It's the height of the Cold War, and a team of assassins is targeting agents of the British Intelligence. In desperation, the agency sends their best agent to hunt down the killers. Jack "Gorilla" Grant isn't your typical secret agent. Uncompromising and rough-edged, he doesn't fit in with the debonair intelligence operatives. Drawn into a deadly game, Jack soon realizes that even the perfect spy can die in a wilderness of mirrors.

The 21st Century in 100 Games is an interactive public history of the contemporary world. It creates a ludological retelling of the 21st century through 100 games that were announced, launched, and played from the turn of the century. The book analyzes them and then uses the games as a means of entry to examine both key events in the 21st century and the evolution of the gaming industry. Adopting a tri-pronged perspective — the reviewer, the academic, and an industry observer — it studies games as ludo-narratological artefacts and resituates games in a societal context by examining how they affect and are engaged with by players, reviewers, the gaming community, and the larger gaming industry. This book will be a must read for readers interested in video games, new media, digital culture (s), culture studies, and history.

An oversized full-color hardcover that celebrates fifteen years of the iconic Assassin’s Creed video game saga! Discover the genesis of each Assassin’s Creed game and get an insider's look at the efforts that went into creating one the biggest franchises in the video game industry.​ In observance of Assassin’s Creed’s fifteen-year anniversary, Ubisoft and Dark Horse Books have teamed up to create an extensive examination into the creation of the award-winning Assassin’s Creed franchise. Featuring gorgeous art from over a decade-and-a-half of development, and detailed interviews with the games’ past and present creators, this is the perfect companion piece for any aspiring Assassin.

Lyrical Assassins: 50 of the Greatest Prophet Emcees is an illustration of my personal tribute to the gifted men and women whose extraordinary oratory skills have garnered my attention to listen, learn, admire, and respect. Hip-hop music has been through quite a few transformations during its existence. Despite the ups and downs, hip-hop has lived a very fruitful life. Rap artists have invented some of the most dynamic creations of music while entertaining a mass audience of fans nationwide and abroad. This book represents my personal favorites from number 1 to 50, with a list of honorable mentions and top fifty rap groups.

A novel of intrigue, love, mystery, betrayal, and the worlds oldest terrorist organization. This is a novel which draws on the magic of A Thousand and One Nights and the realism of history and political life. The herowarrior, minstrel and poet, Nureddinis divided between his commitment to sultan Saladin and his love for the beautiful enchantress Laila. Saladin aims at uniting the fragmented Arab world against the Crusaders; Laila is queen and supreme houri of the artificial paradise set up by the terrible Old Man of the Mountain, who terrorizes his enemies and reduces his followers to a state of blind obedience. Involving suspense, love, poetry, conspiracies, warAssassins is, above all, the story of a powerful love relationship that triumphs over all adversities. In an inventive style. . . Nikos Kyriazis artistically transmutes historical materials into fiction of great literary and emotional impact. --Kostas Sardelis

This fascinating study places multiple genres in dialogue and considers both medievalism and genre to be frameworks from which meaning can be produced. It explores works from a wide range of genres-children's and young adult, historical, cyberpunk, fantasy, science fiction, romance, and crime-and across multiple media-fiction, film, television, video games, and music. The range of media types and genres enable comparison, and the identification of overarching trends, while also allowing comparison of contrasting phenomena. As the first volume to explore the nexus of medievalism and genre across such a wide range of texts, this collection illustrates the fractured ideologies of contemporary popular culture. The Middle Ages are more usually, and often more prominently, aligned with conservative ideologies, for example around gender roles, but the Middle Ages can also be the site of resistance and progressive politics. Exploring the interplay of past and present, and the ways writers and readers work engage with them demonstrates the conscious processes of identity construction at work throughout Western popular culture. The collection also demonstrates that while scholars may have by-and-large abandoned the concept of accuracy when considering contemporary medievalisms, the Middle Ages are widely associated with authenticity, and the authenticity of identity, in the popular imagination; the idea of the real Middle Ages matters, even when historical realities do not. This book will be of interest to scholars of medievalism, popular culture, and genre.

Welcome to Gor, a parallel Earth, where social norms are exotic and the way of life is brutal. In the fifth book in the Gorean Series, the deadly assassin Kuurus is intent on a bloody mission of vengeance. His adventure takes him from the caste of the pleasure-slaves, which are rigorously trained in the rules and techniques of sexual ecstasy, to the brutal arenas where humans participate in deadly hand-to-hand combat. He witnesses violence, conflict and uncertainty, as the inhabitants of Counter-Earth are forced to confront their destinies...no matter how exalted or debased.

Books 5-7 in the action-packed Catnip Assassins urban fantasy series, together in one volume for the very first time! Assassin. Private Investigator. Cat shifter. Lover. Kat and her family have moved to a new town, but that doesn't mean that things will calm down. New enemies, new allies and new challenges await them. To survive, Kat will have to polish her claws and trust the three guys willing to do everything for her. And not eat too much catnip, obviously... Continue the bestselling Catnip Assassins series with this handy boxed set, which doesn't just include countless kittens, but also an adorable fawn! This is an urban fantasy romance full of cats, secrets and dead bodies. It includes a slow-burn reverse harem relationship where Kat ends up with three love interests. This collection includes: Lick Claw Hisss If you've not started the Catnip Assassins series yet, begin with Meow or get the first four books in a convenient box set. Search terms: urban fantasy, urban fantasy romance, reverse harem, why choose, pregnancy romance, surprise pregnancy, action, paranormal romance, werewolf, shifter romance, shifter pregnancy, complete series, strong heroine, friends to lovers, slow burn romance, private investigator, menage, polyandry, poly romance, funny romance, alpha males, contemporary fantasy, humor, long series, babies, shifter baby, shifter cub.

Video game studies are a relative young but flourishing academic discipline. But within game studies, however, the perspective of religion and spirituality is rather neglected, both by game scholars and religion scholars. While religion can take different shapes in digital games, ranging from material and referential to reflexive and ritual, it is not necessarily true that game developers depict their in-game religions in a positive, confirming way, but ever so often games approach the topic critically and disavowingly. The religion criticisms found in video games can be categorized as follows: religion as (1) fraud, aimed to manipulate the uneducated, as (2) blind obedience towards an invisible but ultimately non-existing deity/ies, as (3) violence against those who do not share the same set of religious rules, as (4) madness, a deranged alternative for logical reasoning, and as (5) suppression in the hands of the powerful elite to dominate and subdue the masses into submission and obedience. The critical depictions of religion in video games by their developers is the focus of this special issue.

Exploring the importance of destination branding and destination marketing as well as their implications on sustainability in tourism, this book approaches the topic through the lens of destination image, taking into account the large influence of appearance on tourist attraction. With consideration to various stakeholders in sustainable tourism development, this book incorporates ideas for new techniques in destination branding and marketing in order to maximize economic impact. The book also discusses the rising influence of social media on tourists’ interest. Emphasizing sustainability in tourism development, the chapters address a number of important issues, such as post-disaster tourism marketing, culture and heritage tourism, eco-tourism, community-based nature tourism, community involvement in destination development, benchmarking for destination performance evaluation, sustainable food practices in tourism, and more. Each chapter of this book incorporates a quantifiable trend in tourism development, including various paradigms and studies that relay different statistics about certain areas of tourism. The book makes use of case studies for specific destinations and integrates strategies, evidence, and analyses to offer a holistic understanding of the myriad factors involved in sustainable tourism development.