Books published by publisher S. J. Blackwell

Amazon #1 Bestselling Ghost Story A serial killer on the loose, two reporters in his sights, and a legendary ghost haunting the town... How far would you go to catch a serial killer? For two local reporters, the cost may be their souls. Lord Halloween, a vicious murderer who targeted Loudoun County, Va., twelve years ago, has returned. Quinn and Kate, two community journalists, race uncover his identity before a promised bloodbath on Halloween. But to stop him, they may unleash a far darker threat - and pay an unimaginable price.

When Morgan loses Holly's friendship bracelet in her Nan's concrete bunker, they go inside to find it and discover that it's a whole lot more than a storage place for coal. Unexpectedly back in time, the two girls meet new friends Bob, Frank and Nellie and soon find themselves in the middle of a mystery. Who is stealing food from Fordham's farm?What is hidden under the strange tree on Totleigh Hill?And how do you explain a mobile phone to a kid from the 1940s?Suitable for 8+, and anyone who enjoys a good old Blytonesque mystery adventure!

"Contemporary reporters stumble into ancient powers - and modern urban fantasy gets a colonial Gothic twist. Blackwell's smartly original series is heady - and headless - good fun."-- Melissa F. Olson, author of the bestselling Boundary Magic and Scarlett Bernard seriesA Celtic legend and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" collide in A Soul to Steal, a bestselling Kindle novel that deftly combines urban fantasy, mystery, and suspense.A serial killer on the loose, two reporters in his sights, and a legendary ghost haunting the town...Lord Halloween, a vicious murderer who targeted Loudoun County, Va., twelveyears ago, has returned. Quinn and Kate, two community journalists, race to uncover his identity before a promised bloodbath on Halloween. But to stop him, they may unleash a far darker threat -- and pay an unimaginable price.A Soul to Steal has been featured on USA Today and praised by book bloggers and readers alike for its thrilling combination of urban fantasy, mystery and suspense. "With the combination of an ancient Celtic myth and the legend of the Headless Horseman, Blackwell's story is a leave-the-light-on kind of page turner... If you like suspenseful thrillers, check out A Soul to Steal."--Indie Reader [Featured on USA Today Books]GET LOST IN THE SANHEIM CHRONICLES:Book One, A Soul to Steal: Two reporters on the trail of a killer find much more than they bargained for. "When I first downloaded 'A Soul to Steal' I had no idea I would get sucked into a series that would fire my imagination and twist mythologies so thoroughly."Book Two: Band of Demons: Quinn and Kate confront a new evil that threatens to destroy their town. The novel has earned rave reviews for its "plot twists that will leave you gasping for air."Book Three: Give the Devil His Due: "A stellar conclusion to one of the best trilogies I've ever read... I'm still reeling from the ending."

This is a survey of religious beliefs in the British Isles from the Old Stone Age to the comming of Christianity, one of the least familiar but most extensive periods in Britain's history. Ronald Hutton draws upon new data, much of it archaeological, that has transformed interpretation over the past decade. Giving more or less equal weight to all periods, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, he considers a range of evidence for Celtic and Romano-British paganism: from burial sites, cairns, megaliths and causeways, to carvings, figurines, jewellery, weapons, votive objects, literary texts and folklore. The author reveals the important rethinking that has taken place over Christianization and the decline of paganism, and reviews the progress that has been made in tracing the survival of pre-Christian beliefs and imagery into the Middle Ages. Dr Hutton shows how a host of received ideas have been demolished, and how the pagans of ancient Britain were far more creative, complex, engmatic and dynamic than has previously been supposed.

1977, British hardcover edition, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, U.K. 371 pages. Written by a respected University of Chicago professor, this is one challenging, brilliantly conceived title. Shows how diseases and viruses have literally brought on political and social upheavals throughout history. Documents smallpox and measles epidemics, influenza, syphilis, cholera, malaria, and much more. Something all of us sometimes forget is the 1918-1919 epidemic of influenza that claimed 21 million victims. "A brilliant and challenging approach to history."

When the Three Brother Bears set off for an adventure in the woods, Captain thinks they will follow his map. But Blue has other ideas and Thunder struggles to keep up…Stars of a new book series for children aged 1-6, Captain, Blue & Thunder are three little Teddy Bear brothers who look out for each other as they grow up. The world of the Three Brother Bears is a safe place where, though worries might be faced, there is always a happy ending and where the relationship between the brothers is a comfort and a constant. The stories are written in simple rhymes and deal with everyday childhood experience such as the fear of being lost, feeling “different”, sibling rivalry etc. The photographic illustrations are shot in the natural environment: in the woods, at the beach, in the garden, and in unique hand-constructed indoor sets. Captain likes maps and mechanical things, Blue loves animals and Thunder is a typical toddler, trying to keep up with his brothers and often getting things wrong!Jo Blackwell (aka Grandma Bear) is a writer, photographer and proud Grandmother. She created these little characters and their happy little world because she believes strongly that children need to play outside and that the series’ values of Kindness, Resourcefulness, Loyalty, Self Respect, Playfulness, Creativity, Friendship and Environmental Awareness can be taught through example, recreating the childhood of our imagination.

Children's literature is an expanding field of study, involving criticism, education, and psychology. This book argues that children's literature has an important role in the development of critical theory, especially in the areas of reader response and the effect of the imagined readership on the writing of the text itself. The book does not tackle the subject in the context of schools and movements in criticism, but seeks to develop ideas from basics, using the minimum of critical jargon.

LEVIATHAN Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil—commonly referred to as Leviathan—is a book written by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and published in 1651 (revised Latin edition 1668). Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan. The work concerns the structure of society and legitimate government, and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory. Leviathan ranks as a classic western work on statecraft comparable to Machiavelli's The Prince. Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), Leviathan argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature ("the war of all against all") could only be avoided by strong, undivided government. THOMAS HOBBES Thomas Hobbes (/hɒbz/; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679), in some older texts Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, was an English philosopher who is considered one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, which established the social contract theory that has served as the foundation for most later Western political philosophy. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy. Though on rational grounds a champion of absolutism for the sovereign, Hobbes also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law that leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid. His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, remains influential; and his account of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a "social contract" remains one of the major topics of political philosophy.