Books with title Acquainted With The Night

A woman's quest for the truth...A medieval icon that holds the clues...And an ancient book with the power to shake Christianity-and humanity itself. London tour guide Caroline Clifford has never believe in vampires- until her uncle is brutally murdered at a Bulgarian archaeological site, and a vampire hunter who corresponded with him seeks her out.Strange anagrams on her uncle's passport lead them to a cliff-top monastery in Greece, where a shattering revelation connects a relic Caro inherited to an age-old text on immortality-and an enigmatic prophecy that pits the forces of darkness and light in a showdown that could destroy all they know...

The mysterious, seductive essence of the night has long entranced the imagination of artists and writers, and now it is the focus of a unique book that pairs evocative black-and-white photography with classic and contemporary poetry. Lynn Saville's photographs, shot after dark in and around New York and at other urban and rural sites in the United States, Portugal, Greece, and India, reveal unusual aspects of familiar cities and monuments as well as the dusky allure of fringe areas such as Manhattan's industrial district and desolate waterfronts. Rich with light and shadow, the photographs suggest the suspenseful, provocative quality of film noir.Accompanying the photographs are 35 poems and poetic excerpts about the night, beginning with Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night," which inspired the book's title and mood. Selected here are works by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Charles Simic, and Octavio Paz, among other award-winning poets, and citations from ancient verse such as the Rig Veda and The Epic of Gilgamesh. This volume speaks with contemplative beauty to those who love photography and poetry, and especially to all denizens of the night.

A rich and diverse collection of stories detailing life in all its daily battles and yearnings Lynne Sharon Schwartz is a master of tone, deft at creating realistic settings and characters. In Acquainted with the Night, she unleashes sixteen wickedly smart, wholly believable short stories. In the title story, for instance, a man’s nocturnal battle against a floating globule in his eye forces him to question his very state of being. In “Mrs. Saunders Writes to the World,” an anonymous old woman attempts to force people to know her first name by writing “FRANNY” in big red letters all over her neighborhood. In another, a girl must to deal with the increasingly juvenile actions of her divorced mother. By turns darkly humorous, moving, and witty, Acquainted with the Night demonstrates Schwartz’s genius for detail.

Only Christopher Dewdney could mine the darkest pools of lore, legend, natural history, science, cultural history and the arts to recast the seemingly commonplace aspects of an ordinary night into a magical and exhilarating nocturnal tour.Using an original hour-by-hour structure that follows night’s progression from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am, Dewdney explores and celebrates a single representative night at each point on the clock.• 6:00 pm: The setting sun begins Dewdney’s search todiscover the perfect sunset.• 10:00 pm: The evening rhythms of the city hit theirstride, from the cop on the night beat to the backbeatof the clubs.• Midnight: The hour of romance and magic.• 3:00 am: Dewdney is wide awake at a sleep clinic.• 5:00 am: “The desperate hour,” we enter a provocativecultural investigation of the “art of darkness.”For all those who’ve been wondering what they’ve been missing while they sleep, Acquainted with the Night is an illuminating exploration and a terrific gift book.

It is the rare individual who has not, at one time or another, been kept awake for hours on end―as the rest of the world, maddeningly, appears to be comfortably lost in the nocturnal world of dreams.Here is a treasury of verse on the rich subject of insomnia―meditations by poets who have sought to describe their own moments of solitude in darkness, when the world's regular bustle of activity and distraction falls away and they are left to contemplate in silence.Acquainted with the Night brings together Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop, Rimbaud and Sappho, Shakespeare and Shelley―the great poets of the Western literary heritage―on a theme with which each one has been acutely familiar. Lisa Russ Spaar has also unearthed ruminations on the sleepless nights of poets the world over: in a fascinatingly diverse anthology, she has harvested verse from Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Inuit, Vietnamese, Tamil, Yiddish, and Romanian poets, who together present an illuminating display of insomnia's extraordinary and enduring legacy in widely different cultures through the centuries.As these exquisite poems chart a course from solitude, through anxiety, to epiphany, the reader truly learns what it means to be acquainted with the night.

Caroline Clifford’s bland life as a London tour guide flips upside down when her beloved uncle is brutally murdered at a Bulgarian archaeological site. While traveling to recover his remains, she meets a man who corresponded with her uncle. Jude Barrett is a biochemist on a mission — to rid the world of vampires… At first, Caro is dismissive of Jude’s beliefs, but she can’t ignore the signs that are all around her: the human bite marks on her uncle, the men following her, the anguished cries after sundown. Strange anagrams on her uncle’s passport lead her and Jude to a cliff-top monastery in Greece, where a shattering revelation connects a relic Caro inherited from her parents to an age-old text on immortality — and an enigmatic prophecy that pits the forces of darkness and light in a showdown that could destroy them all... “A fantastic read. Smart and sophisticated... A Da Vinci Code–esque adventure with a fresh take on vampirism and an emotional, sexy romance.” —Virna DePaul, author of Chosen by Blood “Bulgarian vampires and nonstop sex (not with the Bulgarian vampires), PLUS an illuminated lost manuscript, in a twisty tale of family mystery, murder, and corporate greed.” —Diana Gabaldon, New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander series “A singe-your-fingers page-turner. Don’t miss this one.” —Shirley Hailstock, author of Some Like Them Rich