![]() Through tense alliances and devastating betrayal, the Dhai and their allies attempt to hold against a seemingly unstoppable force as enemy nations prepare for a coming together of worlds as old as the universe itself. ![]() As the dark star of the cataclysm rises, an illegitimate ruler is tasked with holding together a country fractured by civil war a precocious young fighter is asked to betray his family to save his skin and a half-Dhai general must choose between the eradication of her father's people or loyalty to her alien Empress. Stretching from desolate tundra to steamy, semi-tropical climes seething with sentient plant life, this is an epic tale of blood mages and mercenaries, emperors and priestly assassins who must unite to save a world on the brink of ruin. At the heart of this war lie the pacifistic Dhai people, once enslaved by the Saiduan and now courted by their former masters to provide aid against the encroaching enemy. ![]() In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin. "On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past-while a world goes to war with itself. ![]()
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![]() ![]() There’s family drama to deal with, and Katie simply will not stop trying to mess up Hannah’s life even further, no matter who gets hurt. The two march forward together through the rest of the school year, watching Hannah’s bump grow bigger and bigger, and in the process, becoming each other’s rock and best friend. Why? Well, Hannah needs a hero, and Aaron desperately needs to do something heroic. Hannah is hiding a big secret, and so is Aaron… and when Hannah’s former bestie blabs about the pregnancy to exactly the wrong person, the news is soon all over Facebook and Hannah’s reputation is trashed - until Aaron steps in and offers to pretend to be the baby’s father. ![]() So is it only a matter of time until it all catches up with her?Īnd then there’s Aaron, the new boy at school, son of the the new history teacher, and mysteriously unknowable - cool, but not excessively so accepted by the in-crowd, but just ever so slightly stand-offish, with people to hang with but no close friends. With her underdressed, oversexed best friend Katie, Hannah is known for her sexiness and her willingness. By the time Hannah gets around to taking a pregnancy test, we’ve seen her out at the park every Friday night, hooking up with whatever boy she can find, whether or not he’s actually available. ![]() When Hannah finds herself pregnant at age 15, it certainly doesn’t come as a surprise to the reader, although Hannah seems to be pretty stunned herself. ![]() ![]() Rousseau’s primary claim to fame depends on his ideas about morals, politics and society. The rest of his life’s work was, he claimed, determined for him at that moment. So overcome was he by the flood of ideas that this question aroused in him the realization that he had to break his journey. He read in the newspaper a prize essay question, asking whether advances in the sciences and arts had improved morals. He was on his way to see his then friend Diderot who was imprisoned at Vincennes. The turning point in his life occurred in July 1749. His first love was music and he composed a number of operas in the 1740s with some success. Rousseau always maintained that he regretted taking up a career of letters. He died in 1778 and in 1794 his body was transferred to the Panthéon in Paris. From this obscure beginning he rose to become one of the best known intellectual figures of the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment, taking his place alongside Diderot, Voltaire and others as one of the emblematic figures of this period, for all that he came to differ violently in view from them. ![]() His mother died a few days after his birth. ![]() ![]() ![]() Rousseau was born in Geneva, the second son of Isaac Rousseau, watchmaker. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() And who can blame her when the gorgeous and mysterious Carver Reed comes to live with the Kaplan family for the summer? Little by little, Natalie is drawn to Carver's spontaneity and free spirit, and before long, she turns into another breed of girl, who surprisingly bites the hand that feeds her. ![]() Just like the Ibizan, Natalie is very mindful of her master's rules, but at the first sign of freedom, she is prone to stray. (Her mom is a respected veterinarian with a successful clinic, so it's not that much of a stretch.) Actually, Natalie has been trained so well that sometimes she thinks her mother is secretly controlling her with a dog whistle. Natalie herself resembles an Ibizan hound-quiet, playful, loyal, smart, and above all, obedient. When 16-year-old Natalie Kaplan meets a new person, she knows right away what kind of dog they'd be. ![]() ![]() ![]() Many of these supernatural elements seem like archetypes to me, but you should ask a psychologist. Some of his books also contain completely invented mythical elements. He draws from a wide variety of mythological sources, most frequently Native American and Irish. His magic is most often subtle and understated the supernatural is a faint trace on the borders of the mundane world, and is rarely blatant. ![]() Having established a character and his place in the world, De Lint pulls the rug out from under his world view, and invites us to watch him react. In service of this, he places a high premium on characterization. He studies the reactions of ordinary people to the living myth. The chief theme is the existence of an ancient, mystical significance behind the world we see, which has only been obscured, not destroyed, by the passage of time. ![]() De Lint's work is all (or nearly all) urban fantasy, or, to use his own term, mythic fiction. ![]() ![]() ![]() I wanted to restore The Palm Inn to its original beauty and reopen it as a bed-and-breakfast. He wanted to unload the run-down place, which, admittedly, needed a lot of work. ![]() We bickered a lot as we both moved into the property while we figured things out. ![]() You could say we got off on the wrong foot. We won’t mention that I accidentally injured him during our first meeting, causing him to get eight stitches. The other half now belonged to Levi Miller, the famous quarterback who had other ideas about what we should do with the property. ![]() When my young son inherited half of his great grandfather’s historic inn, I decided to move us both to the place where I grew up. A new, sexy stand-alone from New York Times best-selling authors Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward. ![]() ![]() It's just so peculiar.īut enough about the imaginary culture. Perhaps lazy, because despite being in Florida, and despite being in Costa Rica and a fictional South American country, White tries to give us some local flavor by using two Spanish words: 'calle,' and 'tienda.' Oh, yes, my gringo friends: 'street' and 'store.' Not particularly relevant either. One part of my brain ended up poking at it, trying to analyze the 'why.' I could not work out if he thought he was being sensitive by using a fictionalized people, or lazy with characterization. A lot of strange things happened then, including White's idea to use a fictional South American country Masagua as part of his setting, as well as two fictional Mayan tribes. ![]() ![]() White's entry into the genre is solid, albeit rather peculiar. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() If local communities don't have a direct connection or benefit from protecting lions, they have no reason to want to do so."ĭespite the urgency of the crisis, there are reasons for hope. Conservation should be about both nature and people and should aim to reduce the costs local communities face from living with and protecting wildlife, as well as increasing the benefits. "In the past, conservation has just been about protecting wildlife species and habitats, and very little concern was given to the people that live around these areas. Threats include shrinking habitats, a decline in prey because of illegal bushmeat poaching and an increase in human-wildlife conflict – but there are solutions, writes Dr Mbizah: "The communities that live with the lions are the ones best positioned to help lions the most." Local people should be at the forefront of tackling the problem, she argues. ![]() Although lions also previously existed in many other countries, outside of Africa, lions can only be found today in the wild in one location: Gir National Park in India." "In Africa, they currently inhabit less than 8% of their former range. ![]() "There are fewer than 20,000 lions remaining in the wild," writes Dr Moreangels Mbizah, the founder and executive director of Wildlife Conservation Action, in The New Big 5. ![]() ![]() ![]() The second book in the Cadfael series was published in 1979. "I am telling you, my lord Prestcote, there is a murdered man among your executed men, a leaf hidden in your forest." Thus does Brother Cadfael inform King Stephen's man that an additional body has been placed by someone amongst those who have been hanged for their treason against the king. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice. ![]() ![]() You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. ![]() Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice. ![]() ![]() ![]() Above all, this is the intimate and detailed self-revelation of a complex and attractive man, driven by his creative urges to a position of lonely eminence. It tells the story of his romance with Harriet Smithson -with whom he fell in love when he saw her playing the part of Ophelia - and his even more passionate affairs with Shakespeare, Scott and Byron.įamiliar with all the great figures of the age - Liszt, Wagner, Balzac, Delacroix, Weber, Rossini - Berlioz paints brilliant and often mordant portraits of them in a style which is one of the glories of French prose. Larger than life - like his massive works - Berlioz was a seminal figure in the Romantic movement and his book is both a personal testament and an account of his role in that movement. His autobiography is among the greatest ever written. ![]() ![]() Possibly the most colourful figure in the history of Western music, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was certainly the most eloquent. ![]() |