The unthinkable has happened: the imperial capital is under siege by the Three Nations Alliance thanks to a surprise attack, which will divide the Empire in two. The Empress and the Empire’s paltry forces at the scene must rally in a bid to evacuate what people and structures they can, and buy time for the capital’s relocation. Lafier and Jint are charged with saving the Empire’s culturally significant artifacts, even while Lafier’s brother Duhier is stranded behind enemy lines.
Lafier and Jint have now proven themselves in the most unthinkable of situations, earning honor and recognition that will serve them well--and perhaps even haunt them. Lafier takes command of a state-of-the-art raid ship as her little brother Duhier, who idolizes her, officially enlists with the Star Forces. But more than personal conflicts are brewing under the surface... The galactic war takes a strange turn when the thus-far neutral Hania Federation reaches out to the Abh with an unexpected offer of support. Not everything is as it seems, however. Lafier and Jint return to the imperial capital to find it under attack by the Three Nations Alliance, forcing the intrepid duo and all of the Abh to sacrifice everything and abandon Lahkfacar. The Empress herself tries to buy them time to evacuate the most precious artifacts of their civilization as the city falls and the Empire fractures. A long decade later, Lafier--now the Crown Princess and a fleet commander--helms an operation to reunite the shattered state and regain part of what was lost. When all adversity stands in her way, will she be able to go above and beyond to see the mission through?
Around a decade has passed since the Fall of Lahkfacar, and the Empire is now split into two distinct regions. Crown Princess and fleet commander Lafier is tasked with the operation to annex the People’s Sovereign Stellar Union and reunite the Empire while at the same time facing supply shortages and crew inexperience — and she might need to flout orders to get it done.
Having escaped from the planet Sufugnoff, Lafiel now commands her own assault ship. As she deals with the pressures of leading her crew, Jinto tries to prove his worth to the empire as the ship's supply officer. Illustrations.
Like her art, Marilyn Monroe was rooted in paradox: She was a powerful star and a childlike waif; a joyful, irreverent party girl with a deeply spiritual side; a superb friend and a narcissist; a dumb blonde and an intellectual. No previous biographer has recognized-much less attempted to analyze-most of these aspects of her personality. Lois Banner has. With new details about Marilyn's childhood foster homes, her sexual abuse, her multiple marriages, her affairs, and her untimely death at the age of thirty-six, Marilyn is, at last, the nuanced biography Monroe fans have been waiting for.
Lafier is now the captain of a state-of-the-art raid ship, and her brother, Duhier (who is still wrestling with his inferiority complex) has finally enlisted in the Star Forces. Meanwhile, the galactic war is reaching a turning point, as the Hania Federation asks to join the Abh Empire. Will the Empress accept their offer? And might Hania have ulterior motives?
Savage Holiday, first published in 1954 by noted American author Richard Wright, is a tense, well-written psychological thriller about Erskine Fowler, an insurance executive forced into early retirement, who, over the course of a bizarre weekend, is responsible for the accidental death of his neighbor’s young son. Tragic consequences follow as Fowler attempts to redeem himself and is forced to question his own life, as events spiral out-of-control to their inevitable conclusion.
In America, we are eager to claim ownership: our homes, our ideas, our organs, even our own celebrity. But beneath our nation’s proprietary longing looms a troublesome question: what does it mean to own something? More simply: what is property? The question is at the heart of many contemporary controversies, including disputes over who owns everything from genetic material to indigenous culture to music and film on the Internet. To decide if and when genes or culture or digits are a kind of property that can be possessed, we must grapple with the nature of property itself. How does it originate? What purposes does it serve? Is it a natural right or one created by law? Accessible and mercifully free of legal jargon, American Property reveals the perpetual challenge of answering these questions, as new forms of property have emerged in response to technological and cultural change, and as ideas about the appropriate scope of government regulation have shifted. This first comprehensive history of property in the United States is a masterly guided tour through a contested human institution that touches all aspects of our lives and desires. Stuart Banner shows that property exists to serve a broad set of purposes, constantly in flux, that render the idea of property itself inconstant. Despite our ideals of ownership, property has always been a means toward other ends. What property signifies and what property is, we come to see, has consistently changed to match the world we want to acquire.
A collection of curious tales questioning the ownership of airspace and a reconstruction of a truly novel moment in the history of American law, Banner’s book reminds us of the powerful and reciprocal relationship between technological innovation and the law.
