El emperador Mastuh ha muerto y deja un extenso imperio a su hija, Hansa. Esta es tan solo una niña y desde hace más de dos siglos no ha reinado una mujer en el imperio de Kovan. Al producirse la muerte del emperador, su hermano, Jonrrak, regresa de las conquistadas tierras de Cirimeria con la Legión Extranjera y da un golpe de estado en el imperio para derrocar a su sobrina y hacerse con el trono imperial. Un grupo de guardias logra salvar a la princesa y huir de la capital, Ciudad Baluarte. Sin embargo, la lucha se extiende por todo el imperio entre los partidarios de la princesa Hansa y los partidarios de Jonrrak. Las sacerdotisas del imperio, las célebres Korais, únicas capaces de utilizar magia en el imperio, también se posicionan a favor de uno u otro bando. El conflicto por el dominio de Kovan está servido. Es una lucha por el control de territorios y de ideologías. Sin embargo, también desde las fronteras exteriores del imperio acechan enemigos poderosos, dispuestos a destrozar al imperio. Daniel Igual Merlo. Nacido en Móstoles (Madrid) en 1987, es licenciado en Historia y Periodismo. Desde muy temprana edad su afición por la novela fantástica le llevó a escribir relatos de este género. Siempre busca en sus aventuras el nexo entre fantasía épica y el protagonismo colectivo de varios personajes cuyas historias se entrelazan en la trama principal. En ocasiones, sus relatos tienen un paralelismo con acontecimientos históricos. Tras su primera saga “Las aventuras de Alan Braw”, ahora en “Imperio de Kovan” nos muestra una historia épica en la que dos contendientes luchan por alcanzar el poder de un territorio existiendo en ambos bandos personajes inolvidables, tanto hombres como mujeres, que protagonizan toda la trama.

"In this book, 14 scholars from Belgium, Canada, Mozambique, Portugal, the US, and the UK examine the long-term cultural and social environment of sex definition in different continents. The study of medieval and early modern Portugal shows limited rights of women and patriarchal constraints. The impact on gender definition of Portuguese expansion in Africa, Asia, and the New World is analysed with the inclusion of local agency informing indigenous responses. Unstable constructions of masculinity, femininity, queer, homosexual, bisexual, and transgender identities and behaviours are placed in historical context. The use of language and literary representation are part of this research. Contributors are: Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, Vanda Anastácio, Francisco Bethencourt, Dorothée Boulanger, Rosa Maria dos Santos Capelão, Maria Judite Mário Chipenembe, Gily Coene, Philip J. Havik, Ben James, Anna M. Klobucka, Chia Longman, Amélia Polónia, Ana Maria S. Rodrigues, Isabel dos Guimarães Sá, Ana Cristina Santos, and João Silvestre"--

An inspiring story of survival and our powerful bond with man's best friend, in the aftermath of the nation's most notorious case of animal cruelty. Animal lovers and sports fans were shocked when the story broke about NFL player Michael Vick's brutal dog fighting operation. But what became of the dozens of dogs who survived? As acclaimed writer Jim Gorant discovered, their story is the truly newsworthy aspect of this case. Expanding on Gorant's Sports Illustrated cover story, The Lost Dogs traces the effort to bring Vick to justice and turns the spotlight on these infamous pit bulls, which were saved from euthanasia by an outpouring of public appeals coupled with a court order that Vick pay nearly a million dollars in "restitution" to the dogs. As an ASPCA-led team evaluated each one, they found a few hardened fighters, but many more lovable, friendly creatures desperate for compassion. In The Lost Dogs, we meet these amazing animals, a number of which are now living in loving homes, while some even work in therapy programs: Johnny Justice participates in Paws for Tales, which lets kids get comfortable with reading aloud by reading to dogs; Leo spends three hours a week with cancer patients and troubled teens. At the heart of the stories are the rescue workers who transformed the pups from victims of animal cruelty into healing caregivers themselves, unleashing priceless hope. Includes an 8-page photo insert. Watch a video

Icon and Devotion offers the first extensive presentation in English of the making and meaning of Russian icons. The craft of icon-making is set into the context of forms of worship that emerged in the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-seventeenth century. Oleg Tarasov shows how icons have held a special place in Russian consciousness because they represented idealized images of Holy Russia. He also looks closely at how and why icons were made. Wonder-working saints and the leaders of such religious schisms as the Old Believers appear in these pages, which are illustrated in halftones with miniature paintings, lithographs and engravings never before published in the English-speaking world. By tracing the artistic vocabulary, techniques and working methods of icon painters, Tarasov shows how icons have been integral to the history of Russian art, influenced by folk and mainstream currents alike. As well as articulating the specifically Russian piety they invoke, he analyzes the significance of icons in the cultural life of modern Russia in the context of popular prints and poster design.

This book studies the Arabic-Islamic view of Byzantium, tracing the Byzantine image as it evolved through centuries of warfare, contact, and exchanges. Including previously inaccessible material on the Arabic textual tradition on Byzantium, this investigation shows the significance of Byzantium to the Arab Muslim establishment and their appreciation of various facets of Byzantine culture and civilization. The Arabic-Islamic representation of the Byzantine Empire stretching from the reference to Byzantium in the Qur'an until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 is considered in terms of a few salient themes. The image of Byzantium reveals itself to be complex, non-monolithic, and self-referential. Formulating an alternative appreciation to the politics of confrontation and hostility that so often underlies scholarly discourse on Muslim-Byzantine relations, this book presents the schemes developed by medieval authors to reinterpret aspects of their own history, their own self-definition, and their own view of the world.

Cassiodorus—famed throughout history as one of the great Christian exegetes of antiquity—spent most of his life as a high-ranking public official under the Ostrogothic King Theoderic and his heirs. He produced the Variae, a unique letter collection that gave witness to the sixth-century Mediterranean, as late antiquity gave way to the early middle ages. The Variae represents thirty years of Cassiodorus’s work in civil, legal, and financial administration, revealing his interactions with emperors and kings, bishops and military commanders, private citizens, and even criminals. Thus, the Variae remains among the most important sources for the history of this pivotal period and is an indispensable resource for understanding political and diplomatic culture, economic and legal structure, intellectual heritage, urban landscapes, religious worldview, and the evolution of social relations at all levels of society during the twilight of the late-Roman state. This is the first full translation of this masterwork into English.

Historical Archaeology and Heraldry on Chios presents the results of research into the island's medieval period, a terra incognita in the contemporary scholarly record. It is the first to be devoted to this topic in more than 100 years, following the publication of the seminal History of Chios by G. Zolotas in the 1920s. The book discusses the archaeology and history of Chios during the Byzantine and Genoese periods, focusing on Mount Amani, the region on the north-western part of the island. Harsh, remote, and poor, Mount Amani is nevertheless surprisingly rich in material for the landscape archaeologist and the student of historical topography, yet unknown in scholarly literature. Different types of evidence--both tangible and intangible--are used to discuss aspects of the local history and culture, from the evolution of the Byzantine settlement pattern, the rural economy, communications by land and sea and the chain of watchtowers, to the genealogy, the prosopography and the insignia of the local aristocracy, with many stone carvings illustrated for the first time.