The sixth Sister of Power presents pirate-turned-vampire Viktor Brandewyne with his greatest challenge yet. Circe proves not only hard to reach: the quest she sets him is fraught with peril from the very start. He must brave a labyrinth to retrieve a puzzle box. He then must revisit each of the Sisters he's already faced. Five pieces of the box were dispersed among them by order of the Elder long before Viktor was even born. The completion of his quest is further barred by a sea dragon, the ultimate form of a male siren, who seeks to claim Belladonna as his mate. Before all is done, Viktor will lose someone very close and important to him. He also has to survive Circe's powers; for she is the same witch from The Odyssey, with the power to turn men to beasts.

The original super-sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, is back on the case - A corpse in a sarcophagus, a headless macaw, and a stolen slice of Black Forest gateau alert Sherlock Holmes to a macabre international crime in progress, and lead him through London’s backstreets to the gloomy moors of Cornwall. People vanish, Greek statues vanish. Even Holmes vanishes – to the distress of his companion, James Wilson, whose emails and text messages go unanswered. But Holmes is in top form, fully recovered from his journey through ice to the twenty-first century and ready to reveal a multitude of secrets . . .

The year 1982 was a desperate time for the U.S. defense community. The United States had no effective system to protect itself completely from a Soviet attack with nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, which the Soviet Union possessed in large quantity, and the doomsday philosophy of mutually assured destruction seemed inescapable. But people in the Reagan administration, including Reagan himself, were not content with what they viewed as a morally unacceptable status quo. Then Adm. James Watkins, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked, "Wouldn't it be better if we could develop a system that would protect, rather than avenge, our people?" With that, the president's commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) became certain. Ultimately, SDI reflected Western political idealism, a powerful ingredient in the struggle to finally conquer the terrors of the Cold War and to allay the threat of nuclear holocaust. The Star Wars Enigma tells this dramatic story.

Devastated from the loss of the Reaper, Viktor Brandewyne returns to Savannah to give Brianna Grimm and her children the bad news about her husband only to find them missing. Worse, no one, not even Mother Celie has any memory of them or of Hezekiah Grimm sailing with him the past six years. With the help of Belladonna and Jim Rigger, Viktor sets out to find them or at least learn what happened to them. His curse grows stronger and his control over his Hunger erodes as those who hunt him close in, reminding him he must also face Mamaan Juma, the seventh Sister of Power, once and for all... and time is running out.

Viktor Brandewyne’s search for the second Sister of Power leads him to the bayou country near colonial New Orleans. Along the way, he has his first encounter with vampires not made by him, as well as runs afoul of smugglers. The black waters of the bayous hold their own danger, as well. An ancient demon guards the way to the Sister. Worse, the siren, Belladonna, begins to die in the swamps. Should Viktor return the siren to the sea or continue on to the Sister? Without magic from all the Sisters, he won’t be able to break the curse that has made him vampire before it destroys him. Without Belladonna, he cannot find the Sisters.

Mere Venoma Noir, the fourth Sister of Power, proves to be the most challenging yet for Viktor Brandewyne. She sets him to retrieve an amulet stolen by a notorious slave trader with a reputation for ruthlessness to rival Viktor’s and a talent for black magic. She also possesses the power to turn the siren, Belladonna, against him; and the Sister will use every tool and opportunity she can to kill the pirate-turned-vampire before he can complete his quest.

The search for the third Sister of Power takes Viktor Brandewyne to Mexico and the Devil’s Daughter. She sends him to find devil’s hoof, but doesn’t explain exactly what it is. All Viktor knows is that she will try to enslave him once he brings it back to her. His quest strands him in the middle of the shark-infested Indian Ocean with no food or water, no wind… and no siren to sing one up for him. Try as he might to reach her, his bond with Belladonna has fallen silent.

Viktor Brandewyne finds himself tasked with finding the most flighty of the Sisters of Power. He tracks her from New England to the ends of the earth. She sets him the task of retrieving three things as the price for a portion of her magic: a dragon's egg, a dodo's egg, and a drop of blood from the Daughter of the Dragon, one of the few beings capable of killing him. Lady Carpathia has her own agenda concerning Viktor. Though she comes to realize just how dangerous he is, she still hopes to seduce and use him to overthrow her master before she ultimately destroys the pirate-turned-vampire. Fraught with danger, Viktor's chances of surviving this quest are almost as slim as those of him completing it. How can he acquire the eggs of a mythical beast or of a creature that has been extinct for nearly a century?

Realistic appraisal of Soviet defence efforts is crucial to strategic planning and foreign policy analysis. Since Soviet defence expenditure figures are incomplete, however, our knowledge in this area is extremely limited. This study reviews the state of current knowledge in this field, and presents a critical review of the nature and limitation of traditional approaches. The contributors analyse newly available sources of economic, scientific, and technical military information, and conclude with an in-depth consideration of the relevance and impact of historical and cultural influences on current Russian-Soviet military strategy. There emerges a fascinating account, which both extends our knowledge and understanding, and sheds light on what is perhaps the single most important 'unknown' in the study of international affairs and defence needs.

In this book, Curtis Gruenler proposes that the concept of the enigmatic, latent in a wide range of medieval thinking about literature, can help us better understand in medieval terms much of the era’s most enduring literature, from the riddles of the Anglo-Saxon bishop Aldhelm to the great vernacular works of Dante, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and, above all, Langland’s Piers Plowman. Riddles, rhetoric, and theology—the three fields of meaning of aenigma in medieval Latin—map a way of thinking about reading and writing obscure literature that was widely shared across the Middle Ages. The poetics of enigma links inquiry about language by theologians with theologically ambitious literature. Each sense of enigma brings out an aspect of this poetics. The playfulness of riddling, both oral and literate, was joined to a Christian vision of literature by Aldhelm and the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book. Defined in rhetoric as an obscure allegory, enigma was condemned by classical authorities but resurrected under the influence of Augustine as an aid to contemplation. Its theological significance follows from a favorite biblical verse among medieval theologians, “We see now through a mirror in an enigma, then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Along with other examples of the poetics of enigma, Piers Plowman can be seen as a culmination of centuries of reflection on the importance of obscure language for knowing and participating in endless mysteries of divinity and humanity and a bridge to the importance of the enigmatic in modern literature. This book will be especially useful for scholars and undergraduate students interested in medieval European literature, literary theory, and contemplative theology.