Shawn Martinbrough

*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*‘One of the master storytellers of our time’ – Dr Gabor Maté, author of The Myth of NormalFrom 'one of the greatest storytellers we have' (Robert Bly), an urgent invitation to allow the oldest stories – and the Greatest Story – to reshape our own. There’s an old Irish belief that if you aren’t wrapped in a cloak of story you will be unprepared for what the world will hurl at you. You remain adolescent at just the moment a culture worth its salt requires you to become a real, grown, human being. In Liturgies of the Wild, acclaimed mythographer, storyteller and Christian thinker Martin Shaw argues that we live in a myth-impoverished age, cut off from the deep wells of story and meaning that once prepared us for life’s challenges. Drawing on the 'ancient technologies' of myths and initiatory rites, Shaw invites readers to rediscover the ancient stories that shape the human soul — and to encounter Christ as the ultimate, transforming story providing a road to wholeness, maturity and connection. Within these pages, Shaw:Teaches us to read a myth the way it wants to be read;Provides vivid retellings of tales powerful enough to carry you through life’s travails;Shows you how to gather and reshape your own thrown-away stories. Most vividly, Shaw shares his own spiritual journey and how these ancient technologies led him – unexpectedly – to Christ, 'the True Myth,' by way of a thirty-year journey and a 101-night vigil in a Dartmoor forest. Blending nimble storytelling in the tradition of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien with scholarly depth, Liturgies of the Wild s a thrilling counsel of resistance and delight in the face of many modern monsters, providing a transformative journey into story, spirit and self-discovery. Ebury Vine: The Home Of Christian Living. Drawing on the deep roots of Christianity to cultivate curious minds and inspire faith-informed growth.

The Israeli destruction of Gaza has returned the idea of genocide to the centre of world politics, with sharp conflicts between protesters and lawyers who invoke it and governments and media that deny it. This book, by the foremost sociological theorist of genocide, defends the idea against thinkers who have questioned it, and argues that it is essential to the understanding of mass atrocities. It maintains that Gaza has opened a new age in which the West not only fails to prevent, but also participates in genocide. As well as discussing the genocide idea, the book analyses the Gaza genocide in the context of the longer histories of the problem, both globally and in Palestine. Further chapters deal with "forgotten genocides", the attempted Russian elimination of Ukraine, and the history of British complicity. The New Age of Genocide brings the debate up to date and is essential reading.

Bardskull is the record of three journeys made by Martin Shaw, the celebrated storyteller and interpreter of myth, in the year before he turned fifty. It is unlike anything he has written before. This is not a book about myth or narrative; rather, it is a sequence of incantations, a series of battles. Each of the three journeys sees Shaw walk alone into a Dartmoor forest and wait. What arrive are stories – fragments of myth that he has carried within him for decades: the deep history of Dartmoor itself; the lives of distant family members; Arthurian legend; and tales from India, Persia, Lapland, the Caucasus and Siberia. But these stories and their tellers don’t arrive as the bearers of solace or easy wisdom. As with all quests, Shaw is entering a domain of traps and tests. Bardskull can be read as a fable, as memoir, as auto-fiction or as an attempt to undomesticate myth. It is a magnificent, unclassifiable work of the imagination.