that will indeed alter the accepted history of the Cold War—and how he understands his own unhappy Woodstock childhood, growing up in the shadow of a rumored suicide and the infidelities of an alcoholic father, a roadie with The Band. In Gods of Deception, acclaimed novelist David Adams Cleveland has created a multiverse all its own: a thrilling tale of espionage, a family saga, a stirring love story, and a meditation on time and memory, astrophysics and art, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey into the troubled human heart as well as the past—a past that is ever present, where the gods of deception await our distant call.

Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism brings together ten innovative contributions by outstanding scholars working across a wide array of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Interdisciplinary in its methodology and compass, with a strong comparative European dimension, the volume examines discourses ranging from literature, historiography, music and opera to anthropology and political philosophy. It makes an original contribution to the study of 18th-century ideas of universal peace, progress and wealth as the foundation of future debates on cosmopolitanism. At the same time, it analyses examples of counter-reaction to these ideas and discusses the relevance of the Enlightenment for subsequent polemics on cosmopolitanism, including 21st-century debates in sociology, politics and legal theory.

"Surface. That''s what it was, surface. The still black water gave a mirror image of the trees and bushes that grew out of it. No telling how deep this bayou was. Chip could see this side of the surface. He could tell nothing of what was on the underside." Cry Flip! (2002) These sentences capture the essence of Cry Flip!, a humorous and adventurous portrayal of life and politics of the late 1920s in Louisiana, New Orleans, and the Cajun wetlands. The story is full of colorful characters who find themselves in a network of misadventures which are not really what they seem. One minute you are involved in Federal or State offices in Louisiana; the next you are dangling from a French Quarter balcony, or two-stepping at a raging dance hall which is steeped in Cajun culture and fun. Why tell you more? You won''t be bored.

In the first comprehensive narrative study of the mythology of the Middle East, David Leeming ranges from prehistoric figures such as the Mother Goddess of Çatal Hüyük to Mesopotamian gods such as Marduk and mythic heroes such as Gilgamesh, to the pantheon of Egyptian mythology, including the falcon-headed sky-sun god Horus and jackal-headed Anubis. The author also offers an illuminating exploration of the mythology of the three great monotheistic religions of the region: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

This book provides the first complete account of the life and work of Charles Warren Eaton. It also fills an enormous gap in American art history by telling the story of the Tonalist movement.

A major life of one of the most influential black writers of our time, James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time). Leeming, Baldwin''s friend for 25 years, accessed all of Baldwin''s private papers to bring readers closer than ever to the complex man who struggled out of Harlem to become a legend of American literature. Photos.

A sensational collection of American myths, this title embraces everything from Big Foot and Moby Dick to Paul Bunyan and Davy Crockett to John Henry and Hiawatha. Ranging from the coyote trickster to Johnny Appleseed, this compendium illuminates the myth-making process and sheds much light on what it takes to be American. 40 illustrations.

A shape-shifting succubus, Grace, struggles to adjust to life on the mortal realm and a relationship with an angel. Then a dark force comes into her life, threatening to tear them apart forever… A paranormal romance novel written by a team-up between David Adams and Alica Knight.

Before the Godsdeath we had power. Dragons commanded the arcane and the divine equally. We could have raised our stillborn eggs to life. Such things were not unusual for our kind, especially not those who had magic and motivation. I had both. Ophiliana was the better fighter. I was the better spellcaster. We were, however, both dragons; magic and muscle in one package, wings that could block out the sun, flame that could burn a horse to the bone, eyes as sharp as eagle’s. And yet, for all our strength and power, Ophiliana and I could not conceive. We kept trying, of course. Dead egg after dead egg. We waited. The humans were not so patient. They pleaded with the gods to return. They threatened. They screamed to the heavens. And then, all other avenues exhausted, they sacrificed.

This is an A-Z dictionary of mythologies of the Asian continent. Major characters, places and events of Asian mythology, as well as certain relevant themes and cultural traditions are included.