The irreverant, hilarious, touching and philosophical caper about the end of the world. 'Still makes me laugh 25 years later' Ben Aaronovitch There is a hint of Armageddon in the air. According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (recorded, thankfully, in 1655, before she blew up her entire village and all its inhabitants, who had gathered to watch her burn), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. So the Armies of Good and Evil are massing, the four Bikers of the Apocalypse are revving up their mighty hogs and hitting the road, and the world's last two remaining witchfinders are getting ready to Fight the Good Fight. Atlantis is rising. Frogs are falling. Tempers are flaring, and everything appears to be going to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon are not particularly looking forward to the coming Rapture. They've lived amongst Humanity for millennia, and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle. So if Crowley and Aziraphale are going to stop it from happening, they've got to find and kill the AntiChrist (which is a shame, really, as he's a nice kid). There's just one glitch: someone seems to have misplaced him. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's brilliantly dark and funny take on mankind's final judgment is back, in a new hardcover edition which includes an introduction by the authors. Readers can't get enough of Good Omens: 'This is actually a profound philosophical and theological treatise , exploring good and evil, nature versus nurture, free will, war, pollution, and organised religion . . . The writing is so like Douglas Adams that it could be mistaken for a missing volume of Hitchhiker's ' Goodreads reviewer, ' Good Omens is a hysterically funny book . . . It is also a love letter to humanity and to the power of free will and choice in a world desperate to wrench it away. You should read it ' Goodreads reviewer, 'If I were to pick a setting for a comedy, I'm not sure it would be Armageddon. However, in the talented minds of Pratchett and Gaiman, it's the perfect setting . . . just the right mix of clever, deadpan, sarcasm, innuendo, and self-deprecation ' Goodreads reviewer, ' Has got to be one of the funniest satires I've ever read . . . This book is funny, irreverent, and at times surprisingly insightful' Goodreads reviewer, ' No getting around it, it IS funny! . . . The book is loaded with great characters , there's even a cute little dog, The Hound from Hell morphed into a cat chasing mongrel' Goodreads reviewer,

It is commonly known that the United States was founded by men with a philosophy grounded in the occult: namely Freemasons, who saw in the US a potential "New Atlantis", which would guide the nations towards a New World Order of peace, democracy, and enlightenment. But what few people understand is the correlation between the esoteric doctrines of Masonry and the economic principles that underpin the American economy. Few understand that the dollar is a unit of magical energy, and the dollar bill itself a magical talisman. Although many words have been written by conspiracy theorists analyzing the Masonic symbols on the one dollar bill, no one has yet been able to sufficiently explain why these symbols are there, or what they really mean. Solomon's Treasure explains how the magic of the dollar operates. The creation of money by the Federal Reserve, and its exponential multiplication by the procedures of the banking system, is analogous to the creation and multiplication of gold in the metaphysical practice of alchemy. The members of the Federal Reserve Board are in many ways like sorcerers, conjuring wealth seemingly out of thin air and distributing it at will to transform the American economy according to their desires. The dollar is "fiat currency", declared into existence by the central bank in a manner similar to the creation of the universe by the divine words "Let there be light!" This system depends entirely on a religious faith by the American people in the supernatural power of the dollar. This faith is reinforced by the financial terminology currently in use, as well as by watchwords and symbols found on American money. These act as magical charms, and also as tokens of communal trust in, and fidelity to, the dollar as an institution. Every time a person spends a dollar, or accepts a dollar as payment, they are confirming their belief in the dollar, and using it to exercise their spiritual will. Even the familiar dollar ($) sign has an occult meaning which is linked with these ideas. ¿Solomon's Treasure reveals the role played by the proto-Masonic Order of Knights Templar in the development of capitalism and the modern banking system. Because of their pivotal contributions, numerous modern financial terms, monetary concepts, and banking practices can be traced back to the Templars. Perhaps most shocking are the links between the treasure of King Solomon, purportedly discovered by the Knights Templar, and America's wealth. In Solomon's Treasure, author Tracy R. Twyman explains how time-honored esoteric wisdom principles of wealth creation have been passed down through the ages: from King Solomon, to the Knights Templar, to the Freemasons, and ultimately to the architects of the US dollar.

"A palm tree, seeing me troubled and divining the cause, murmured in its branches that there was nothing wrong with fifteen-year old boys getting into corners with girls of fourteen; quite the contrary, youths of that age have no other function, and corners were made for that very purpose. It was an old palm-tree, and I believed in old palm-trees even more than in old books. Birds, butterflies, a cricket trying out its summer song, all the living things of the air were of the same opinion." So begins this extraordinary love story between Bento and Capitu, childhood sweethearts who grow up next door to each other in Rio de Janeiro in the 1850s. Like other great nineteenth century novels--The Scarlet Letter, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary--Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro explores the themes of marriage and adultery. But what distinguishes Machado's novel from the realism of its contemporaries, and what makes it such a delightful discovery for English-speaking readers, is its eccentric and wildly unpredictable narrative style. Far from creating the illusion of an orderly fictional "reality," Dom Casmurro is told by a narrator who is disruptively self-conscious, deeply subjective, and prone to all manner of marvelous digression. As he recounts the events of his life from the vantage of a lonely old age, Bento continually interrupts his story to reflect on the writing of it: he examines the aptness of an image or analogy, considers cutting out certain scenes before taking the manuscript to the printer, and engages in a running, and often hilarious, dialogue with the reader. "If all this seems a little emphatic, irritating reader," he says, "it's because you have never combed a girl's hair, you've never put your adolescent hands on the young head of a nymph..." But the novel is more than a performance of stylistic acrobatics. It is an ironic critique of Catholicism, in which God appears as a kind of divine accountant whose ledgers may be balanced in devious as well as pious ways. It is also a story about love and its obstacles, about deception and self-deception, and about the failure of memory to make life's beginning fit neatly into its end. First published in 1900, Dom Casmurro is one of the great unrecognized classics of the turn of the century by one of Brazil's greatest writers. The popularity of Machado de Assis in Latin America has never been in doubt and now, with the acclaim of such critics and writers as Susan Sontag, John Barth, and Tony Tanner, his work is finally receiving the worldwide attention it deserves. Newly translated and edited by John Gledson, with an afterword by Joao Adolfo Hansen, this Library of Latin America edition is the only complete, unabridged, and annotated translation of the novel available. It offers English-speaking readers a literary genius of the rarest kind.