Negotiating collaboratively in your committed relationship is a new way to achieve individual and marital goals, to resolve differences equitably, to manage conflicts, to create and sustain a satisfying sex life, to figure out where you stand on fidelity, to think about having and caring for kids, and to have committed careers and a satisfying family life. Negotiating collaboratively supports you and your partner seeing yourselves simultaneously as individuals and as a couple—enhances the sense of “being in this together” while also having individual life plans. Negotiating collaboratively supports valuing each other as individuals before seeing each other as husband and wife, and allows modern couples to challenge old gender trappings that can undermine the achievement of balance in a committed relationship. Straightforward and accessible, A Marriage of Equals offers couples a road map for how to negotiate collaboratively around the most essential aspects of a committed relationship—and, in doing so, create the equitable marriage they long for.

Autism was not a recognised disorder in Jane Austen's lifetime, nor for well over a century after her death. However there were certainly people who had autism, and Phyllis Ferguson Bottomer proposes that Austen wrote about them, without knowing what it was that she was describing. So Odd a Mixture looks at eight seemingly diverse characters in Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice, who display autistic traits. These characters - five in the Bennet family and three in the extended family of the Fitzwilliams - have fundamental difficulties with communication, empathy and theory of mind. Perhaps it is high-functioning autism or Asperger's Syndrome that provides an explanation for some characters' awkward behaviour at crowded balls, their frequent silences or their tendency to lapse into monologues rather than truly converse with others. This fascinating book will provide food for thought for students and fans of Austen's classic novel, and for anyone interested in autism spectrum disorders.

In the first-ever Seven Seas history of the world's female buccaneers, Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas tells the story of women, both real and legendary, who through the ages sailed alongside—and sometimes in command of—their male counterparts. These women came from all walks of life but had one thing in common: a desire for freedom. History has largely ignored these female swashbucklers, until now. Here are their stories, from ancient Norse princess Alfhild and warrior Rusla to Sayyida al-Hurra of the Barbary corsairs; from Grace O'Malley, who terrorized shipping operations around the British Isles during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I; to Cheng I Sao, who commanded a fleet of four hundred ships off China in the early nineteenth century. Author Laura Sook Duncombe also looks beyond the stories to the storytellers and mythmakers. What biases and agendas motivated them? What did they leave out? Pirate Women explores why and how these stories are told and passed down, and how history changes depending on who is recording it. It's the most comprehensive overview of women pirates in one volume and chock-full of swashbuckling adventures that pull these unique women from the shadows into the spotlight that they deserve.

Why did the West become so rich? Why is inequality rising? How ‘free’ should markets be? And what does sex have to do with it? In this passionate and skilfully argued book, leading feminist Victoria Bateman shows how we can only understand the burning economic issues of our time if we put sex and gender – ‘the sex factor’ – at the heart of the picture. Spanning the globe and drawing on thousands of years of history, Bateman tells a bold story about how the status and freedom of women are central to our prosperity. Genuine female empowerment requires us not only to recognize the liberating potential of markets and smart government policies but also to challenge the double-standard of many modern feminists when they celebrate the brain while denigrating the body. This iconoclastic book is a devastating exposé of what we have lost from ignoring ‘the sex factor’ and of how reversing this neglect can drive the smart economic policies we need today.

Courtesan, actress, medium -- spy. 1805: Europe stands poised on the brink of war. Elza is content with her life in the demi-monde, an actress and courtesan in the glittering society of France's First Empire, but when her former lover is arrested for treason, Elza is blackmailed into informing on her friends and associates. She has one alternative -- to become the secret agent of the most feared man in Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte! France's invasion of England is imminent, but a spy in the camp of the Grand Army threatens the secret plans. Taking the Emperor's commission to catch the spy means playing the deadly game of spy versus counterspy. However, this is no ordinary espionage, but backed by the power of the witches of England determined to hold England's sea wards against invasion. Only an agent who is herself a medium can hope to unravel their magic in time -- with the life of the man Elza loves hanging in the balance. From the theaters of Paris to the sea cliffs that guard the Channel, from ballrooms and bedrooms to battlefields corporeal and astral, Elza must rely on her wits, her courage, her beauty, and her growing talents as a medium for she must triumph -- or die! Based upon the real life of Maria Versfelt (alias Ida St. Elme)—courtesan, actress and writer—Graham’s latest entwines history, romance and a delicious dollop of fantasy. Sexy and dashing. -- Kirkus Review on The General's Mistress (This) story will confirm Graham’s place in the highest ranks of historical fantasists. -- Publisher's Weekly on Stealing Fire Graham's ability to bring history to life is truly remarkable -- Romantic Times Book Reviews on The General's Mistress Graham’s spare style focuses on action, but fraught meaning and smoldering emotional resonance overlay her deceptively simple words. -- Publisher's Weekly on Black Ships The General’s Mistress is a gorgeous book, a tumultuous moment in history seen through the eyes of a woman who is living both in and beyond her own time. Like Elza, the book manages to straddle the modern-day and the past to be both authentic and accessible to the readers. The result is a beautiful, sensual journey of a woman with many names trying to find her true identity. -- Geek Speak Magazine on The General's Mistress

Every major poet or philosopher develops their own distinctive semantic field around those terms which matter most to them, or which contribute most profoundly to the imagined world of a particular work. This book explores the specific meanings which Milton develops around key words in Paradise Lost. Some of these are theological or philosophical terms (e.g. 'evil', 'grace', 'reason'); others are words which shape the imagined world of the poem (e.g. 'dark', 'fall', 'within'); yet others are small words or even prefixes which subtly move the argument in new directions (e.g. 'if', 'not', 're-'). Milton seems to expect his readers to be alert to the special semantic field which he creates around such words, often by infusing them with biblical and literary connotations, and activating their etymological roots; alert also to the patterns created by the repetitions of such words, and particularly to their diverse use (and often their blatant misuse) by different characters. To understand the migrations and malleability of key words is part of the education of Milton's reader.

Book Three of the New Hope SeriesIt has been six months since Marti agreed to marry Joey. Despite her history, she’s having a healthy pregnancy. They finally have her house to themselves and Joey has finished her To Do list. Life should be perfect, but it’s not. Joey is pressuring Marti to make it legal before the baby arrives, which is proving impossible since Blaine refuses to let go. Their situation is further complicated when Finn refuses to go away. Add in a town divided, a legacy to uphold, and a particularly vicious hurricane season, and then hang on. Because life is full of storms and love means sharing an umbrella.

In The Abyss Beside My Driveway, the author's first novel, three markedly different worlds of Wall Street, the Taliban and the West Indies all collide in a colorful and breathtaking romp through New York City. Just around the time when Osama bin Laden began plotting against the West from his shadowy enclaves in Afghanistan, Howard Belnavis took his seat at the bottom of a dog-eat-dog totem pole, in one of Wall Street's most powerful firms. What ensued is a heart stopping and whimsical trek through the rise and fall of the stock market bubble and into the grim autumn of 2001.

The story's heroine, young Hagar Ashendyne, questions the constraints of her culture and eventually, through the freedom gained by her writing career, escapes its restrictions. Her struggle for independence and subsequent growth relect many of the dilemmas faced by southern women in the early twentieth century. A work of great scope, the heroine moves from the family plantation in the postwar South to a New York City tenement, from Fabian London to Caribbean moonlight.

The Artist and the Trinity aims to create a Christian theology of work based on Dorothy L. Sayers' analogy of the Trinity to the process of artistic creation. Sayers' analogy gives us an account of the person that does not collapse into the atomism of the individual of modern liberal capitalism, but is fully relational. By putting Sayers into dialogue with Alasdair MacIntyre, the book develops a fully Trinitarian theology of work that accounts for the interdependence of human beings, and for the ethical requirements of caring for the weak, the young, and the old in a way that is gender neutral.