Books published by John Hunt Publishing

A new and spiritual look at the 12 signs of the zodiac.

Are you really ready for change? Are you prepared for a world changing as fast as you can read this sentence? Most leaders say they are prepared for the future, yet many organizations and communities are doing things in the same old way they've been working for decades. We're living on the precipice of a new era in human history. Preparing For A World That Doesn't Exist - Yet offers an approach to getting ready for an emerging society that will be increasingly fast paced, interconnected, interdependent, and complex. In Preparing For A World That Doesn't Exist - Yet, you will learn about an emerging Second Enlightenment and the capacities you'll need to achieve success in this new, fast-evolving world. Higher education, health and wellness, governance and the economy are transforming in ways few of us could have imagined ten or even five years ago. In this book, you'll get the skills you need to ride the wave of the future and the perspective you'll need to be ready to catch the next wave, too. Planners, physicians, government and higher-education leaders are using the principles and capacities described in this book to create better organizations, and best of all communities of the future that will lead to a planet that can thrive. Join them in looking at the future with excitement and anticipation.

The lives we lead, particularly in the Western world, are technologically overburdened and spiritually impoverished. Our children can tell us the various merits of different operating systems for electronic devices, but are rarely in touch with how different emotions are experienced in the body, or how it feels to bring kindness to a moment of difficulty. They are bombarded almost constantly with information at a rate that mankind even 50 years ago would have struggled to begin to comprehend, and mental illness is at an all-time high. Research indicates that one of every four adolescents will have an episode of major depression during high school, with the average age of onset being 14 years of age. The human race is at a tipping point, and we have no sane choice but to begin to awaken the capacities within us that have too-long lain dormant. We can choose to lead a child towards awakening, and thus awaken ourselves.

Ultimum Mysterium attempts to explain mysterious phenomena from a new perspective. In Section I: ';The Puzzle', the author sets out and examines a number of reportedly true cases of such activity, both from history and from more recent times, which are so bizarre that even current scientific theories are unable to offer an explanation. In Section II: ';The Physics', the author reviews the latest scientific discoveries (mainly in physics, but also in neurological research) with a view to seeing whether these can offer any kind of explanation to the strange phenomena described in Section I. In Section III: ';The Philosophy', the author examines the underlying philosophical issues to see what may be possible in terms of a scientific explanation. He argues the universe is what it is, regardless of what we may think about its workings. If the impossible happens, so be it. We need keep an open mind on the subject and embrace the bizarre, but fascinating world of the impossible.

Enso Morning: Daily Meditation Gifts presents over 160 Morning Blessing Letters to awaken, stimulate and deepen meditation and spiritual practice. In the tradition of Robert Frost and Wendell Berry, Jacob uses poetic images and personal experiences of New England nature, the birds, animals, woods, and beaches of coastal Maine, to awaken readers to begin their day nurtured and encouraged to be themselves, joined with like-minded souls. The personal letters in Enso Morning: Daily Meditation Gifts provide a friendly, comforting and accessible way to wake up and affirm the whole self. Each letter has seven brief paragraphs that offer a welcome to the day, a silent meditation, affirmations of body, heart and soul, a blessing and a gift for each day.

In this book, using Eric Fromm's distinction between Humanistic and Authoritarian Religions whose implications for Christianity the author explored at some length in his recently published The Two Faces of Christianity, he identifies what he believes to be the fundamental psychopathology which has prevented Christianity becoming an unambiguous good for humanity, namely an authoritarian mind-set. Central to this mindset is the idea of God as a controlling force acting on the universe, but separate from it, rather than as a property of ';all that is'. Dr Oxtoby argues that it is this ubiquitous authoritarian thinking, with its emphasis on the need for obedience to imposed authority which lies at the root of the sado-masochistic obsession with pain, suffering and death of the Doctrine of the Atonement.

Uncertain Futures: An Assessment of the Conditions of the Present provides a detailed look into the economic and political conditions of our present moment from a Marxist perspective. Key aspects of Marxist economic theory are illustrated in clear ways in order to provide an easy introduction to Marxist thought and their applicability. The book also examines the sluggish recovery from the Great Recession, in the context of the long-term feasibility of sustaining the capitalist system by placing it into a historical framework. It considers the necessity of social democratic reforms while calling for an anarchic re-invigoration of the politics of everyday life.

A sobering look at the ongoing crisis in civic learning and the fatal attraction of information technology.

There is another world, and it is in this one. Pearly James is fed up with being lonely. Shes fed up with her pointless, boring school life. And shes deeply fed up with the fake, numbing, conformist world of screen culture that seems to enslave all her schoolmates. She just knows there must be something more. Change is what she really wants, but who or what will make it happen? Enter Bernard OHare, the computer genius with his trademark black overcoat and green, staring eyes... Both an adventure and a cry against the new global conformity, Tramp Life is the story of how one girl discovers another world hidden behind humdrum existence. A world of danger and delight, music, madness...and maybe friendship, too.

Predominance of the National Security Complex in government has undermined American liberty and security.

A stark expose of the enslavement, trafficking, sexual starvation and general abuse of workers in the Gulf Arab Region.

When her grandmothers ashes along with a family portrait arrive at her home in England, fourteen-year-old Tatiana finds herself being tormented by supernatural forces. To free herself from the increasingly persistent hauntings, she has to find and release the ghost of an ancestor caught up in the terror of the French Revolution. With the aid of her cousin, Marcus, she sets out on a mission, which leads them through the dramas of present-day life in Paris and the frightening upheavals of Revolutionary France.

What does literature mean in our time? While names like Proust, Kafka and Woolf still stand for something, what that something actually is has become obscured by the claims of commerce and journalism. Perhaps a new form of attention is required. Stephen Mitchelmore began writing online in 1996 and became Britains first book blogger soon after, developing the form so that it can respond in kind to the singular space opened by writing. Across 44 essays, he discusses among many others the novels of Richard Ford, Jeanette Winterson and Karl Ove Knausgaard, the significance for modern writers of cave paintings and the moai of Easter Island, and the enduring fallacy of Reality Hunger, all the while maintaining a focus on the strange nature of literary space. By listening to the echoes and resonances of writing, this book enables a unique encounter with literature that many critics habitually ignore. With an introduction by the acclaimed novelist Lars Iyer, This Space of Writing offers a renewed appreciation of the mystery and promise of writing.

It looked like a paper cut, but sixteen-year-old Dylan Lord is discovering just how painful lies can be. Every lie she tells or hears causes physical pain. It isnt coincidence this started with Jack. He's there to teach her to be a ';Fide'; to feel and heal lies. She wants to believe nothing is happening. A letter opener sliced her hand, not her mother's ';I love you.' The cuts opening on her arms as she walks through her high school were already there, but it's not working. Every wound she suffers Jack does too. When a lie rips open across Dylan's stomach, she must admit she isnt fine. She never asked for this. She doesnt want to be a walking lie detector, but not all lies can be covered with Band-Aids. The lies she hasnt fixed are spreading across her body, and she isnt the only one suffering. Jack is growing weaker. She has to hear the truth to heal. If she doesnt hear the truth soon, someone is going to die.

Never try to open the locked doors. Never question what you are told. And never attempt to cross the Boundary.

Mindfulness and Madness shows how to approach our everyday life without armor, and how to meet the worlds nakedness with our own.

Enlightenment is a special kind of knowledge or insight that lifts the malaise of everyday life. But what exactly is it? This ground-breaking book offers a definitive logical account for the modern mind of the kind of knowledge that spiritual enlightenment provides, doing justice both to logic and to spirituality. Zen and the Tao have expressed the mystical nature of enlightenment by contradictions and riddles; it is shown here that the reason enlightenment must be mystical in this way is that it is complementary to logic, expressing changes in the very nature of our understanding. It is this that makes our life magically switch from the existentially meaningless to one of profound meaning. For this switch to not be mystical, our desolation would have to already be solvable in terms of our current conceptions which is precisely what often seems impossible for us. This work should appeal both to the believer and the sceptic, by revealing the special relationship between spiritual enlightenment and Logic. Not only does it use logic to clarify what is meant by enlightenment, but it simultaneously shows how the mystical nature of enlightenment clarifies when and when not to use logical reasoning.

While chain-smoking Roy Scherer might aspire to fill loafers better worn by Marlowe, Hammer and Spade, reality wears such a whim thin. His clients veer from immortal to monster-brow-beaten, and he's up against foes that howl at the moon, one case of Lazarus Syndrome, dismembered talking heads, and a vengeful Japanese spirit. Scherers only allies? Ditzy, bookish assistant Suzie Miller, her gung-ho, mostly inebriated father Art, an ageless ballet dancer with martial-arts skills, and a Smith & Wesson boasting silver-plated rounds.

A studio cop, an aspiring actress who uses what she's got to get what she wants, a cross-dressing action star, a mysterious death all are elements in this novella set in 1940s Hollywood... but the real subject of Digby's Hollywood Story is story-telling itself, an examination of our need to make sense of the world by casting the chaos of life into the form of narrative.

Pandora disappears on a secret mission, putting her relationship in jeopardy, so the prophecy of an archangel can be fulfilled.

In The Dream of Europa, following the tradition of celebratory court masques in verse by Ben Jonson and more recently William Empson, Nicholas Hagger celebrates the court of the leaders of the European Union. Through a chorus of 50 representatives of European states he presents the growth and expansion of what became the EU in an epic sweep that takes us from 1945 to 2015 and incorporates the five elements (prologue, antimasque, masque, revels, epilogue) and blend of mythology and history found in all masques. Zeus asks Europa, the goddess of Europe, to sort out the chaos and disorder that devastated Europe in 1945. Europa presides over the growing unification of a European Union of 28 states with 22 more expected to join. Celebratory revels acclaim the Treaty of Lisbon but there is a discordant note, and Churchill has strong words for the UK representative. Finally Europa hands the EU back to Zeus. The dream of Europa is that one day the EU will turn into a United States of Europe consisting of 50 states (see front cover) like the USA, and will bring in a Universalist World State. As a court entertainment for European leaders celebrating Europe's progress from disorder to order, The Dream of Europa cries out to be performed in Brussels. It heralds the triumph of peace during the 70 years following 1945 and calls for a strengthening of European unity in the face of an expanding Russia that still regards Eastern Europe as being within its sphere of influence. This masque and its informative appendix on European states and rights will appeal to all generations in the 50 European states and to all beyond who value a peaceful Europe in our troubled time.

These stories serve as an introduction to Nicholas Hagger's five volumes totalling 1,001 stories (an echo of The Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights). They are grouped in two parts which reflect the two aspects of the fundamental theme of world literature outlined in his A New Philosophy of Literature: ';Follies and Vices' and ';Quest for the One'. These stories condemn follies and vices in relation to an implied virtue more than 150 vices are listed in a Preface and present moments of heightened consciousness in which the universe is perceived as a unity.

These poems serve as an introduction to Nicholas Hagger's poetic works, which include nearly 1,500 poems, more than 300 classical odes, two poetic epics and five verse plays. They are grouped in two parts which reflect the two aspects of the fundamental theme of world literature outlined in his A New Philosophy of Literature: ';Quest for the One' and ';Follies and Vices'. They present a quest for Reality along with moments of heightened consciousness in which the universe is seen as a unity, and condemn social follies and over 220 vices in terms of an implied virtue. This selection of poems combines image and statement in the reconciling Universalist manner, and in different poems blends Romantic search and organic form with classical social attitudes, verbal precision and architectural structure. The poems cover five decades and include extracts from ';The Silence', which describes Freeman's quest for Reality in Modernist style, ';Archangel' (a reflection on Communism following visits to China and the Soviet Union), poems written during a Dark Night of the Soul, glimpses of illumination and poems of social satire. There are also extracts from Haggers verse plays. As can be seen from his ';A Metaphysical in Marvell's Garden' Hagger derives his inspiration from the 17th-century Metaphysical poets and seeks to unite the later Augustan and Romantic traditions. This selection offers a chance to reappraise a poet whose material, accomplished technique and reconciling sensibility places him in the forefront of poets writing today.

Finding a Way Ahead! is a book of devotional reflections drawing from experiences of Angela Harpers own healing from a lifelong condition. The reflections are intended to help others, showing that it is necessary to look at various aspects of ourselves in any search for divine healing and wholeness. The notes were originally written for a Time for Healing prayer group; a mix of churchgoers and those who came off the street to join in and who needed someone to talk to, pray with them, and listen. In accessible easy-to-read sections, Angela Harper encourages others to take heart, and to help them find comfort and guidance and coping strategies. Her aim is to give people tools to help turn around their experiences or to see other perspectives.

An informative book on diet, nutrition, and how to make simple medicines the humoral way. Prior to the adoption of chemicals and minerals to cure illnesses introduced to the body, medical experts understood that controlling humoral balance is central to healthfulness. Curing problems that originate within the body, and preventing them from occurring in the first place, these learned people knew, are two sides of the same coin. Thus, good health is maintained by eating the right foods at the right time, and improved by taking individually-tailored simple but effective humoral medicines. Become Your Own Doctor does four things: It describes the nature of humorism, the humoral body and medicine - discussing why for centuries it was so important in maintaining good health and preventing illnesses; it explains how to easily recognise bodily imbalances in order to make informed choices about lifestyle, dietary regimes and medicines; it discusses the humoral characteristics and medical attributes of a wide range of commonly available foods; and it explains how to simply make a range of medicines that can be used both to protect the household from contracting illnesses and to help cure existing ones.

Eleven-year-old Emma doesn't know that she comes from generations of tree singers, passed from mother to daughter. She doesn't believe she can sing. Her ailing grandmother has just come to live with the family. Her father is hardly ever at home. Her mother has been acting strange. To add to Emma's troubles, her mother's great uncle from England is coming to stay. Then, a strange old woman wearing a hat full of feathers appears mysteriously in her garden. She gives Emma a white swan feather that emits a haunting melody. Emma's only solace is the oak tree in her garden, which she names Annie Oakley. What she does not yet know is that Annie is part of a network of tree spirits who disguise themselves as old women. These spirits have come to Peachtree City to help Emma remember her mission to sing the Song of Creation and save the Great Mother tree.

Mike Brooks' debut novel is an adventure story set in a dystopian future in which our taste for branding, consumerism and artificial reality is boundless. In /The Machine Society/, he weaves together psychological insight, philosophical reflection and spiritual inquiry to give us a novel that is both a deep satire on modern life and a rich metaphor for our longing to find inner peace. Dean Rogers lives in the Perimeter of New London, holding down a soul-destroying job, surrounded by people who have lost the will to communicate. He is afraid his debts will spiral out of control, resulting in him being cast out of the city, outside of the Security Wall. Meanwhile, in the Better Life Complex, New London's rich elite live in plastic luxury, unaware of the sinister secrets that underpin their world. /The Machine Society/ is an original and intelligent sci-fi thriller, and a heartfelt rally cry for the soul's liberation.

Mystery, mayhem and magic - a gripping adventure for 8+

In stripping away the flowery language, the sugar coating so to speak, the author is aware that he is presenting Self Enquiry as the challenging Practice it is designed to be, directly, in the raw. But then this will take you to an important question: Who or what is being challenged? What is it within you that creates this resistance, doubt and fear? This is your first opportunity to go to the source, to step back from this anxiety and concern and see it for what it is: the many-layered mind with all its attachments continuing its game-playing in an effort to remain in control. In being prepared to swallow what seems to be a bitter pill you are taken directly to what matters: the path to Truth.

Mainstream Christian denominations are facing critical decline in the United Kingdom. Church leaders call for new strategies for growth but will these be effective? In this book, Adrian Alker calls for an honest look at the life of Jesus and the faith of the Church and suggests a radical and more honest reshaping of the churches to enable them to face the challenges of the present day. The author has been ordained as an Anglican priest for over thirty years and recognises the important contributions which church congregations can and do make to their communities and the wider world. He passionately believes that the Church must become more Jesus shaped and less concerned with its own structures and beliefs in order to attract new members.