Four strong heroines determined to do what’s right for their people, despite the odds against them. Shuree has always been the perfect khan’s daughter, obeying and supporting her father, even if she doesn’t agree with him. So when he is massacred in an ill-fated raid, she must step up to lead her people. But will others accept the peace she knows they so desperately need? As an imperial princess and an assassin, Lien lives by three rules: never disobey the emperor, never reveal her secret gift, and never trust a barbarian. When the emperor betroths her to the barbarian she’s sworn to kill, Lien is faced with an impossible decision. When a deadly disease sweeps through her village, Geriel despairs she’s not a good enough healer to rescue her people. With the outbreak spreading and her gift unstable, she’s sent on a desperate mission to locate the herbal cure deep in enemy territory. Lady’s maid Shan works for a privileged family, though she longs to see all servants treated fairly. But when she’s caught with equality propaganda, no favours can keep her from execution. With no other way to save herself, Shan reveals her ability to turn invisible and agrees to a risky mission spying on the emperor. This boxset contains three full length novels, plus an exclusive novella and short story not for sale anywhere else. Get swept away in the adventure today.

An Award-Winning Challenge to Popular Ideas of the Kingdom According to Scot McKnight, "kingdom" is the biblical term most misused by Christians today. It has taken on meanings that are completely at odds with what the Bible says and has become a buzzword for both social justice and redemption. In Kingdom Conspiracy, McKnight offers a sizzling biblical corrective and a fiercely radical vision for the role of the local church in the kingdom of God. Now in paper. Praise for Kingdom Conspiracy 2015 Outreach Resources of the Year Award Winner One of Leadership Journal's Best Books for Church Leaders in 2014 "This is a must-read for church leaders today."--Publishers Weekly "A timely resource for the missional church to reexamine some basic assumptions that impact church practice in the everyday."--Outreach

Why, Timothy Melley asks, have paranoia and conspiracy theory become such prominent features of postwar American culture? In Empire of Conspiracy, Melley explores the recent growth of anxieties about thought-control, assassination, political indoctrination, stalking, surveillance, and corporate and government plots. At the heart of these developments, he believes, lies a widespread sense of crisis in the way Americans think about human autonomy and individuality. Nothing reveals this crisis more than the remarkably consistent form of expression that Melley calls "agency panic"—an intense fear that individuals can be shaped or controlled by powerful external forces. Drawing on a broad range of forms that manifest this fear—including fiction, film, television, sociology, political writing, self-help literature, and cultural theory—Melley provides a new understanding of the relation between postwar American literature, popular culture, and cultural theory. Empire of Conspiracy offers insightful new readings of texts ranging from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to the Unabomber Manifesto, from Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders to recent addiction discourse, and from the "stalker" novels of Margaret Atwood and Diane Johnson to the conspiracy fictions of Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, Don DeLillo, and Kathy Acker. Throughout, Melley finds recurrent anxieties about the power of large organizations to control human beings. These fears, he contends, indicate the continuing appeal of a form of individualism that is no longer wholly accurate or useful, but that still underpins a national fantasy of freedom from social control.

Entering the world of conspiracy theories and secret societies is like stepping into a distant, parallel universe where the laws of physics have completely changed: black means white, up is down, and if you want to understand what’s really going on, you need a good reference book. That’s where Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies comes in. Whether you’re a skeptic or a true believer, this fascinating guide, packed with the latest information, walks you through some of the most infamous conspiracy theories — such as Area 51 and the assassination of JFK — and introduces you to such mysterious organizations as the Freemasons, the Ninjas, the Mafia, and Rosicrucians. This behind-the-curtain guide helps you separate fact from fiction and helps you the global impact of these mysterious events and groups on our modern world. Discover how to: Test a conspiracy theory Spot a sinister secret society Assess the Internet’s role in fueling conspiracy theories Explore world domination schemes Evaluate 9/11 conspiracy theories Figure out who “they” are Grasp the model on which conspiracy theories are built Figure out whether what “everybody knows” is true Distinguish on assassination brotherhood from another Understand why there’s no such thing as a “lone assassin” Why do hot dogs come in packages of ten, while buns come in eight-packs? Everybody knows its a conspiracy, right? Find out in Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies.

As portrayals of heroic women gain ground in film, television, and other media, their depictions are breaking free of females as versions of male heroes or simple stereotypes of acutely weak or overly strong women. Although heroines continue to represent the traditional roles of mothers, goddesses, warriors, whores, witches, and priestesses, these women are no longer just damsels in distress or violent warriors. In Heroines of Film and Television: Portrayals in Popular Culture,award-winning authors from a variety of disciplines examine the changing roles of heroic women across time. In this volume, editors Norma Jones, Maja Bajac-Carter, and Bob Batchelor have assembled a collection of essays that broaden our understanding of how heroines are portrayed across media, offering readers new ways to understand, perceive, and think about women. Contributors bring fresh readings to popular films and television shows such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Kill Bill, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Weeds, Mad Men, and Star Trek. The representations and interpretations of these heroines are important reflections of popular culture that simultaneously empower and constrain real life women. These essays help readers gain a more complete understanding of female heroes, especially as related to race, gender, power, and culture. A companion volume to Heroines of Comic Books and Literature, this collection will appeal to academics and broader audiences that are interested in women in popular culture.

GALACTIC THREAT The awesome forces of the Empire of Earth have destroyed most of the evil conspiracy's fleet, including the ship bearing the ice-blooded Lady A, when the Family d'Alembert uncover a plot on the planet Newforest, proving that the conspiracy commanded by the mysterious C is even more widespread than they have dreamed. For Yvette suddenly realises who - or what - C actually is, and she knows the terrifying true meaning of Lady A's boast that the conspiracy is the Empire! Revolt of the Galaxy is the tenth and final exciting novel in the enthralling space adventure series whose heroes and heroines are the intrepid Family dAlembert.

Weaving U.S. history into the larger fabric of world history, the contributors to Crossing Empires de-exceptionalize the American empire, placing it in a global transimperial context. They draw attention to the breadth of U.S. entanglements with other empires to illuminate the scope and nature of American global power as it reached from the Bering Sea to Australia and East Africa to the Caribbean. With case studies ranging from the 1830s to the late twentieth century, the contributors address topics including diplomacy, governance, anticolonialism, labor, immigration, medicine, religion, and race. Their transimperial approach—whether exemplified in examinations of U.S. steel corporations partnering with British imperialists to build the Ugandan railway or the U.S. reliance on other empires in its governance of the Philippines—transcends histories of interimperial rivalries and conflicts. In so doing, the contributors illuminate the power dynamics of seemingly transnational histories and the imperial origins of contemporary globality. Contributors. Ikuko Asaka, Oliver Charbonneau, Genevieve Clutario, Anne L. Foster, Julian Go, Michel Gobat, Julie Greene, Kristin L. Hoganson, Margaret D. Jacobs, Moon-Ho Jung, Marc-William Palen, Nicole M. Phelps, Jay Sexton, John Soluri, Stephen Tuffnell

This book is a history of Christianity from its earliest beginnings to the end of the twentieth century. The book provides students with an introduction to the many persons, places, movements, and events necessary for the telling of our story, the story of the Church. This history of Christianity is told in its essentials, simply and straightforwardly for students with little or no experience in the academic study of religion. It is a story told within the complex contexts of larger world events and world cultures, but defined and simplified by attention to those developments which have proven most influential for the past and present shaping of Church thought and practice. The book is a comprehensive and definitive introduction to the history of Christianity. It provides students with the necessary outline and description of the broad sweep of movements and periods in this history, but it also pauses at important points to provide details about the lives of Christians as lived at various times and in various locations. This story is told in easy-to-understand prose and with illustrative photographs, maps and charts.