Books like Aleister Crowley by Gary Lachman

Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising offers a concise guide to the human mind, blending the eight‑circuit model of consciousness with self‑observation, general semantics, and holistic practices to enhance mental control and awareness.

At first glance, it seems difficult to imagine two more different literary personalities than Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall. Coward's writing is playful, sarcastic, absurd; Hall's is brooding and melancholic, rife with misery and suffering. Where she throws her head back in despair, he merely lifts an eyebrow. Yet as Terry Castle displays in her provocative new study, the two had much more in common than critics have been willing to concede. The first look at the literary and biographical link between these influential contemporaries, Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall recounts a forgotten literary friendship and shows that Coward and Hall even make subtle, "ghostly" appearances in each others' works. This captivating tale is brought to life in a series of 45 illustrations, including photographs of Hall, Coward, and others in their social circle, along with cartoon renditions of the two from the popular press. Through its imaginative juxtaposition of two major literary figures, this provocative work illuminates how traditional ideas of the differences between male and female homosexuals shield from view a vast arena of cultural understanding. Castle pushes past stale definitions - the tragic lesbian and the witty, urbane gay man - to present a broader picture. In the process, Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall provides a rich critical vocabulary for bridging the experiences of gays and lesbians in history, casting light upon deep-rooted stereotypes that have long separated the two.

Samuel Pepys, a naval administrator and diarist, kept a private diary that captures the turbulent world of Restoration London and explores his inner life of relations with women, fears and ambitions, and political shifts.

An illustrated, scholarly guide that charts Agatha Christie’s life, works, and critical reception, enriched with rare photographs and updates on her publications, films, and TV adaptations.

Isobel Grundy is the first to examine in detail Lady Mary's family situation and social relationships, or to situate Montagu's writing life in relation to both tradition and innovation, to enlightenment circles and political agendas, and to the emerging tradition of women's writing, in which she herself was a key figure. Grundy highlights Lady Mary's adolescent longing for literary fame, her growing understanding of the pressures of class and gender imperatives on such upstart desires, her conflicted negotiations with manuscript culture and the new world of print, the punitive responses of society, the deep dissonance at every stage of her life between her actual circumstances and the constructed self of her letters and other writings. She also situates Montagu's work in the context of her exceptionally wide reading in both men's and women's texts, and her own theorizing of her social world.