Make-believe romance has never felt so real! From USA TODAY bestselling author Maureen Child. Bestselling writer Micah Hunter lives a nomadic life. Temporarily settling in a small town for research is outside his comfort zone. Only his tantalizing landlady can lure him from the isolation of his rented mansion. Because Kelly Flynn stirs him as no woman ever has. And she needs his help. To placate her grandmother, Kelly asks Micah to pretend they’re engaged. He relishes the chance to be with Kelly…until acting like they’re in love begins to feel like more than an act!

USA Today Bestseller Leslie North invites you to indulge in a steamy billionaire romance with an unforgettable bad boy billionaire and the smart-talking woman who tames him... Reclusive billionaire inventor Gavin Burrows still thinks about Sarah Hanson—the woman he had a brief but memorable fling with three years ago. So he’s shocked when the pretty American woman shows up at his castle door pleading with him to not end his contract with his gardeners, who happen to be Sarah’s aunt and uncle. Sarah is desperate to complete the garden, but Gavin is desperate, too. He’ll do almost anything to get his mother to stop playing matchmaker—even if that means making a deal with Sarah to pose as his fiancée. She gets her garden, he gets his mother off his back. At least with Sarah posing as his fake fiancée, he can avoid all his mother’s marriage prospects. Coming from a large and rambunctious family, all he’s ever really wanted was to be alone to work on his inventions. He certainly won’t let one gorgeous gardener get in his way. Sarah would never tell Gavin this, but that summer three years ago? She’d fallen hard for him. As an only child, Sarah has always wanted a large family, so when she learns he considers having a big, loud family akin to having the plague, she now realizes Gavin is definitely not the man for her. Still, she can’t resist the opportunity to restore Gavin’s historic garden to its former glory, so when he offers, she reluctantly agrees to pose as his fiancée and prays she can shield her heart. But even though she knows it’s temporary, she surrenders to their smoldering attraction and falls hard all over again. When Gavin’s parents throw them an engagement party, the guilt over all their lies begins to weigh heavy—as does the realization she’ll once again be left heartbroken. As the garden she’s created turns out to be a spectacular achievement, Sarah can only wonder if her love for Gavin will wither or finally bloom into something just as grand…

In this wide-ranging study, Ghassan Moazzin sheds critical new light on the history of foreign banks in late nineteenth and early twentieth century China, a time that saw a substantial influx of foreign financial institutions into China and a rapid increase of both China's foreign trade and its interactions with international capital markets. Drawing on a broad range of German, English, Japanese and Chinese primary sources, including business records, government documents and personal papers, Moazzin reconstructs how during this period foreign banks facilitated China's financial integration into the first global economy and provided the financial infrastructure required for modern economic globalization in China. Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China shows the key role international finance and foreign banks and capital markets played at important turning points in modern Chinese history.

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the workings of financial institutions and financial markets beyond the discipline of economics, which has been accelerated by the financial crisis of the early twenty-first century. The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Finance brings together twenty-nine chapters, written by scholars of international repute from Europe, North America, and Asia, to provide comprehensive coverage on a variety of topics related to the role of finance in a globalized world, and its historical development. Topics include global institutions of modern finance, types of actors involved in financial transactions and supporting technologies, mortgage markets, rating agencies, and the role of financial economics. Particular attention is given to financial crises, which are discussed in a special section, as well as to alternative forms of finance, including Islamic finance and the rise of China. The Handbook will be an indispensable tool for academics, researchers, and students of contemporary finance and economic sociology, and will serve as a reference point for the expanding international community of scholars researching these areas from a broadly-defined sociological perspective.

Current interest in the history of money and banking remains strong and it is opportune to survey developments both in the UK, USA, Europe and Asia. This set provides historical analysis which incorporates research from the early twentieth century onwards in a form that is both accessible to students of money & banking and economists, economic historians and bankers This set re-issues 38 volumes originally published between 1900 and 2000. It charts the history of early banking, discusses banking in the UK, Europe,Japan and the USA, analyses banks as multinationals, the UK mortgage market, banking policy and structure and examines specific sectors such as gilts and gold.

When it was originally published this volume was the first comprehensive survey of the experience of Islamic banking throughout the Muslim world in Turkey, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Sudan, iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Drawing comparisons between the countries in economic terms, it shows that the success of Islamic banks to a large extent reflects the immediate political environment. The complete Islamization of the financial systems of the more fundamentalist countries of Iran and Pakistan is compared with the divide between conventional interest-based systems and the new Islamic banks in Kuwait, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan and Jordan. Islamic Financial Markets explores both international Islamic finance and the national markets in which Islamic banks operate, raising for the first time the issue of competition in Islamic banking. It also looks to the future, to retail development and wholesale possibilities which seem to be the next step forward in Islamic finance. Setting the subject in historical, religious and economic perspective, the book offers a comprehensive survey of the successful adaptation of an ancient financial system to meet the requirements of modern commerce.

This book is distinctive among current studies on this topic. The Chinese economy has entered a period of transformation, which has brought changes to the finance market and consumer habits. For a long time, topics such as monetary policy, reform, financial risks and so forth have been the focus. But there have been few studies of those aspects of the consumer finance market that are directly related to private consumption. Studies on this topic, to which this book contributes, are necessary for understanding the current economic situation in China. This is a full-scale comparative study of consumer finance in China, Japan and South Korea, and will draw lessons for China in this area from the experience of the other two countries.

Katy Andrews was going to a family reunion where she knew her life just wouldn't be worth living she didn't take a man. Trouble was, all the decent men she knoew were too old, too young or too married, which left her with only one option… Laid-back rancher Dylan Cole was the man Katy loved to hate. They rarely managed to be in the same room for long without arguing! Now they had to call a truce long enough to convince Katy's family that they were engaged. But then they began to enjoy their pretend relationship a little too much…

Recent economic crises have made the centrality of debt, and the instability it creates, increasingly apparent. This realization has led to cries for change—yet there is little popular awareness of possible alternatives. Beyond Debt describes efforts to create a transnational economy free of debt. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia, Daromir Rudnyckyj illustrates how the state, led by the central bank, seeks to make the country’s capital Kuala Lumpur “the New York of the Muslim world”—the central node of global financial activity conducted in accordance with Islam. Rudnyckyj shows how Islamic financial experts have undertaken ambitious experiments to create more stable economies and stronger social solidarities by facilitating risk- and profit-sharing, enhanced entrepreneurial skills, and more collaborative economic action. Building on scholarship that reveals the impact of financial devices on human activity, he illustrates how Islamic finance is deployed to fashion subjects who are at once more pious Muslims and more ambitious entrepreneurs. In so doing, Rudnyckyj shows how experts seek to create a new “geoeconomics”—a global Islamic alternative to the conventional financial network centered on New York, London, and Tokyo. A groundbreaking analysis of a timely subject, Beyond Debt tells the captivating story of efforts to re-center international finance in an emergent Islamic global city and, ultimately, to challenge the very foundations of conventional finance.

This book is a contribution to the international trade and economic development literature and is based on a decade of joint research and collaboration on South–South economic relations. Given the increasing focus on the economic power of some developing countries, for example the 2013 Human Development Report’s “Rise of the South”, it is particularly appropriate and timely. [NP] The book’s findings are based on rigorous empirical examination of South–South trade and finance and it provides an even-handed assessment from the perspective of long-term development goals rather than mainstream welfare approaches or ideological/theoretical worldview. [NP] This work directly engages with the ‘new developmentalism’ literature that has challenged the neoliberal orthodoxy and its policy approach, which focuses on liberalization, privatization, and deregulation. It also engages with literature by examining whether the increase in South–South trade facilitates or inhibits the possibilities for developmentalist economic policy in developing countries. The book shows concrete and positive results from South–South trade particularly related to industrial development and also documents how South–South trade is dominated by large developing countries and that South–South trade liberalization may be counterproductive.