She came from a race long thought dead Shaina C’Err belonged to the Olak’din, a secret race of warriors. With her people in danger she asked for help from the one warrior who owed her. With a Kabanian Warlord at her side, she might have a chance at defeating her enemies. He craved what his friends had attained Argan Kril never thought he’d long for love until his life changed forever. Now among the Raasa he watches his best friend and his fellow Warlord with the women who love them. His upbringing dictates that such a bond is for the weak but when his path crosses with Shaina he feels stronger and happier than he’s ever been. Neither expected the battle they’d wage together would have such a steep reward.

Welcome to a top-level clearance world that doesn't exist...Now with updated material for the paperback edition. This is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a road trip through a shadow nation of state secrets, clandestine military bases, black sites, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies that make up what insiders call the "black world." Here, geographer and provocateur Trevor Paglen knocks on the doors of CIA prisons, stakes out a covert air base in Nevada from a mountaintop 30 miles away, dissects the Defense Department's multibillion dollar "black" budget, and interviews those who live on the edges of these blank spots. Whether Paglen reports from a hotel room in Vegas, a secret prison in Kabul, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, he is impassioned, rigorous, relentless-and delivers eye-opening details.

Pronouncements such as “the avant-garde is dead,” argues James M. Harding, have suggested a unified history or theory of the avant-garde. His book examines the diversity and plurality of avant-garde gestures and expressions to suggest “avant-garde pluralities” and how an appreciation of these pluralities enables a more dynamic and increasingly global understanding of vanguardism in the performing arts. In pursuing this goal, the book not only surveys a wide variety of canonical and noncanonical examples of avant-garde performance, but also develops a range of theoretical paradigms that defend the haunting cultural and political significance of avant-garde expressions beyond what critics have presumed to be the death of the avant-garde. The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s) offers a strikingly new perspective not only on key controversies and debates within avant-garde studies but also on contemporary forms of avant-garde expression within a global political economy.

Essays by Christian G. Appy, Andrew J. Bacevich, John Prados, and others offer “history at its best, meaning, at its most useful.” —Howard Zinn From the launch of the “Shock and Awe” invasion in March 2003 through President George W. Bush’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” two months later, the war in Iraq was meant to demonstrate definitively that the United States had learned the lessons of Vietnam. This new book makes clear that something closer to the opposite is true—that US foreign policy makers have learned little from the past, even as they have been obsessed with the “Vietnam Syndrome.” Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam brings together the country’s leading historians of the Vietnam experience. Examining the profound changes that have occurred in the country and the military since the Vietnam War, this book assembles a distinguished group to consider how America found itself once again in the midst of a quagmire—and the continuing debate about the purpose and exercise of American power. Also includes contributions from: Alex Danchev * David Elliott * Elizabeth L. Hillman * Gabriel Kolko * Walter LaFeber * Wilfried Mausbach * Alfred W. McCoy * Gareth Porter “Essential.” —Bill Moyers

Sun Rise Sun Set: Twin Towers, Outer Realm Adventure By: JK Griffin “With great wealth comes great responsibilities” resonates as the Kelly’s continue to mesmerize with their spontaneity incorporating the twin tower buildings into their empire. The final chapters exasperate to retribution when Sean and the G’lani twins discover modern intervention with gems introducing diamonds as a form of new technology: diamond fuel storage units. Futuristic fantasy, the Kelly’s of G-Company embraces their fate encountering extraterrestrial life-form while space-mining for diamonds. Romance, mystery, suspense, and family drama dazzles with interstellar deceptive actions from an international vantage point deep in the outer realm.

England has an abundance of ancient stone circles, and the world is full of stone rings and megalithic places. Places like Stonehenge, The Avebury Rings, Carnac in France, even the newly found Göbeklitepe in Turkey have been discovered in more recent years, but no one knows why or what they were used for. But what if two boys discover the actual answers to the archaeological questions that have perplexed the world for thousands of years? What if two boys knew all the answers to all the enigmas? Questions that scholars and historians worldwide have been desperately attempting to find for centuries but are largely unaware of what they are used for? This is a story about how two young boys discovered the hidden secrets of the past and could understand why civilisations and Empires have forged over the past twelve thousand years, only to be lost and forgotten again. Living in the New Forest in England, two boys discover a hidden stone circle in the countryside: only to find out what they were used for and why they existed; only to find out where they lead to, why they were built in the first place; only to find a closely guarded secret that only a few would know and a long-forgotten past with civilisations that rose to glory then collapsed into the ashes of history. A sophisticated network of stone circles crisscross the globe, and voices from the past whistle in the wind around our accidental megaliths, waiting to be discovered.

Love that breaks all the rules… Every culture has its secrets, some surprising and some horrifying, and Delroi is no different. When Sergei Trace, half Delroi half Earthling, arrived on his father’s home planet he expected some culture shock. He’s used to living in the shadows, on the fringes of life. On Delroi he’s thrust into the light. Kayna Idis has a serious problem. She’s in love with the wrong man. Razor Deriq is everything she always wanted. Strong and steadfast. Sexy and fun. Then Sergei enters her life just as compelling in his own way. He’s dark and mysterious. Hard and unflinching. And she wonders if she can have them both. Razor is determined to keep them both, but first he needs to find and eliminate the warriors threatening Kayna. Pairing up with Sergei for the task gives him the perfect opportunity for seduction, but will Sergei ever lower his shields enough to let him and Kayna in?

The Ming Empire scrambles to prepare for war as the resurging clans of the Underworld form alliances and make maneuvers to overthrow the dynasty in the name of a powerful and mysterious race of nonhuman foreigners called Terukk. The knight-errant Sun Xin, known as the Wandering Wolf, embarks on another harrowing operation with his motley team to discover their enemies’ plans and buy the Ming Empire enough time to muster her defenses for the arrival of a massive Terukk invasion force. The Ming Dynasty’s emperor is compelled to form his own alliances with ancient enemies and rival kingdoms if there is to be any hope of survival. This is the story of the great clash of alliances where legendary factions, powerful armies, and bitter rivals fight to the death for the creation of a new world or for the restoration and preservation of the old one.

In 2000 the Washington Post listed The Agency as one of the ten best books on Intelligence in the twentieth century, calling it “An encyclopedic and fair-minded overview of the agency into the 1980s.” A history of the CIA from its intrepid early days to becoming a mature bureaucracy riddled with scandal and scrutiny. During World War II “Wild Bill” Donovan started the Office of Special Services (OSS) and gave the CIA its original image: dashing, Ivy League, and Eastern Establishment. Successive CIA Directors covered in the book were Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby and William Casey. “The Agency is the first comprehensive history of the CIA, a book designed, in its author’s words, to get away from ‘contemporary demonology’ and to place the CIA firmly within the context of its time... a dazzling, panoramic overview of the CIA’s history. [Ranelagh] mixes keen insights into the organization and the people who ran it with superb accounts of specific crises and operations. This brilliant book is so rich both in detail and generalization that even a reader unfamiliar with the history of the CIA will find it hard to put down... the book pursues many... themes, such as organizational changes within the agency and shifts in its sense of mission, its relationship with presidents and their advisers and other intelligence agencies, the history of specific projects and operations, and the general mood within both the CIA and the government and nation at large. The result is a complex tapestry, full of new information and fresh generalizations.” — Reviews in American History “A massive history of the CIA... Ranelagh... has a good feel for the murky world of intelligence, and has constructed quite a readable work... [he] conducted scores of interviews with insiders and studied more than 7,000 pages of classified and formerly classified documents... Great reading and a valuable reference for students of government bureaucracy and intelligence work.” — Kirkus “Ranelagh... provides here a major overview of the Central Intelligence Agency from its founding in 1947 to [1987]. Based largely on hundreds of interviews, the book examines the personality and policies of each director in the context of the times.” — Publishers Weekly “[A] comprehensive examination of the CIA... Unlike most books on the nearly 40-year-old spy organization, The Agency is not a diary of old war stories or a flashy expose; it is a thoughtful analysis of the CIA from gestation to middle age... An important difference between The Agency and many other scholarly treatments of intelligence gathering is the extensive use of quotes from both on-the-record and unattributed sources, as well as documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.” — The New York Times “A thoughtful analysis of the CIA from its beginnings, arguing that dependence on technology has crippled American intelligence.” — The New York Times “Mr. Ranelagh, a British television producer, has written the best comprehensive history of the CIA. He is in control of the massive secondary literature, has used the Freedom of Information Act effectively, interviewed widely, and mined congressional sources. The tone is critical but detached, devoid of both the muckraking passion of the left and the self-congratulatory approach of the old-boy network. A fine book.” — Foreign Affairs “The Agency is without a doubt the finest, best-documented, and most entertainingly written study of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of which I know. It traces the agency from its first gleam in the eye of Wild Bill Donavan through the first term of William Casey on behalf of President Reagan... a genuine literary and stylistic accomplishment.” — Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

This fantasy adventure, The Maiden's Saber, centers around three improbable companions. Gareth, a roughish mountain of a man who once roamed the seas as a sailor. He joined with Natsha, a daughter of the Thieves Guild. Together they formed an unlikely partnership that went about the land of Aventine cutting purse strings and emptying the odd monuments of its treasures. Through misfortune or destiny, Gareth awakens the Maiden Amari Djinn, who in turn saves them from the hands of the king's soldiers. They are forced to take sanctuary in the lair of the Dragon's Grave while trying to escape Amari's evil sister. Wandering the endless catacombs, they discover another of the fabled magic sabers that only fits Gareth's mighty hand. Three additional magic swords have appeared in Amari's visions. Together, these swords will complete the fabled Kcaj Pentadiene. Their adventurous search takes the trio into violent lands and confrontations with evils bent to destroy them.