Books published by Culicidae Press, LLC

In Kites: The Art of Using Natural Materials, John Browning shows how he uses natural materials to make beautiful kites; kites that fly. In the book Browning balances the visual appeal of Nature's riches with the universal appeal of kites, their ephemeral lightness tethered to the kite flyer's desire to be air-borne, defying the pull of earth's gravity. This combination of beauty and practicability is evident in the colourful images-which inform as well as delight-of kites both fixed and in flight. Throughout the book the images demonstrate how the different shapes, colours, and textures of natural materials have been transformed by Browning into fragile yet flight-worthy structures that appeal to the mind, to the eye, and to the imagination. This book, filled with colourful images, shows many examples of natural materials-leaves, plants, trees, paper, and bamboo-and how they have been brought together to create the kites. Conceived as works of Art, constructed as kites, and realized as flying structures.

In this book I chronicle my experience-at age forty-nine-when I recalled the sexual abuse by my father as a young girl. Through my journal entries, represented here verbatim, I share my journey to heal from the aftermath of this profound awakening. My story is one of survival. It follows the course of the first year of healing-from my psychotic break and diagnosis of PTSD and paranoia, through the flashbacks and memories, my disclosure to family, working through the grief process, and finally to acceptance and forgiveness. My story is one of survival and hope-one that will interest fellow survivors of sexual abuse, loved ones who want to help them, the recovery community, and those with a general interest in this subject.

A witty, haunting tale of family and friendship, regret and redemption, set on a remote Wyoming cattle ranch in the dead of winter. The White Creek Ranch has been in Hap Cobb's family for over a century and a half, but Hap is now eighty-two, and the last surviving member of his family. Hap has no rival as a home cook, and owns the best-stocked private library in the state. When a sudden blizzard hits one January evening, however, and his ranch help Aaron opens the door to a young woman and a teenaged boy seeking shelter from the storm, everything Hap thought he knew about the world begins to shift. With these two unlooked-for houseguests, the White Creek Ranch soon becomes a wellspring of mystery and possibility, and will never be the same again.

In music-instrument language a bridge usually refers to the part of the violin that supports the strings and transfers its vibrations to the instrument's body. It conducts the sound as well as the music produced by the player. In a wider sense, however, a bridge is a passage that connects two worlds-in this case the world of the violin and the world of the fiddle. [...] This book is for violin educators, violin and fiddle students who would like to teach and perform, and fiddlers who are curious to learn more about the connection of the fiddle heritage with the European baroque and classical world.

The essays and reviews in Transatlantic Trio are laid out in a sequence that, though differing slightly from the chronological order in which they were first printed, best reveals the scholarly narrative implicit throughout these formerly scattered, yet now assembled, shorter pieces. One case—namely, “Locke and Wesley: An Essence of Influence”—compresses the collection’s take not just on the British, but on the British-to-Anglo-American, milieu. At least one essay in the first series, accordingly, may be short enough for readers in a hurry. Two cases, as already specified in the bibliographical listings, re-publish only the longer of two pieces otherwise similar. Another case revises the piece in question, and changes its title from “Romanticism and Christianity” to “Empiricism and Evangelicalism: A Combination of Romanticism”: this revision offers readers the quickest way to acquaint themselves with the series as a whole (books included). Establishing the broadest parameters of all the essays, a final case expands the piece and changes its title from “The Common Ground of Wesley and Edwards” to “Wesley and Edwards: An Anglo-American Nexus.” All other reprints remain as they were, except for occasional clarifications and typographical corrections (for convenience in transcribing, the somewhat differing styles of citation favored among the various original publishers are retained). May readers discover only the forgivable extent of remaining infelicity!Browsers among these essays and reviews may wish to consider whether or not British empiricism and the empirical evangelicalism of the Anglo-American world can each in its own right prove as worthy to be read for its manner as for its thoughts. Readers might also stay alert to how the confluence of empirical philosophy and evangelical faith in the neoclassic-to-Romantic imagination helps explain 19th-century authors as aficionados of the realistic and of the preternatural at one and the same time. From their varying but corresponding points of view, these thirty-eight reissues do not just examine, but dwell in the possibility of, intellectual, emotional, and imaginative re-integration. Please take to heart, again—before perusing the first essay—all three  epigraphs, thereby bringing the prologue full circle. The Shelley stanza gives an important, surprising directive for anyone’s natural-cum-spiritual experience. The Koestler statement provides a succinct, stimulating watchword for aesthetic endeavor. And the Wiman meditation bears on how a life’s work ranges from the professional to the personal.

A collection of seventeen intriguing and mind-bending short stories that appeal to readers of crime stories and detective novels, parents of children, lovers of life, letter writers, dentists, and any one in between. The author, Susanna Piontek, was born in Bytom, Poland and immigrated to Germany in 1965. She earned an M.A. at Bochum University, specializing in language pedagogy research, history, and American studies. After working at the University of Saarbrücken for several years, she completed her education as a broadcast editor at a journalism school. Her works have been published in book form, anthologies, and magazines in Germany, the U.S., Israel, and Albania. Since 2006 Piontek is living in the United States as a freelance writer.