Building on the tradition of Little Bee, Chris Cleave again writes with elegance, humor, and passion about friendship, marriage, parenthood, tragedy, and redemption. What would you sacrifice for the people you love? KATE AND ZOE met at nineteen when they both made the cut for the national training program in track cycling—a sport that demands intense focus, blinding exertion, and unwavering commitment. They are built to exploit the barest physical and psychological edge over equally skilled rivals, all of whom are fighting for the last one tenth of a second that separates triumph from despair. Now at thirty-two, the women are facing their last and biggest race: the 2012 Olympics. Each wants desperately to win gold, and each has more than a medal to lose. Kate is the more naturally gifted, but the demands of her life have a tendency to slow her down. Her eight-year-old daughter Sophie dreams of the Death Star and of battling alongside the Rebels as evil white blood cells ravage her personal galaxy—she is fighting a recurrence of the leukemia that nearly killed her three years ago. Sophie doesn’t want to stand in the way of her mum’s Olympic dreams, but each day the dark forces of the universe seem to be massing against her. Devoted and self-sacrificing Kate knows her daughter is fragile, but at the height of her last frenzied months of training, might she be blind to the most terrible prognosis? Intense, aloof Zoe has always hovered on the periphery of real human companionship, and her compulsive need to win at any cost has more than once threatened her friendship with Kate—and her own sanity. Will she allow her obsession, and the advantage she has over a harried, anguished mother, to sever the bond they have shared for more than a decade? Echoing the adrenaline-fueled rush of a race around the Velodrome track, Gold is a triumph of superbly paced, heart-in-throat storytelling. With great humanity and glorious prose, Chris Cleave examines the values that lie at the heart of our most intimate relationships, and the choices we make when lives are at stake and everything is on the line.

We Americans are never taught anything about gold and silver through our education system. That's why many gold dealers are able to easily rip off unsuspecting buyers of gold and silver.Financial advisors and journalists aren't giving you the truth either, as to how gold and silver fit into a properly diversified portfolio. So naturally, people are looking for answers."Buy Gold and Silver Safely" provides those answers by explaining why gold and silver need to be a part of everyone's portfolio, and helping people learn about buying or selling gold and silver... the safe way.

From the award-winning author of Diamond: A blazing exploration of the human love affair with gold that “combines the engaging style of a travel narrative with sharp-eyed journalistic exposé” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the price of gold skyrocketed—in three years more than doubling from $800 an ounce to $1900. This massive spike drove an unprecedented global gold-mining and exploration boom, much bigger than the gold rush of the 1800s. In Gold, acclaimed author Matthew Hart takes you on an unforgettable journey around the world and through history to tell the extraordinary story of how gold became the world’s most precious commodity. Beginning with a page-turning report from the crime-ridden inferno of the world’s deepest mine, Hart traveled around the world to the sites of the hottest action in gold today, from the biggest new mine in China, to the highly secretive London gold exchange, and the lair of the world’s most powerful gold trader in Geneva, Switzerland. He profiles the leaders of the gold market today, the nature of the current boom, and the likely prospects for the future. From the earliest civilizations, when gold was an icon of sacred and kingly power, Hart tracks its evolution, through conquest, murder, and international mayhem, into the speculative casino-chip that the metal has become. He ends by telling the story of the massive flows of gold that have occurred in the wake of the financial crisis and what the world’s leading experts are saying about the profound changes underway in the gold market and the prospects for the future. “Compelling, stylish, and impressively researched” (The Boston Globe), Gold is a wonderful historical odyssey with important implications for today’s global economy.

A hidden message, treachery, opposition, and a God-given success will lead to an unlikely bounty. In Harvest of Gold (Book 2), the scribe Sarah married Darius, and at times she feels as if she has married the Persian aristocracy, too. There is another point she did not count on in her marriage—Sarah has grown to love her husband. Sarah has wealth, property, honor, and power, but her husband’s love still seems unattainable. Although his mother was an Israelite, Darius remains skeptical that his Jewish wife is the right choice for him, particularly when she conspires with her cousin Nehemiah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Ordered to assist in the effort, the couple begins a journey to the homeland of his mother’s people. Will the road filled with danger, conflict, and surprising memories, help Darius to see the hand of God at work in his life—and even in his marriage?

Fields of Gold critically examines the history, ideas, and political struggles surrounding the financialization of farmland. In particular, Madeleine Fairbairn focuses on developments in two of the most popular investment locations, the US and Brazil, looking at the implications of financiers' acquisition of land and control over resources for rural livelihoods and economic justice. At the heart of Fields of Gold is a tension between efforts to transform farmland into a new financial asset class, and land's physical and social properties, which frequently obstruct that transformation. But what makes the book unique among the growing body of work on the global land grab is Fairbairn's interest in those acquiring land, rather than those affected by land acquisitions. Fairbairn's work sheds ethnographic light on the actors and relationships—from Iowa to Manhattan to São Paulo—that have helped to turn land into an attractive financial asset class. Thanks to generous funding from UC Santa Cruz, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

"Isaac isn't interested in much, but when a mysterious shopkeeper tells him about a legendary book that holds the answers to every question ever asked, he embarks on a lifelong search for the Book of Gold"--