?The ultimate gated community is a human being with a closed mind.? JG Ballard In Dubai there?s a new world of high-luxury resorts emerging for the super-rich?but at what price to everyone else? Lea, Roy and their 15 year-old daughter Cara live in a gated community reserved for foreign workers. Roy has been hired to deal with teething problems at Dream World, a futuristic beach complex. In the oppressive heat, the wives appear happy to follow behind their husbands, cooking and arranging tea parties, but Lea finds herself a virtual prisoner in a land where Western women are regarded with indifference and suspicion. At least there are a few friendly outsiders who don?t enjoy the conformity of the ex-pat community?until one night, when the most outspoken one dies in a suspicious accident. It?s the first in a string of terrible occurrences that divide the foreign workers. Lea?s neighbours start to blame migrants, locals and even each other. Lea is convinced that deliberate acts of cruelty are being committed?but is there a real threat to her life, or is she becoming paranoid? And what if what she fears most is really happening? What happens in a world where only the rich are important? Welcome to a future that?s five minutes away, where rebellion against conformity can lead to the unthinkable ?

A little more than a century ago, western North America was a mystery to the European settlers who had rapidly filled the eastern part of the continent. In the feverish search for beaver, gold, and emigration routes, a special breed of man emerged who would reveal the secrets of the vast West. Such men were said to 'have sand' or 'have sand in their craw.' These men, rugged individuals with the determination to succeed, the grit to survive, and wanderlust in their hearts, forged the way for the settlement of the West. The author skillfully guides the reader through the lives of thirteen of these men including the highly regarded team of Lewis and Clark.

The legendary Spartacus is recast as a fierce female warrior in this action-packed tale of a 17-year-old princess and a handsome gladiator who dared take on the Roman Republic.

"An astounding epic novel of J.R.R. Tolkien proportions!" — Steven Pressfield, Bestselling author of Gates of Fire and The War of Art Raiders of the Lost Ark playing A Game of Thrones The Sand Sea takes place on an alternative Earth roiled by war and conquest that mirrors our own Gilded Age. The treasure that ignites greed and folly in this parallel world is not petroleum, but beserite—a mineral of immeasurable value. Captivated by an ancient prophecy and the call of adventure, inexperienced nobleman and scholar Peter Harmon (think of a young Winston Churchill-like naif) joins an expedition to stake his nation’s claim to a global empire. Harmon’s destination is a vast and inhospitable desert halfway around the world, dominated by the iron-fisted Grand Vizer Jemojeen Jongdar. A tyrant on a mission to secure the ancient and supernatural Staff of the Ram, the Lion, and the Serpent, Jongdar knows the truth that others can only imagine: The one who controls the staff will possess the power to rule the world. Before he can seize his destiny, Jongdar must find and destroy the one person capable of thwarting his ambition, the rightful heir to the Sand Sea realm, an innocent woman named Selena Savanar. Can the brave and indomitable Selena accept her true destiny and rally her people in the eye of a gathering storm? To do so will require her to outwit the man who burned her father alive and left her an orphan and beggar a lifetime ago. Or will Peter Harmon and the cadre of opportunists he rides with conquer the divided empire? With the mythic structure of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy in a world as rich and real as George R.R. Martin’s Westeros, The Sand Sea is an immersive experience made to order for epic fantasy fans and anyone who enjoys grand-scale historical fiction.

Sable has been exposed for who she is: Imari, the illegitimate daughter of Istraa's king, and a Liagé-someone born with forbidden Shah power. After ten years of hiding and surviving in the bitter cold Wilds, she is finally returning home. But it's not the homecoming Imari envisioned. After all, her father proclaimed her dead ten years ago, and with an anonymous Liagé leader operating in Istraa's shadows, attacking villages and burning down temples, her father fears the people will blame Imari. It could mean his throne, and her life. Worse yet, the night Imari played her flute in Skyhold's court, something unlocked inside of her, and now her power will not quiet. Neither will the growing fury she feels on behalf of Istraa's Sol Velorian labor- people who share her blood. As that fury becomes too loud to ignore, Imari chooses to use her position to liberate the Sol Velor. But can she free them without angering enemies hungry for the power she wields-a power that could rip the Five Provinces apart?

"Whereas the centrality of femininity to nineteenth-century French fiction has been the focus of widespread critical attention, masculinity has, until recently, received little sustained treatment in either the literary or socio-historical domains. In this book, Nigel Harkness uses the fiction of George Sand (1804-1876), the pre-eminent woman writer of the period, to explore questions of masculinity as they pertain to the nineteenth-century French novel, and to map out new approaches to the study of literary masculinity. Drawing on contemporary theories of gender and narrative, Harkness reveals how Sands novels repeatedly focus on a nexus of language, masculinity and power, in which narrative is both a vehicle for the expression of manhood, and a site where masculinity is discursively performed. Masculinity is thus reconfigured in Sands fiction as an identity constituted as much through words as through actions. Analysis of the performances of masculinity staged in Sands novels opens onto an exploration of gendered processes of literary representation: the links between masculinity and the doxa, the equation of writing and power, the homosocial function of acts of narration, and the masculinity of authorship and authority."