An extraordinary, cinematic saga of rags-to-riches-to-revolution that follows an orphan girl coming of age in Iran at a time of dramatic upheaval It is the 1950s in a restless Iran, a country rich in oil but deeply divided by class and religion. The government is unpopular and corrupt and under foreign sway. One night, an illiterate army driver hears the pitiful cry of a baby abandoned in an alley and menaced by ravenous wild dogs. He snatches up the child and takes her home, naming her Aria—the first step on an unlikely path from deprivation to privilege. Over the next two decades, the orphan girl acquires three mother figures whose secrets she will learn only much later: reckless and self-absorbed Zahra, who abuses her; wealthy and compassionate Fereshteh, who adopts her; and mysterious Mehri, whose connection to Aria is both a blessing and a burden. Nazanine Hozar’s stunning debut gives us an unusually intimate view of a momentous time, through the eyes of a young woman coming to terms with the mysteries of her own past and future.

Mavis was my name, and you could say I have had a bit of a tough go. Following a tremendous personal loss, I was entombed by my own daughter rather than allow me to expose our secret to the world.I woke up in a mausoleum and two centuries have passed. All I want to do is drink a bit of blood and maybe find a beautiful modern maiden to entertain what's left of my soul. However, sinister forces are ever at play in my world. Even a queen who is two-centuries usurped cannot rest. Vampyrs are dying and the royals including my only surviving child are all in danger, as are the communities around us.Set in modern New Orleans, this is the tale of the Lower Queen, Mavis Aubrey the mysterious vampyr who once led most of Britannia. Come follow Mavis as she struggles to learn how to function in the post-modern world and the vast array of new challenges rising to greet her.Slow building poly lesbian romance.

Meet Aria the alicorn, she's a unicorn with wings! Find out what its like to be an alicorn for a day and the life lessons about how its more fun standing out versus fitting in.

Wes Emerson is at the pinnacle of his career. The Australian actor has more fame, money, and adoring women than he knows what to do with. Too much. What better place to decompress, than an exclusive lodge in Alaska's Far North? But when his brother backs out at the last minute, and a snarky New York nurse snags the vacancy, she challenges everything Wes knows of himself. ?Lena Hamilton didn't plan on a forced leave of absence from work, nor did she expect to wind up in Alaska. Trapped in the crossroads of ambition and self-preservation, the Manhattan trauma nurse has two weeks to decide the future of her career. When Lena finds herself at a remote lodge with THE Wes Emerson, her job is the last thing on her mind. While she can't control her body's response to the panty-melter, she'll be damned if she opens her heart.Fiercely independent, Lena is nothing like the women Wes is used to. She calls his every bluff, pushing buttons he didn't know he had. And as the growly alpha inside Wes begins to pace, Lena doesn't just rattle his cage, she bites back, making him want things he'd sworn off for years. When they land at the mercy of the Alaskan wilderness, Lena and Wes quickly learn Mother Nature doesn't pull her punches. They find their True North in each other, but can they make it out alive?

On a mission to destroy Ovanan's Avatar, Jason is surprised to find his long-lost sister, Liana.

From a very young age, Aria has lived among the shadows, treated as a slave and subjected to multiple abuses. She hoped that upon reaching the age of majority, she could escape from that terrible place, a pack that was not welcoming to her. Following the demands of her pack's Luna, Aria eagerly awaits the day she can finally escape from that place, but unexpectedly discovers who her mate is. But he, not willing to continue with this eternal union, rejects Aria as his mate. With those painful and heartbreaking words, an unbearable pain took hold of her chest, which was enough to make Aria decide to definitely run away from the pack, fleeing towards the territory of the vampires and facing new changes. Will Aria be able to fulfill what is predestined?

A premier singer and master teacher here tells other singers how to get the most from 151 famous arias selected for their popularity or their greatness from 66 operas, ranging in time and style from Christopher Gluck to Carlisle Floyd, from Mozart to Menotti. “The most memorable thrills in an opera singer's life,” according to the author's Introduction, “may easily derive from the great arias in his or her repertoire.” This book continues the work Martial Singher has done, in performances, in concerts, and in master classes and lessons, by drawing attention “not only to precise features of text, notes, and markings but also to psychological motivations and emotional impulses, to laughter and tears, to technical skills, to strokes of genius, and even here and there to variations from the original works that have proved to be fortunate.” For each aria, the author gives the dramatic and musical context, advice about interpretation, and the lyric—with the original language (if it is not English) and an idiomatic American English translation, in parallel columns. The major operatic traditions—French, German, Italian, Russian, and American—are represented, as are the major voice types—soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass-baritone, and bass. The dramatic context is not a mere summary of the plot but is a penetrating and often witty personality sketch of an operatic character in the midst of a situation. The musical context is presented with the dramatic situation in a cleverly integrated way. Suggestions about interpretation, often illustrated with musical notation and phonetic symbols, are interspersed among the author's explication of the music and the action. An overview of Martial Singher’s approach—based on fifty years of experience on stage in a hundred roles and in class at four leading conservatories—is presented in his Introduction. As the reader approaches each opera discussed in this book, he or she experiences the feeling of participation in a rehearsal on stage under an urbane though demanding coach and director. The Interpretive Guide will be of value to professional singers as a source of reference or renewed inspiration and a memory refresher, to coaches for checking and broadening personal impressions, to young singers and students for learning, to teachers who have enjoyed less than a half century of experience, and to opera broadcast listeners and telecast viewers who want to understand what goes into the sounds and sights that delight them.

In his powerful debut, Christopher Nelson examines the progenitors and forms of violence in the twenty-first century, from Cain and Abel to the damming of rivers. We see glimpses of the speaker's quest to find and know God, seeking answers everywhere, from Spanish cathedrals filled with holy relics to withered winter fields.

Fehotun sent away the humans to fend for themselves in Gipo, ruling over the Fae and keeping them safe in Bubbol, the safest and most prosperous domain in the whole world. The human and fae kingdoms of Aria have been at war since the beginning of civilization. Enter Ethan Owusu and Balthazar, two boys from entirely different worlds. Balthazar is a fae prince and the sole student of Aria’s god, Fehotun, while Ethan is a human commoner with a deeper understanding of magic than anyone else alive. These two opposites would never meet under usual circumstances, but fate has other plans.

This authoritative, new edition of the world's most loved songs and arias draws on original manuscripts, historical first editions and recent research by prominent musicologists to meet a high standard of accuracy and authenticity. Includes fascinating background information about the arias and their composers as well as a singable rhymed translation, a readable prose translation and a literal translation of each single Italian word.