Britt Anderson is retired. Secretive and fiercely independent, she journeys to Delroi to spend time with her two oldest friends. She doesn’t expect to be dragged back into the spy business when she gets there, but the lure is impossible to fight for a not so reformed adrenalin junkie. Danger. Conspiracy. What’s not to love? But there’s always a price and it presents itself as the darkly dangerous Barak Trace. She can’t deny the attraction, but has enough sense to steer clear of the possessive glint in his gaze. Until he somehow manages to merge his psychic abilities with hers. When he’s captured by rebel forces, she has no choice but to go after him. The question is will she be able to free herself once he’s rescued? And will she even want to? Originally published in 2009.
"Argues that the problem of impending ecological devastation cannot be solved without a repudiation of whiteness, and white theology that created it"--
Firefly meets The Expanse in a future where humanity has destroyed the Earth through ecological disaster and warfare, and a totalitarian state prevents any access to their home... Environmental disasters and AI armies have caused the human population of Earth to flee. They lie scattered across space stations and colonies, overcrowded and suffering. The Earth is cut off by the Interdiction Zone: a network of satellites that prevents any escape from the planet. The incredible cost of maintaining it has crippled humanity, who struggle under the totalitarian yoke of the Sol Commonwealth government. Many have been driven to the edge of society, taking any work offered, criminal and otherwise, in order to survive. The crew of the Arcus are just such people. Through the Interdiction Zone, a world of priceless artifacts awaits, provided anyone is crazy enough to make the run. With fuel running low and cred accounts even lower, the Arcus’ survival might depend on taking the job. Yet on arrival on Earth, the crew discovers that what remains of their world is not as they have been told, and the truth may bring the entire Sol Commonwealth tumbling down…
Tortoises disappear from a Madagascar reserve and reappear in the Bronx Zoo. A dead iguana floats in a jar, awaiting its unveiling in a Florida court. A viper causes mayhem from Ethiopia to Virginia. In Stolen World, Jennie Erin Smith takes the reader on an unforgettable journey, a dark adventure over five decades and six continents. In 1965, Hank Molt, a young cheese salesman from Philadelphia, reinvented himself as a “specialist dealer in rare fauna,” traveling the world to collect exquisite reptiles for zoos and museums. By the end of the decade that followed, new endangered species laws had turned Molt into a convicted smuggler, and an unrepentant one, who went on to provide many of the same rare reptiles to many of the same institutions, covertly. But Molt soon found a rival in Tommy Crutchfield, a Florida carpet salesman with every intention of usurping Molt as the most accomplished reptile smuggler in the country. Like Molt, Crutchfield had modeled himself after an earlier generation of natural-history collectors celebrated for their service to science, an ideal that, for Molt and Crutchfield, eclipsed the realities of the new wildlife-protection laws. Zoo curators, caught between a desire for rare animals and the conservation-minded focus of their institutions, became the smugglers’ antagonists in court but also their best customers, sometimes simultaneously. Crutchfield forged ties with a criminally inclined Malaysian wildlife trader and emerged a millionaire, beloved by some of the finest zoos in the world. Molt, following a string of inventive but disastrous smuggling schemes in New Guinea, was reduced to hanging around Crutchfield’s Florida compound, plotting Crutchfield’s demise. The fallout from their feud would result in a major federal investigation with tentacles in Germany, Madagascar, Holland, and Malaysia. And yet even after prison, personal ruin, and the depredations of age, Molt and Crutchfield never stopped scheming, never stopped longing for the snake or lizard that would earn each his rightful place in a world that had forgotten them—or rather, had never recognized them to begin with.
This concise and revealing history reconsiders the Civil War era by centering one Native American tribe's encounter with citizenship. In 1837, eleven years before Wisconsin's admission as a state, representatives of the Ho-Chunk people yielded under immense duress and signed a treaty that ceded their remaining ancestral lands to the U.S. government. Over the four decades that followed, as "free soil" settlement repeatedly demanded their further expulsion, many Ho-Chunk people lived under the U.S. government's policies of "civilization," allotment, and citizenship. Others lived as outlaws, evading military campaigns to expel them and adapting their ways of life to new circumstances. After the Civil War, as Reconstruction's vision of nonracial, national, birthright citizenship excluded most Native Americans, the Ho-Chunk who remained in their Wisconsin homeland understood and exploited this contradiction. Professing eagerness to participate in the postwar nation, they gained the right to remain in Wisconsin as landowners and voters while retaining their language, culture, and identity as a people. This history of Ho-Chunk sovereignty and citizenship offer a bracing new perspective on citizenship's perils and promises, the way the broader nineteenth-century conflict between "free soil" and slaveholding expansion shaped Indigenous life, and the continuing impact of Native people's struggles and claims on U.S. politics and society.
With the death of his father, Pardis becomes the chosen Black King who holds the strength to save the Day and Night people from the Aduboola. Pardis is not your ordinary boy; he is the only one left of his kind that was not taken captive by the Aduboola. The Aduboola came to Earth to destroy harmony and peace. Hidden evil forces are hard at work, so good has no day off. Pardis possesses numerous abilities, which gives him the chance to punish every wicked being. Evil shall never inherit this divine land.
THE BORDER WARS An uneasy peace had prevailed these last few years between the Empire of Videssos and rival Makuran. But now Makuran's King of Kings alerted his border holdings--even the small fortress where Abivard's father was lord--to prepare for barbarian raids. But Abivard himself received a warning of a different sort: an eerie prophecy of a field, a hill, and a shield shining across the sea. Before a season had turned, his father and his King lay dead upon the field of battle--the very place foreseen in the vision. Abivard hastened home to defend his family and his land. To his dismay, the most urgent danger came not from marauding tribes, or from Videssos, but from the capital. An obscure and greedy bureaucrat had captured the crown; the rightful heir had disappeared, and no mortal man would say where he might be found. Abivard's strange fate would lead him to his King, though, and on through peril to the very brink of greatness--and of doom! FIRST TIME IN PRINT
The traditional houses and settlements of the several hundred ethnic groups of Indonesia are extremely varied and all have their own unique history. Underlying this rich diversity are fundamental similarities rooted in the ancient heritage that is shared by all the peoples in the Indonesian field of study. The multiplicity of ways in which this heritage is given shape in each local situation bears witness to an amazing creativity in adapting to regional circumstances and social changes. Inter-ethnic comparison of the architectural structures is a way to arrive at a better understanding of both the shared traditions and the diverging developments. In many cases, the variety of house forms will reflect successful attempts at one group's making distinct its buildings from those of neighbouring groups in an ongoing ethnic process of what could be called 'mutual contrasting', although sometimes by means of pseudo-traditions which have little to do with indigenous customs of the past. The contributions to this volume are grouped in four sections. The first consists of essays describing approaches to the transformation and variation of houses. The second set presents applications of these approaches in case studies of specific Sumatran cultures. The third group widens the perspective through the inclusion of a number of cultures from outside Sumatra, namely from Flores, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Palu'é, and Roti. The final set deals not so much with houses as with settlements. In their pursuit of the cultural dimension of houses, the contributions focus on villages and towns, exploring their cosmological and symbolic organization.
“Now, if you don’t mind, there is a great big universe out there calling, and I’ve gotta get going!” With exclusive content from Ncuti Gatwa’s first outing as the Fifteenth Doctor, discover more about the Time Lord who has been keeping the Earth safe for over 60 years. This brand-new edition is the ultimate guide to all of the Doctor’s fifteen incarnations – from William Hartnell to Tom Baker and including both of David Tennant’s eras – you will learn fascinating facts from all of space and time. Discover more about the Doctor’s many helpful companions, fearsome foes and, of course, the TARDIS who has been through it all. Learn the difference between regeneration and bi-generation, why you should never anger a Meep, and always, always get Cherry Sunday a cup of tea! So, allons-y!