What is dreaming & what causes it? Why are dreams so strange & why are they so hard to remember? Replacing dream mystique with modern dream science J. Allan Hobson provides a new & increasingly complete picture of how dreaming is created by the brain. Focusing on dreaming to explain the mechanisms of sleep this book explores how the new science of dreaming is affecting theories in psychoanalysis & how it is helping our understanding of the causes of mental illness. J. Allan Hobson investigates his own dreams to illustrate & explain some of the fascinating discoveries of modern sleep science while challenging some of the traditionally accepted theories about the meaning of dreams. He reveals how dreaming maintains & develops the mind why we go crazy in our dreams in order to avoid doing so when we are awake & why sleep is not just good for health but essential for life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts analysis perspective new ideas & enthusiasm to make interesting & challenging topics highly readable. ...

Journalist David K. Randall never gave sleep much thought. That is until he began sleepwalking & a midnight crash into a wall sent him on an investigation into the strange science of sleep. In Dreamland Randall explores the research investigating those dark hours that make up nearly a third of our lives. Taking readers from military battlefields to childrens bedrooms Dreamland shows that sleep isnt as simple as it seems. Among other questions he looks at whether women sleep differently to men & if you happen to kill someone while you are sleepwalking whether it counts as murder. This book is a tour of the often odd sometimes disturbing & always fascinating things that go on in the peculiar world of sleep. ...

You never think it could happen to you. You never think that one day youll stand in a graveyard rain tapping on a sea of black umbrellas watching your parents being lowered into the earth never to come back. Its happening to me. They said it was an accident. Only I know the truth. My parents were hunters like their parents & grandparents before them hundreds of years back scores of ancestors behind me fulfilling the same call. I must follow in their footsteps. I am the only one left to keep the promise. I can never give up the fight this fight that has been handed down to me thrust upon my unwilling shoulders. Id rather be buried with my parents my brave fierce father & mother who lived & died by the Midnight motto: Dont Let Them Roam. Ever since her thirteenth birthday seventeen-year-old Sarah Midnights dreams have been plagued by demons
- but unlike most peoples nightmares Sarahs come true. Her dreams guide her parents hunt as Sarah remains in bed terrified but safe sheltered from the true horrors of the Midnight legacy. But all this is about to change. After the murder of her parents she is cruelly thrust into a secret world of unimaginable danger as she is forced to take up their mission. Alone & unprepared for the fight that lies before her Sarah must learn how to use the powers shes inherited & decide whom to trust before its too late...
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In the debut novel DREAMS & SHADOWS screenwriter & noted film critic C. Robert Cargill takes us beyond the veil through the lives of Ewan & Colby young men whose spirits have been enmeshed with the otherworld from a young age. This brilliantly crafted narrative
- part Neil Gaiman part Guillermo Del Torro part William Burroughs
- follows the boys from their star-crossed adolescences to their haunted adulthoods. Cargill's tour-de-force takes us inside the Limestone Kingdom a parallel universe where whisky-swilling genies & foul-mouthed wizards argue over the state of the metaphysical realm. Having left the spirit world & returned to the human world Ewan & Colby discover that the creatures from this previous life have not forgotten them & that fate can never be sidestepped. With sensitivity & hopeful examination Cargill illuminates a supernatural culture that all too eerily resembles our own. Set in a richly imagined & constructed world complete with its own richly detailed history & mythology DREAMS & SHADOWS is a deeply engaging story about two extraordinary boys becoming men.

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The son of a black African father & a white American mother Obama was only two years old when his father walked out on the family. Many years later Obama receives a phone call from Nairobi: his father is dead. This sudden news inspires an emotional odyssey for Obama determined to learn the truth of his father's life & reconcile his divided inheritance. Written at the age of thirty-three Dreams from my Father is an unforgettable read. it illuminates not only Obama's journey but also our universal desire to understand our history & what makes us the people we are. ...

An understanding of natures final laws may be within our grasp
- a way of explaining forces & symmetries & articles that does not
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Nineteen-year-old Joy Louie has run away from her home in 1950s America to start a new life in China. Idealistic & unafraid she believes that Chairman Mao is on the side of the people despite what her family keeps telling her. How can she trust them when she has just learned that her parents have lied to her for her whole life that her mother Pearl is really her aunt & that her real father is a famous artist who has been living in China all these years? Joy arrives in Green Dragon Village where families live in crowded windowless huts & eke out a meagre existence from the red soil. & where a handsome young comrade catches her eye... Meanwhile Pearl returns to China to bring her daughter home
- if she can. For Mao has launched his Great Leap Forward & each passing season brings ever greater hardship to cities & rural communes alike. Joy must rely on her skill as a painter & Pearl must use her contacts from her decadent childhood in 1930s Shanghai to find a way to safety & a chance of joy for them both. Haunting passionate & heartbreakingly real this is the unforgettable new novel by the internationally acclaimed Lisa See.
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Girls Aloud are the most successful UK girl b&. Since winning ITV's Popstars: The Rivals in 2002 Cheryl Kimberley Nadine Nicola & Sarah have come a very long way indeed. With a record-breaking eighteen consecutive Top 10 singles five platinum albums two Brit nominations a judge on the X Factor & CD sales in excess of six million in the UK alone they are both loved by the masses & critically acclaimed by the press. Now in Dreams That Glitter" the girls share with us the story of their phenomenal success. Giving a personal insight into their childhoods their love interests their struggle for recognition their party lifestyle & their rock-solid friendships this book follows their ride from relative obscurity to international superstardom
- with plenty of style advice & celebrity gossip along the way. Fun feisty drop-dead gorgeous incredibly talented & the life & soul of the party Girls Aloud are the nation's favourite girl b&. Packed full of pictures from their own personal collections this book shares with us their innermost secrets & reveals exactly what it feels like when all of your dreams come true."
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GRRM: A RRETROSPECTIVE is a massive collection of the best of George R.R. Martin's short fiction containing 32 short stories & novellas including the Hugo-winning 'A Song for Lya' the Bram Stoker-winning ' The Pear-Shaped Man' & ' The Skin Trade' which won the World Fantasy Award & is generally acclaimed as the finest werewolf story of our time. As well as the stories themselves which span Martin's multi-faceted career there are two television scripts voluminous author commentary an introduction by award-winning editor & writer Gardner Dozois & a comprehensive bibliography. This must-have volume by one of the brightest stars in the field of imaginative fiction ...

GRRM: A RRETROSPECTIVE is a massive collection of the best of George R.R. Martin's short fiction containing 32 short stories & novellas including the Hugo-winning 'A Song for Lya' the Bram Stoker-winning ' The Pear-Shaped Man' & ' The Skin Trade' which won the World Fantasy Award & is generally acclaimed as the finest werewolf story of our time. As well as the stories themselves which span Martin's multi-faceted career there are two television scripts voluminous author commentary an introduction by award-winning editor & writer Gardner Dozois & a comprehensive bibliography. This must-have volume by one of the brightest stars in the field of imaginative fiction ...