Microfinance began as the disbursement of tiny loans to the poor, which they could use to undertake informal income-generating activities. It went on to become one of the most popular international development policies of all time and a mainstay of local development and antipoverty programs across the Global South. The contributors to this multidisciplinary volume consider the origins, evolution, and outcomes of microfinance from a variety of perspectives and contend that it has been an unsuccessful approach to development. The contributors contend that over the last twenty years, microfinance policies have exacerbated poverty and exclusion, undermined gender empowerment, underpinned a massive growth in inequality, destroyed solidarity and trust in the community, and, overall, manifestly weakened those local economies of the Global South where it reached critical mass. They use qualitative anthropological, economic, and political-economic research to unpack the ideas and values that have allowed microfinance to “seduce” the world and blind so many to its corrosive effects.

Seduced And Betrayed by Candace Schuler released on Jul 25, 1995 is available now for purchase.

'Hardwick's sentences are burned in my brain.' - Susan Sontag Sidelined. Betrayed. Killed off. Elizabeth Hardwick considers the history of women and literature. She imagines the lives of the Brontes, Woolf, Eliot and Plath; the fate of literary wives such as Zelda Fitzgerald and Jane Carlyle; and the stories of fictional heroines from Richardson's Clarissa to Ibsen's Nora. With her radiant sympathy and wisdom, Hardwick mines their childhoods, marriages, and personalities to probe the costs of sex, love, and marriage. She asks who is the seducer and who the seduced; who the victim and who the victor. Both timely and timeless, these devastatingly stylish essays are nothing less than a reckoning, dissecting relations between the sexes, women and writing, work and life.

A pilot on the run. A warrant-taker determined to make a capture. The mating-dance that threatens to destroy them both… Warrant-taker Jazen Lav accepts one last assignment before she retires to follow her dreams. She’s hot on the trail of a runaway cyborg, but the path leads to the crew of the Indefatigable and they’re a tight-lipped bunch. Frustration steers her to an undercover gig as a nurse, which places her in the sights of the flirtatious Indy pilot. Nanu left his home planet at a young age, missing the last crucial elements of his training before he hit adulthood. The inner beast he thought dead leaps to life on meeting Jazen, taking him by surprise and tossing him into confusion. His inner beast insists Jazen is his mate, but she’s trouble for him, trouble for his friends, trouble for his future. Abduction and betrayal—not the best way to start a courtship, and that’s where the turmoil begins since danger stalks into the city with Nanu and Jazen directly in its sights…

Dr. Ian Ellwood has worked hard to become one of the top heart surgeons in the country. His father would have preferred he went into sports medicine, but Ian had loftier goals. What he did not count on was falling in love with a nurse who would ultimately break his heart. Lila Mooney has never gotten over Ian. She left him when it was too hard to stay, never explaining why. Now that they are once again working in the same hospital she cannot avoid him. After Ian realizes why Lila left him, he is determined to win her love again. Seduction is a possibility, but he considers it beneath him to use it. Ian is a temptation that Lila has trouble resisting, but her bitterness may be too hard to overcome.

This accessible, readable book looks at the cultural study of the Bible, challenging the traditional mode of reading the women in the Bible. Alice Bach applies literary theory, cultural representations of biblical figures, films, and paintings to a close reading of a group of biblical texts revolving around the 'wicked' literary figures in the Bible. She compares the biblical character of the wife of Potiphar with the Second Temple Period narratives and rabbinic midrashim that expand her story. She then reads Bathsheba against a Yiddish novel by David Pinski, and finally looks at the Biblical Salome against a very different Salome created by Oscar Wilde, and the selection of Salomes created by Hollywood. Bach argues that biblical characters have a life in the mind of the reader independent of the stories in which they were created, thus making the reader the site at which the texts and the cultures that produced them come together.

Two friends. One woman. Let the games begin… Raine Kendall has been in love with her boss, Macen Hammerman, for years. Determined to make him notice her, she pours out her heart and offers him her body—only to be crushingly rejected. When his very sexy best friend, Liam O’Neill, sees Hammer refuse to act on his obvious feelings for her, he plots to rouse his pal’s possessive instincts by making Raine a proposition too tempting to refuse. He never imagines he’ll fall for her himself. Hammer has buried his lust for Raine for years. After rescuing the runaway from an alley behind his exclusive club, he’s come to crave her. But tragedy has proven he’ll never be the man she needs, so he protects her while keeping his distance. Then Liam’s scheme to make Raine his own blindsides Hammer. He isn’t ready to give the feisty beauty over to his friend. But can he heal from his past enough to fight for her? Or will he lose Raine if she gives herself—heart, body, and soul—to Liam? (Ready to escape with something dark and edgy—and we don’t just mean the men? This saga, loaded with scorching heat, angst, rage, jealousy, and revenge, is super addictive. Just saying…) *Previously published as DOHL: Raine Falling (Book 1). The Unbroken Series: Raine Falling The Broken The Betrayal The Break The Brink The Bond

Excerpts from criticism of the works of novelists, poets, playwrights, short story writers and other creative writers who lived between 1800 and 1900, from the first published critical appraisals to current evaluations.

Plan A sucks. Move over for plan B… Sports commentator and reporter, Megan Saxon, has it all. The perfect career and freedom to do anything she wants, but as the years creep by she realizes love, or at least male companionship, has thumbed its nose at her. With the help of her agent-friend, she hatches Plan B. A brief love affair with a younger man will cure all ills and help her plan for the future. The problem with plan B? Nothing, I repeat nothing, goes the way she plans, and she’s left gasping for breath, dodging reporters and suffering acute embarrassment. The. Worst. Blushing. Epidemic. Ever. Long-term widower and werewolf, Jacey Anderson, has moved to small country town Middlemarch to be near his grieving adult stepson, Henry, and to embrace the wide, open spaces with his wolf. He’s not expecting romance and especially with a public figure who attracts reporters like flies at a dung heap. His attraction to the sexy, sassy Megan has disaster written all over it, yet try telling that to his moonstruck wolf. Yes, this Plan B has calamity written all over it for both parties. A pity that neither of them has a lick of good sense when they’re in the same room, touching… Kissing… Caressing… Contains: werewolves, feline shifters, and creatures that howl at the night moon. There is also hot love, laughter and lots of teasing.