Kayla is the best gymnast on her team. When she misses her vault at an important gymnastics meet, no one sees her mistake except her best friend, Chandra. When Chandra pressures her to tell the truth, Kayla must decide if keeping her trophy is worth losing her friend.
'The Ajya-Na-Ku are coming, and should this rock fall the dragons will also turn, and this time the mighty Rydren Empire won't be there to stop them...' Glider's words, as he guards the cathedral-like rock of Kumbran, enclosing the dormant Cour-Vu-Du, are full of dread for Juran and his expedition to map the terrain of Markesh. Does their trek into the unknown follow a straightforward plan, or could it be part of some deeper strategy? Something about one of the team, Idron the half-breed, isn't quite right... Then, when Matrosse falls, Kumbran is threatened by the forces of evil. In the final showdown, alliances between humans, Elves, Dwarves and dragons are stretched to the limit. Can they keep the demonic Black Owls at bay, and battle the sleeping terror in the Rock? Find out in Paul Tonks' magically woven saga of treachery, shapeshift and darkness, courage, cunning and light, in The Mapping of Markesh.
When Kayla misses her vault at a gymnastics meet, nobody sees except for her best friend Chandra--should she admit to making the mistake, or just accept the trophy?
This groundbreaking book provides the first systematic comparison of America’s modern wars and why they were won or lost. John D. Caldwell uses the World War II victory as the historical benchmark for evaluating the success and failure of later conflicts. Unlike WWII, the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraqi Wars were limited, but they required enormous national commitments, produced no lasting victories, and generated bitter political controversies. Caldwell comprehensively examines these four wars through the lens of a strategic architecture to explain how and why their outcomes were so dramatically different. He defines a strategic architecture as an interlinked set of continually evolving policies, strategies, and operations by which combatant states work toward a desired end. Policy defines the high-level goals a nation seeks to achieve once it initiates a conflict or finds itself drawn into one. Policy makers direct a broad course of action and strive to control the initiative. When they make decisions, they have to respond to unforeseen conditions to guide and determine future decisions. Effective leaders are skilled at organizing constituencies they need to succeed and communicating to them convincingly. Strategy means employing whatever resources are available to achieve policy goals in situations that are dynamic as conflicts change quickly over time. Operations are the actions that occur when politicians, soldiers, and diplomats execute plans. A strategic architecture, Caldwell argues, is thus not a static blueprint but a dynamic vision of how a state can succeed or fail in a conflict.