A collection of short stories set in the world of the Twilight Reign series Eleven stories that add further colour and shape to the epic story of the Twilight Reign series - this is an essential volume for Tom Lloyd's many fans. The history of the Land may remember the slaughter at Moorview or the horror of Scree's fall, but there were other casualties of the secret war against Azaer - more tales surrounding those bloody years that went unrecorded. In the shadow of memorials to the glorious dead, these ghosts lie quiet and forgotten by all but a few. A companion collection to the Twilight Reign quintet, these eleven stories shine a rather different light on the Land. Look past the armies and politics of the Seven Tribes and you will find smaller moments that shaped the course of history in their own way. But even forgotten secrets can kill. Even shadows can have claws.

The crucifix is in! You can fool most of the people most of the time. In The God Con, Lee Moller, a life-long atheist and skeptic, looks at organized religion through the lens of the con. Organized religion has been selling an invisible product, that it never has to deliver, for thousands of years. It has given us bigotry, rampant pedophilia, terrorism, and bloodshed beyond imagining. And its acolytes have, in turn, given organized religion power over their bank accounts, their reproduction, and their very “souls”.

Striking portrayals of 4 all-powerful figures: Aegir, the much-feared god of the ocean; Thor, god of thunder, whose giant chariot created rumbling sounds; Odin, the wise father of the gods; and Valkyrie, an armed female warrior who swept down from the sky to take slain heroes to Valhalla.

What would it be like to realize one day that everything you believed to be true was nothing but a lie? That you lived in an illusion constantly fed by those around you? That reality is often diametrically opposed to the chimera that was inoculated to you? That to learn the truth you need to forget everything you know? - What is God? - Are aliens real? - Is the material universe just an illusion? - Why are we here, where do we come from and where do we go after death? - Is Earth a prison? - Are humans the descendants of the gods of the past? - Is the Bible just a collection of plagiarized myths? - Was Christianity invented by Philo of Alexandria? - Was the Garden of Eden located on the territory of today's Romania? - Are Lucifer and Adam the same character? - Is Noah's Ark one of the Giza pyramids? - Is the Great Pyramid an interdimensional travel device? - Was the prophet Abraham a descendant of the Akkadian emperor Sargon the Great? - Was Moses really Pharaoh Akhenaton? - Is there an unseen war between the Aryan and Semitic races? - Did Alexander the Great discover the source of life in Dacia? - Did Pharaoh Tutankhamun's family practice black magic? - Does the Asteroid Belt come from the Mariana Trench? - Are the fallen angels at the top of the Masonic pyramid? - Is time travel possible? - Is the Apocalypse an event of the past? - Was Jesus possessed? All these questions (and many more) can be answered by "The Secrets of the Gods", a secret history of the world, based on the decoding of ancient myths, as well as on the results of modern scientific research. A unique and controversial interpretation of universal history, which brings to the general public the secrets of the gods, until now reserved only for the initiated.

One of the foundational Christian beliefs is that God has spoken. Most of the time in the Bible, God makes statements. At other times, rather than making statements, God asks questions. And Gods questions provoke serious thought. Many people have questions they would love to ask God. Many more have questions about God. But the most important questions are the ones God is asking us. The God Questions explores these and other questions God asked people in the Bible: Where are you? Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Why are you so angry? Where have you come, from and where are you going? Why are you so afraid? Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? Who do you say that I am? When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? The questions God asked people of ancient times are the same questions God is asking us today. Discover the questions God is asking you, and in doing so, find out what God has in mind for your life.

Who are you? What defines you? What makes you, you? In the past an individual's identity was more predictable than it is today. Life's big questions were basically settled before you were born: where you'd live, what you'd do, the type of person you'd marry, your basic beliefs, and so on. Today personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. Constructing a stable and satisfying sense of self is hard amidst relationship breakdowns, the pace of modern life, the rise of social media, multiple careers, social mobility, and so on. Ours is a day of identity angst. Known by God is built on the observation that humans are inherently social beings; we know who we are in relation to others and by being known by them. If one of the universal desires of the self is to be known by others, being known by God as his children meets our deepest and lifelong need for recognition and gives us a secure identity. Rosner argues that rather than knowing ourselves, being known by God is the key to personal identity. He explores three biblical angles on the question of personal identity: being made in the image of God, being known by God and being in Christ. The notion of sonship is at the center - God gives us our identity as a parent who knows his child. Being known by him as his child gives our fleeting lives significance, provokes in us needed humility, supplies cheering comfort when things go wrong, and offers clear moral direction for living.

Four striking images: Shiva, god of destruction and reproduction; Kali, the source of life; Krishna, a member of the Hindu trinity; and his consort, Lakshmi.

For Mark C. Taylor, the disappearance of depth we sense all around us is a change full of creative possibility. Taylor introduces us to a popular culture in which detectives - the postmodern heroes of Paul Auster and Dennis Potter - lift surfaces only to find more surfaces, and in which fashion advertising plays transparency against hiding. He looks at the current preoccupation with body piercing and tattooing and asks whether these practices actually reveal or conceal. The limitless spread of computer networks, the history of phrenology, the "religious" architecture of Las Vegas - all are brought within the scope of Taylor's brilliant analysis. Postmodernism, he shows, has given us a new sense of the superficial, one in which the issue is not the absence of meaning but its uncontrollable, ecstatic proliferation.

When police search seventeen year-old Sawyer Hayden's wallet after he steals and crashes a vintage motorcycle they find just three things:The fake I.D. his brother bought him, his real ID without a motorcycle endorsement and the empty condom wrapper he saved from his first night with Sarah.What police don't find is his list. A list of the three things Sawyer blames for turning his once promising athlete of a father into a trucker who's life went nowhere. A list that before tonight he never left home without. Before tonight Sawyer lived his life by that list, like a map he used to avoid the same path his father traveled. A map he used to find a road of own, a road he knew for a fact would pave the way to a college scholarship and a future in basketball. But that was before tonight. Because despite all Sawyer's careful planning his map sends him down a road toward an obstacle he never sees coming. An obstacle that slams him head on and reveals a fate worse than failure. Success. Now broken, bleeding and running out of time Sawyer is forced to make a new list. A simple list with only one strategy. Live long enough to fail.