The crew members of the Fleet Explorer Clarion are each extraordinary, so brilliant that their contributions are coveted by the very civilization that produced them. The medical officer suspects the mission is a ruse to discard them all into the unyielding darkness of uncharted space. And if the deep black doesn’t destroy them, their survival is threatened by a tyrannical captain. By a catastrophic accident, they are marooned just out of reach of a virgin world. With a stowaway who also helped elevate the character of their sentience, they face an adversary as deadly as unquestioning faith and as promising as genuine love.

Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It also tells a tale of loss. As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one’s birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one’s own. Although black Americans who adopted white identities reaped benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility, Hobbs helps us to recognize and understand the grief, loneliness, and isolation that accompanied—and often outweighed—these rewards. By the dawning of the civil rights era, more and more racially mixed Americans felt the loss of kin and community was too much to bear, that it was time to “pass out” and embrace a black identity. Although recent decades have witnessed an increasingly multiracial society and a growing acceptance of hybridity, the problem of race and identity remains at the center of public debate and emotionally fraught personal decisions.

BETWEEN 1933 AND 1945 MEMBERS OF THREE GROUPS—THE Nazi fascists, Inner Emigration, and Exiles—fought with equal fervor over who could definitively claim to represent the authentically “great German culture,” as it was culture that imparted real value to both the state and the individual. But when authorities made pronouncements about “culture” were they really talking about high art? This book analyzes the highly complex interconnections among the cultural-political concepts of these various ideological groups and asks why the most artistically ambitious art forms were viewed as politically important by all cultured (or even semi-cultured) Germans in the period from 1933 to 1945, with their ownership the object of a bitter struggle between key figures in the Nazi fascist regime, representatives of Inner Emigration, and Germans driven out of the Third Reich.

An exceptionally illustrated fiction for millions of Blizzard fans, Diablo III: Book of Cain is the source book for Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo franchise and forthcoming Diablo III game. Book of Cain is the must-have illustrated history of the Diablo universe as told by the games' core narrator Deckard Cain. In Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo® and Diablo II, the recurring character of Deckard Cain delivered quests, accompanied the brave adventurer, and, as the last of the Horadrim, provided a link to the greater history of the world of Sanctuary. Ever mysterious during these appearances, Cain hinted at a larger story, providing snippets of it in his notebook. Diablo III: Book of Cain is Cain’s formal record of this greater tale—a dissertation on the lore of the Diablo universe, told by one who has witnessed and participated in some of the epic events that make up the eternal conflict between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells. Designed as an “in-world” artifact from the Diablo universe, Diablo III: Book of Cain includes Cain’s revealing meditations, as well as dozens of sketches and color artworks depicting the angelic and demonic beings who wage constant war with one another.

The New School for Social Research opened in 1919 as an act of protest. Founded in the name of academic freedom, it quickly emerged as a pioneer in adult education—providing what its first president, Alvin Johnson, liked to call “the continuing education of the educated.” By the mid-1920s, the New School had become the place to go to hear leading figures lecture on politics and the arts and recent developments in new fields of inquiry, such as anthropology and psychoanalysis. Then in 1933, after Hitler rose to power, Johnson created the University in Exile within the New School. Welcoming nearly two hundred refugees, Johnson, together with these exiled scholars, defiantly maintained the great traditions of Europe’s imperiled universities. Judith Friedlander reconstructs the history of the New School in the context of ongoing debates over academic freedom and the role of education in liberal democracies. Against the backdrop of World War I and the first red scare, the rise of fascism and McCarthyism, the student uprisings during the Vietnam War and the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe, Friedlander tells a dramatic story of intellectual, political, and financial struggle through illuminating sketches of internationally renowned scholars and artists. These include, among others, Charles A. Beard, John Dewey, José Clemente Orozco, Robert Heilbroner, Hannah Arendt, and Ágnes Heller. Featured prominently as well are New School students, trustees, and academic leaders. As the New School prepares to celebrate its one-hundredth anniversary, A Light in Dark Times offers a timely reflection on the legacy of this unique institution, which has boldly defended dissident intellectuals and artists in the United States and overseas.

Since the beginning of time, the angelic hosts of the High Heavens and the demonic hordes of the Burning Hells have been locked in a struggle for the fate of all Creation. That struggle has now come to the mortal realm...and neither Man nor Demon nor Angel will be left unscathed... Norrec Vizharan has become a living nightmare. While on a quest to find magical treasure, the soldier of fortune discovers an artifact beyond his wildest dreams: the ancient armor of Bartuc, the legendary Warlord of Blood. But the mysterious armor soul. Now, pursued by demons who covet the dark armor for their own devices, Norrec must overcome a bloodlust he can scarcely control and learn the truth about his terrifying curse before he is lost to darkness forever... An orginal tale of swords, sorcery, and timeless struggle based on the bestselling, award-winning M-rated electronic game form Blizzard Entertainment. Intended for mature readers.

Mavis Gallant is the modern master of what Henry James called the international story, the fine-grained evocation of the quandaries of people who must make their way in the world without any place to call their own. The irreducible complexity of the very idea of home is especially at issue in the stories Gallant has written about Montreal, where she was born, although she has lived in Paris for more than half a century. Varieties of Exile, Russell Banks's extensive new selection from Gallant's work, demonstrates anew the remarkable reach of this writer's singular art. Among its contents are three previously uncollected stories, as well as the celebrated semi-autobiographical sequence about Linnet Muir—stories that are wise, funny, and full of insight into the perils and promise of growing up and breaking loose.

The evil Duke of Olasko is lord no more—vanquished by his nemesis Tal Hawkins, the Talon of the Silver Hawk. Saved by a mage's intervention from certain death, the once-feared despot has been reduced to an exile's existence, forced to wander the harshest realms of the world he once enslaved. Conclave of Shadows: Book Three Only days ago, Kaspar, the powerful Duke of Olasko, had great armies at his command and was feared by nations. Now, half a world away from home, he is separated from his former seat of power by merciless deserts, forbidding mountains, and vast oceans. The fall of the tyrant is complete, his dark dreams of vengeance overwhelmed by the daily struggle for his very survival. But Kaspar's prodigious skills and cunning provide him the opportunity he seeks, guarding merchant travelers returning to the other side of the world and back to his homeland. Yet there is a larger drama that will entangle the broken dictator. An evil more devastating and deadly than any encountered in Midkemia for centuries seeks entrance to the land—the mystical tool of a dark empire hungry for conquest and destruction—and Kaspar has inadvertently discovered the key. The man responsible for the slaughter of countless men, women, and children must now assume a far stranger and most unlikely role—that of hero—if his world is to survive. For dire peril is advancing daily, and a long-slumbering malevolence is awakening to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting and unprepared. Suddenly, Midkemia's last hope is a disgraced and exiled duke whose history is written in blood, and who now must wield his sword as her champion ... if he so chooses.

2019 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year 2019 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year First in the Dragons of Terra series, Brian Naslund's Blood of an Exile is a fast-paced adventure perfect for comic readers and fans of heroic fantasy Bershad stands apart from the world, the most legendary dragonslayer in history, both revered and reviled. Once, he was Lord Silas Bershad, but after a disastrous failure on the battlefield he was stripped of his titles and sentenced to one violent, perilous hunt after another. Now he lives only to stalk dragons, slaughter them, collect their precious oil, and head back into the treacherous wilds once more. For years, death was his only chance to escape. But that is about to change. The king who sentenced Bershad to his fate has just given him an unprecedented chance at redemption. Kill a foreign emperor and walk free forever. The journey will take him across dragon-infested mountains, through a seedy criminal underworld, and into a forbidden city guarded by deadly technology. But the links of fate bind us all. Dragons of Terra Series Blood of an Exile Sorcery of a Queen At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

2040. The world’s precious resources are in high demand and security is found on the streets. A private military operative of reeducated gang members — the Blackshield Angels — are the only hope of liberating a vital fuel supply from a criminal overlord. The Blackshield’s best agent struggles through betrayal, love, and a seemingly unending war zone — Zone 12 — to complete his mission through a dangerous world where tattooed warlords reign supreme and giant satellites watch men from above like gods.