This work explains the origins of the familiar and the unfamiliar in everyday speech and literature, including the colloquial and the proverbial. It embraces archaeology, history, religion, the arts, science, mythology and characters from fiction.

Fairies have been revered and feared, sometimes simultaneously, throughout recorded history. This encyclopedia of concise entries, from the A-senee-ki-waku of northeastern North America to the Zips of Central America and Mexico, includes more than 2,500 individual beings and species of fairy and nature spirits from a wide range of mythologies and religions from all over the globe.

For many years now there has been an upsurge in revelation stories and alternative viewpoints on man's history. People such as Graham Hancock and Lawrence Gardner have brought to light many new ideas and many new problems. Now there is a new theory which is all-encompassing and clearly brings into focus a more sinister reason behind the emergence of civilisation. In his theory on Atlantis Graham Hancock is receiving much admiration and academic acclaim. Standard academic thought is more towards the spontaneous eruption of civilisation across the globe, with little or no explanation of why there are so many similarities between the cultures. Now, Philip Gardiner, in his new book THE SHINING ONES is set to turn even this upon its head. The theory is so simple that it begs the question, why has it not been thought of before? The reason for universal similarity of architecture, language, art, travel and religious belief is quite simply an ancient and secret religious brotherhood who have hidden themselves deep within the symbols, ciphers and codes of our ancient texts for hundreds of years. They held a secret knowledge and power base which spread with them across the globe. The very title that they have given themselves is hidden within the standard text and religious books we use every day -- The Shining Ones. Put like this, the whole thing can sound like an X-Files conspiracy theory. However the author has invested huge amounts of time and energy checking, researching and seeking the advice of academics. Now the theory is attracting the attention of historians who can see that the patterns are as subtle as this author proposes. The fact is, this theory does explain away all the problems with dating and variations that people such as Hancock have come up against. Many academics and especially Egyptologists are now turning to this way of thinking and with Gardiners spirit and broad knowledge in history and language the history of the ancients and the secrets that they hold are becoming more clear. There are of course dissenters. The author has been accosted for his standpoint and there are still those hardened academics and even non-academics who refuse to even listen. However, there is a major TV documentary in pre-production stages and with interviews planned across the nation on radio and TV the message may soon be accepted as a credible theory.

"Here there be dragons"--this notation was often made on ancient maps to indicate the edges of the known world and what lay beyond. Heroes who ventured there were only as great as the beasts they encountered. This encyclopedia contains more than 2,200 monsters of myth and folklore, who both made life difficult for humans and fought by their side. Entries describe the appearance, behavior, and cultural origin of mythic creatures well-known and obscure, collected from traditions around the world.

The book investigates English and Slovene onomastic phraseological units (PUs), and is based on two databases containing English and Slovene PUs with anthroponyms, toponyms and their derivatives. These databases were created using monolingual English and Slovene phraseological dictionaries. The volume provides in-depth, cross-linguistic and cross-cultural research into this segment of phraseology, and represents the most extensive treatment of any contrastive topic involving Slovene and a foreign language. As such, it will serve to be a useful source of information for scholars of Slavonic and other languages, as well as anyone interested in phraseology, cultural specificity, etymology, translation equivalence, and the stereotypical use of ethnonyms.

The author has assembled a collection of 3,676 last words from a select group of individuals as they faced their approaching demise. This compilation illuminates a group of beings ranging from convicted criminals to the most holy. Some serenely committed their souls to a higher being while others railed against oncoming death. Many are famous, some are notorious, and others blur into a less well-defined subgroup. The majority of entries consist of final spoken words, but a few wills, epitaphs, diaries, and last letters are also included in this collection. A brief sketch of each person includes birth and death dates, country of origin, and a short biographical sketch. Farewells spoken after the turn of the twenty-first century ensure that this compilation has some of the most up-to-date material in this genre.