Join me on this journey and discover thereby the possibilities that announce themselves to us all on a daily basis. Witness life through the eyes of one seeking a 'healing', a 'miracle', while learning what life truly is about; a quest for the meaning of life that for this writer includes the motive for hammering out this tome; helping but not judging others, and loving all of creation.

“Riding the Dragon gives the reader the chance to look for the lessons that are often hidden in our sorrows.”—Goodreads reviewer Twenty years and 70,000 copies after it was first released, Riding the Dragon—by popular author, speaker, and psychologist Robert J. Wicks—continues to help thousands each year to confront the “dragons” of stress, discouragement, burnout, and unexpected change that everyone struggles with in their daily lives. Instead of pretending these difficulties don’t exist or trying to remove them entirely, Wicks offers ten lessons to help us face them, overcome them, and grow from them. These simple yet profound lessons draw on the wisdom of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions as well as Wicks’s experience as a psychologist, and include pairing clarity with kindness, seeking perspective daily, and building a barrier of simplicity. Riding the Dragon is a concise, compassionate, and knowledgeable guide for anyone experiencing or supporting someone facing personal or professional challenges. This twentieth anniversary edition features a new preface from the author, highlighting how Riding the Dragon is, perhaps now more than ever, an indispensable spiritual and psychological companion for all of us who are yearning for our lives to be transformed.

'Defying the Dragon' tells a remarkable story of audacity: of how the people of Hong Kong challenged the PRC's authority, just as its president reached the height of his powers. Is Xi's China as unshakeable as it seems? What are its real interests in Hong Kong? Why are Beijing's time-honoured means of control no longer working there? And where does this leave Hongkongers themselves?Stephen Vines has lived in Hong Kong for over three decades. His book shrewdly unpacks the Hong Kong-China relationship and its wider significance--right up to the astonishing convergence of political turmoil and international crisis with Covid-19 and the 2020 crackdown.Vividly describing the uprising from street level, Vines explains how and why it unfolded, and its global repercussions. Now, the international community is reassessing relations with Beijing, just as Hong Kong's rebellion and China's handling of the pandemic have exposed the regime's weakness. In a crisis that has become existential all round, what lies ahead for Hong Kong, China and the world?

Resigned to the fate of marrying her childhood sweetheart, Melanie Worth is wary but also secretly thrilled when an unrivaled warrior, Jamie de Brock, displays interest in her during a tournament. Betrothed to Merick de Balan, the second son of a prominent neighboring estate, Melanie longs to wed with a man who does not require constant rescuing. But when the warrior she admires from afar decides to steal her for himself, Melanie finds that she is the one who needs rescuing.​ Merick might be lacking in strength but is not lacking in pride. He has seen the hot glances his betrothed has been exchanging with Jamie de Brock—the Dragon—and it does not overly surprise him when the two run off together. But after Merick learns his sweet, naive Melanie was no willing companion of the man, he must train to become a warrior, as formidable as Dragon, to win her back.​ A disguised Merick deceptively integrates himself into Dragon’s castle and is trained by none other than the legendary de Brock—the very man he has vowed to challenge. The two forge an unlikely bond while Merick and Melanie secretly plot and plan a way to escape. The reunited couple engages in a dance of deception, with each move bringing them closer and closer to a daring finish. Unbeknownst to them is the fact they have greatly underestimated their opponent. For Dragon, too, plays a game—one that he is determined to win at any cost.

This collection offers a thorough treatment of the ways in which the verbal and visual semiotic modes interrelate toward promoting gender equality and social inclusion in children’s picture books. Drawing on cutting-edge theoretical work in multimodality, including multimodal cognitive linguistics, multimodal discourse analysis, and visual social semiotics, the book expands on descriptive-oriented studies to offer a more linguistically driven perspective on children’s picture books. The volume explores the choice afforded to and the lexico-semantic and discursive strategies employed by writers and illustrators in conveying representational, interpersonal, and textual meanings in the verbal and non-verbal components in these narratives in order to challenge gender stereotypes and promote the social inclusion of same-sex parent families. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in multimodality, discourse analysis, social semiotics, and children’s literature. Chapters 1 & 8 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com.

In his latest graphic novel, Dragon Hoops, New York Times bestselling author Gene Luen Yang turns the spotlight on his life, his family, and the high school where he teaches. Gene understands stories—comic book stories, in particular. Big action. Bigger thrills. And the hero always wins. But Gene doesn’t get sports. As a kid, his friends called him “Stick” and every basketball game he played ended in pain. He lost interest in basketball long ago, but at the high school where he now teaches, it's all anyone can talk about. The men’s varsity team, the Dragons, is having a phenomenal season that’s been decades in the making. Each victory brings them closer to their ultimate goal: the California State Championships. Once Gene gets to know these young all-stars, he realizes that their story is just as thrilling as anything he’s seen on a comic book page. He knows he has to follow this epic to its end. What he doesn’t know yet is that this season is not only going to change the Dragons’s lives, but his own life as well.

Rex is no hero, he's just a Hartford bartender with a painfully empty social calendar. But when he meets a strange, sword-wielding woman who asks him to help her with a dragon problem, he ignores his better judgment and offers whatever assistance he can. Now, he's beginning to wonder if he'll ever see his home again. Or if he even wants to.

If Caden Bryce thought it would be difficult to tell his parents that he’s the Ninth Dragon Shifter just wait until he has to tell him that he and Valerius are dating! But Caden’s parents aren’t the new couple’s only speed bump. The Green Dragon King Illarion has come to Reach to make the phrase “three’s a crowd” take on a whole new meaning. WARNING: This is a long serial that is divided into book-length segments. Every single one ends in a cliffhanger. We anticipate there being 9 volumes. This series will not be in KU, because it is on the Raythe Reign serial website. There is also a free audio version on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts!

The first two volumes of Patricia C. Wrede's beloved, bestselling Enchanted Forest Chronicles!