Border fixity—the proscription of foreign conquest and the annexation of homeland territory—has, since World War II, become a powerful norm in world politics. This development has been said to increase stability and peace in international relations. Yet, in a world in which it is unacceptable to challenge international borders by force, sociopolitically weak states remain a significant source of widespread conflict, war, and instability. In this book, Boaz Atzili argues that the process of state building has long been influenced by external territorial pressures and competition, with the absence of border fixity contributing to the evolution of strong states—and its presence to the survival of weak ones. What results from this norm, he argues, are conditions that make internal conflict and the spillover of interstate war more likely. Using a comparison of historical and contemporary case studies, Atzili sheds light on the relationship between state weakness and conflict. His argument that under some circumstances an international norm that was established to preserve the peace may actually create conditions that are ripe for war is sure to generate debate and shed light on the dynamics of continuing conflict in the twenty-first century.

When the Heffernans move in next door, the stressed-out Jamisons are overjoyed. Super-organized Sue Heffernan helps with cooking, housework, looks after the Jamison girls--this on top of her own family. But one day Sue collects. A tale of seduction and murder.

In fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, five of which have been published in The New Yorker, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than ever Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them. In the title story, in which Jones employs the first-person rhythms of a classic detective story, a Korean War veteran investigates the death of a family friend whose sorry destiny seems inextricable from his mother's own violent Southern childhood. In "In the Blink of God's Eye" and "Tapestry" newly married couples leave behind the familiarity of rural life to pursue lives of urban promise only to be challenged and disappointed. With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw away and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.

Mimi Schwartz grew up on milkshakes and hamburgers and her father s boyhood stories. She rarely took the stories seriously. What was a modern American teenager supposed to make of these accounts of a village in Germany where, according to her father, before Hitler, everyone got along ? It was only many years later, when she heard a remarkable story of the Torah from that very village being rescued by Christians on Kristallnacht, that Schwartz began to sense how much these stories might mean. Thus began a twelve-year quest that covered three continents as Schwartz sought answers in the historical records and among those who remembered that time. Welcomed into the homes of both the Jews who had fled the village fifty years earlier and the Christians who had remained, Schwartz peered into family albums, ate home-baked linzertorte (almost everyone served it!), and heard countless stories about life in one small village before, during, and after Nazi times. Sometimes stories overlapped, sometimes one memory challenged another, but always they seemed to muddy the waters of easy judgment. Small stories of decency are often overlooked in the wake of a larger historic narrative. Yet we need these stories to provide a moral compass, especially in times of political extremism, when fear and hatred strain the bonds of loyalty and neighborly compassion. How, this book asks, do neighbors maintain a modicum of decency in such times? How do we negotiate evil and remain humane when, as in the Nazi years, hate rules?

Three SEALs need a nanny for their twins… and someone to satisfy their hot-as-sin bodies, too. I moved cross-country to be with my ex, and one night I followed him, suspecting he was cheating on me. He ended up going to the strip club, Ranchy High. I had to find a way to get in, so when the bouncer asked if I was the nanny, I lied. I found out that my ex was cheating and stealing from others. Distressed and distraught, I found myself in the Jeep with a driver, with not only one kid, but two. Their driver took me to their penthouse, which was on the other side of town. I soon found out that their dads were hot triplets—Stan, Rick, and Pete. They told me that I did a good job and hired me on the spot. The three hot-as-sin SEALs were triplets, but they’re different in every way. Rick, with his seductive and commanding emerald eyes, made me want to surrender to him. Pete was the fun one, the kind who loved to keep entertaining me all night long. Stan was the shy one, the virgin I had to set free from his anxieties. I found a new lease on life, one that I’d never dreamed of having until I moved in. No more did I have a man making all my anxieties go into overtime. My world could turn upside down because everything was going right, but it could go wrong if they found out my secret. The lie in which I’d been holding on to, could be revealed, and I would end up losing a lot more than the new home I’ve found—I could end up losing my heart, too.

A kiss from a mean man is so wonderful it melts you...? Pernelle tried to buy a beautiful home in Cotswolds, but a rich man swooped in and took it from under her. She ends up buying the tiny house next to it, but her new neighbor isn't very welcoming. He makes fun of her butt in shorts, sees her drenched in the rain while she's locked out of her house, and countless other embarrassing moments. But despite his not-so-nice demeanor around her, she can't help but melt at his spur-of-the-moment kiss... From that day on, her heart is filled with only him.