Babylon Blue examines the '60s roots of modern-day erotic cinema through to various incarnations of Euro-porn and hardcore. It contains original interviews with porn directors, producers and actors.

Twelve-year-old twins Philippa and John have more adventures when they become involved in an international adventure involving the Blue Djinn, the supreme arbiter of all djinn.

2020 IPPY Awards Bronze Winner in Cover Design, Fiction 2019 American Fiction Awards: Best Cover Design: Children's Books—Finalist 2019 American Fiction Awards: Juvenile Fiction—Winner 2019 Readers' Favorite Awards Gold Medal Winner in Children's Mythology/Fairy Tale 2019 Moonbeam: Gold Medal Winner in Pre-Teen Fiction/Fantasy “An enchanting new book full of magical mischief and adventure, Alane Adams’s The Blue Witch is guaranteed to please” —Foreword Clarion Reviews Before Sam Baron broke Odin's curse on the witches to become the first son born to a witch and the hero of the Legends of Orkney series, his mother was a young witchling growing up in the Tarkana Witch Academy. In this first book of the prequel series, the Witches of Orkney, nine-year-old Abigail Tarkana is determined to grow up to be the greatest witch of all, even greater than her evil ancestor Catriona. Unfortunately, she is about to fail Spectacular Spells class because her witch magic hasn't come in yet. Even worse, her nemesis, Endera, is making life miserable by trying to get her kicked out. When her new friend Hugo's life is put in danger by a stampeding sneevil, a desperate Abigail manages to call up her magic―only to find out it's unlike any other witchling's at the Tarkana Witch Academy! As mysteries deepen around her magic and just who her true parents are, Abigail becomes trapped in a race against time to undo one of her spells before she is kicked out of the coven forever! Rich in Norse mythology, The Blue Witch is the first of a fast-paced young reader series filled with magical spells, mysterious beasts, and witch-hungry spiders!

The astonishing story of the soldiers, conservationists, and ordinary Iraqis who united to save the animals of the Baghdad Zoo When the Iraq war began, conservationist Lawrence Anthony could think of only one thing: the fate of the Baghdad Zoo, caught in the crossfire at the heart of the city. Once Anthony entered Iraq he discovered that hostilities and uncontrolled looting had devastated the zoo and its animals. Working with members of the zoo staff and a few compassionate U.S. soldiers, he defended the zoo, bartered for food on war-torn streets, and scoured bombed palaces for desperately needed supplies. Babylon's Ark chronicles Anthony's hair-raising efforts to save a pride of Saddam's lions, close a deplorable black-market zoo, run ostriches through shoot-to-kill checkpoints, and rescue the dictator's personal herd of Thoroughbred Arabian horses. A tale of the selfless courage and humanity of a few men and women living dangerously for all the right reasons, Babylon's Ark is an inspiring and uplifting true-life adventure of individuals on both sides working together for the sake of magnificent wildlife caught in a war zone.

Lod Airport, Israel: Two Concorde jets take off for a U.N. conference that will finally bring peace to the Middle East. Covered by F-14 fighters, accompanied by security men, the planes carry warriors, pacifists, lovers, enemies, dignitaries -- and a bomb planted by a terrorist mastermind. Suddenly they're forced to crash-land at an ancient desert site. Here, with only a handful of weapons, the men and women of the peace mission must make a desperate stand against an army of crack Palestinian commandos -- while the Israeli authorities desperately attempt a rescue mission. In a land of blood and tears, in a windswept place called Babylon, it will be a battle of bullets and courage, and a war to the last death.

"Babylon Steel, ex-sword-for-hire, ex ... other things, runs The Red Lantern, the best brothel in the city. She's got elves using sex magic upstairs, S & M in the basement and a large green troll cooking breakfast in the kitchen, and she'd love you to visit, except ... She's not having a good week. The Vessels of Purity are protesting against brothels, girls are disappearing, and if she can't pay her taxes, Babylon's going to lose the Lantern. She'd given up the mercenary life, but when the mysterious Darask Fain pays her to find a missing heiress, she has to take the job. And then her past starts to catch up with her in other, more dangerous ways.

For centuries, dyed fabrics ranked among the most expensive objects of the ancient Mediterranean world, fetching up to 20 times their weight in gold. Huge fortunes were made from and lost to them, and battles were fought over control of the industry. The few who knew the dyes’ complex secrets carefully guarded the valuable knowledge. The Rarest Blue tells the amazing story of tekhelet, or hyacinth blue, the elusive sky-blue dye mentioned 50 times in the Hebrew Bible. The Minoans discovered it; the Phoenicians stole the technique; Cleopatra adored it; and Jews—obeying a Biblical commandment to affix a single thread of the radiant color to the corner of their garments—risked their lives for it. But with the fall of the Roman Empire, the technique was lost to the ages. Then, in the nineteenth century, a marine biologist saw a fisherman smearing his shirt with snail guts, marveling as the yellow stains turned sky blue. But what was the secret? At the same time, a Hasidic master obsessed with reviving the ancient tradition posited that the source wasn’t a snail at all but a squid. Bitter fighting ensued until another rabbi discovered that one of them was wrong—but had an unscrupulous chemist deliberately deceived him? Baruch Sterman brilliantly recounts the complete, amazing story of this sacred dye that changed the color of history.

The study of globalization in cinema assumes many guises, from the exploration of global cinematic cities to the burgeoning 'world cinema turn' within film studies, which addresses the global nature of film production, exhibition and distribution. In this ambitious new study, Malini Guha draws together these two distinctly different ways of thinking about the cinema, interrogating representations of global London and Paris as migrant cinematic cities, featuring the arrival, settlement and departure of migrant figures from the decline of imperial rule to the global present. Drawing on a range of case studies from contemporary cinema, including the films of Michael Haneke, Claire Denis, Horace OvcY nd Stephen Frears, Guha also considers their world cinema status in light of their reconfiguration of established forms of filmmaking, from modernism to social realism. An illuminating analysis of London and Paris in world cinema from the vantage point of migrant mobilities, From Empire to the World explores the ramifications of this historical shift towards the global, one that pertains in equal measure to cityscapes, their representation as world cinema texts, and to the rise of world cinema discourse within film studies itself.