This Last Three Weeks' Acquisitions
- Henry Rogers, The Greyson Letters: Selections from the Correspondence of R. E. H. Greyson, Esq. (Gould and Lincon, 1859). An epistolary novel about the contemporary religious scene in the form of an "edited collection"; more about Rogers, a Congregationalist, here. (eBay)
- "Paul Peppergrass," Mary Lee; Or, the Yankee in Ireland (Kelly, Hedian, & Piet, 1859). Parody of the Irish travel narrative. P. P. is the pseudonym of Father John Boyce, himself an Irish expatriate. (eBay)
- Mrs. Bennett, Jane Shore; Or, the Goldsmith's Wife. An Historical Tale (William Nicholson, n.d.). Novel about Edward IV's influential mistress. (eBay)
- Rev. W. Adams, The Distant Hills: An Allegory (General Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union, 1849). Two orphaned children undergo strange ordeals that lead one to salvation and one to damnation. (eBay)
- Robert Olen Butler, Intercourse: Stories (Chronicle, 2008). Short-shorts about...well...read the title. Begins at the beginning, with Adam and Eve, and ends with Santa Claus and a female elf (!). (Amazon [secondhand])
- Deborah Weisgall, The World Before Her: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin, 2008). Parallel-plot historical novel about George Eliot (in Venice at the end of her life) and Caroline Spingold (an artist in Venice a century later). (Amazon [secondhand])
- Stephen L. Antczak and James C. Bassett, eds., Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (ROC, 2013). Anthology of steampunked variations on "Sleeping Beauty," "The Red Shoes," folklore, etc. (Amazon)
- Robert A. Yelle, The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in British India (AAR, 2013). Analyzes what happened when eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Protestant hermeneutics were applied to South Asian religions. (Amazon)
- Douglas E. Cowan, Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen (Baylor, 2008). The traces of Christian elements, in particular, in contemporary horror cinema, and their cultural significance. (Amazon [secondhand])
- Alison Twells, The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class, 1792-1850 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). The role of evangelical missionary discourse in shaping social and imperial activism. (Amazon [secondhand])
- Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, eds., Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (Pennsylvania, 1997). Essays on topics such as eating, gender, otherness; includes contributions from contemporary vampire novelists. (Amazon [secondhand])
- William Patrick Day, Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture (Kentucky, 2009). Permutations of vampires, especially "liberationist," "erotic," and "post-human" varieties, in fiction and film. (Amazon [secondhand])
- Mary Y. Hallab, Vampire God (SUNY, 2009). Draws on folklore, film, and fiction to analyze how vampire narratives engage with contemporary anxieties about death and dying. (Amazon [secondhand])