Bøker av Bruce Holsinger

A sweeping exploration of the shaping role of animal skins in written culture and human imagination over three millennia

“Beautifully crafted. . . . Quite simply, medieval thrillers don’t come better than this. I may have a new favourite author.”–Edinburgh Evening NewsLondon, 1386. A mass murder has taken place within the city walls. Sixteen corpses have been dumped where they are sure to be found, bearing wounds like none seen before.John Gower, middling poet and expert trader in secrets, is summoned to investigate the killings even as the ruthless mayor of London seeks to thwart an open inquiry for reasons unknown. Gower learns that the men have fallen victim to handgonnes, new and terrifying weapons that threaten to change the future of war.Challenged by deception and treachery on all sides, Gower struggles against his failing vision even as his inquiries take him from the city’s labyrinthine slums to the port of Calais to the forests of Kent, where his friend Geoffrey Chaucer serves as justice of the peace. As Gower strives to discover the source of the new guns and the identity of those who wielded them, he must risk everything to reveal the truth–and prevent a more devastating massacre on London’s crowded streets. . . .“Holsinger’s medieval mystery featuring two famous writers succeeds on every level and will have readers hoping for more.”–Shelf Awareness

London, 1385. Surrounded by ruthless courtiers—including his powerful uncle, John of Gaunt, and Gaunt's artful mistress, Katherine Swynford—England's young king, Richard II, is in mortal peril. Songs are heard across London, said to originate from an ancient book that prophesies the ends of England's kings—including Richard's assassination. Only a few powerful men know that the cryptic lines derive from a "burnable book," a seditious work that threatens the stability of the realm. To find the manuscript, wily bureaucrat Geoffrey Chaucer turns to fellow poet John Gower, a professional trader in information with connections high and low.Gower discovers a conspiracy that reaches from the king's court to London's slums—and potentially implicates Gower's own son. As the intrigue deepens, it becomes clear that John Gower, a man with secrets of his own, may hold the key to saving the king, and England itself.

"Hypnotic." - New York Times"Cinematic." - USA Today"A gripping, full-throttle page turner."- Miranda Cowley Heller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Paper PalaceAn adrenaline-fueled story of lives upended and transformed by an unprecedented catastrophe To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna-the world's first category 6 hurricane-upends everything they have taken for granted. When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing, and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will "normal" ever return? A suspenseful read plotted on a vast national tapestry, The Displacements thrillingly explores what happens when privilege is lost and resilience is tested in a swiftly changing world.

A compulsively readable novel about a group of friends and parents destroyed by their own competitiveness when an exclusive school for gifted children opens in the community

Identifies and explains a surprising affinity for medievalism and medieval studies among the leading figures of critical theory. This book contains original essays by Bataille and Bourdieu - translated English - that testify in various ways to the strange persistence of medievalisms in French postwar avant-garde writings.

President Bush was roundly criticized for likening America's antiterrorism measures to a "crusade" in 2001. This book addresses the role of neomedievalism in contemporary politics. It concludes with a parsing of Bush administration's torture memos, which enlist neomedievalism's model of feudal sovereignty on behalf of abrogation of human rights.