When simple agreements turn into ardent deals… Don’t miss this reader favorite from New York Times bestselling author Brenda Jackson. An Outrageous Offer To help her brother’s struggling cosmetics company, Virginia schoolteacher Colby Wingate arrives in Los Angeles for one last, desperate gamble—to have superstar actor Sterling Hamilton endorse her brother’s new perfume. But Sterling thinks Colby has come to answer his want-ad for a woman who would bear his child. When she realizes what Sterling is looking for, Colby is shocked that he expects her, let alone any woman, to comply no matter how much money he’s willing to pay... A Passionate Bargain A childhood loss has made Sterling determined not to get too close to anyone—even the strikingly beautiful Colby. But somehow, he would have to convince Colby to become the mother of his child...with no strings attached. What he doesn’t expect is for his carefully laid plans to explode into restless, fiery hunger. Now, Sterling knows he needs Colby for much more—if only he can prove his intentions are for real and that he’ll cherish and love her...forever. Title originally published in 1998

In I'm the Silent One, Mae Francis Miller Guthrie shares her heartfelt poetry, expressing love and pain.

A painfully honest, heart-warming, family love story covering nearly twenty years beginning with the author's thought ... I do not want to be my mother with my little girls. I do not want to be screaming at them. The book is an openly honest, very personal, inspirational memoir of change within a family beginning with a thought in late summer 1981.. I do not want to slap and scream at my young daughters. I do not want to be my mother. She was looking for something. She didn't know what she didn't know.

This book takes up Foucault’s hypothesis that liberal “civil society,” far from being a sphere of natural freedoms, designates the social spaces where our biological lives come under new forms of control and are invested with new forms of biopower. In order to test this hypothesis, its chapters examine the critical theory of civil society—from Hegel and Marx through Lukacs, Adorno, Benjamin, and Arendt—from the new horizon opened up by Foucault’s turn to biopolitics and its reception in recent Italian theory. Negri, Agamben, and Esposito have argued that biopolitics not only denotes new forms of domination over life but harbors within it an affirmative relation between biological life and politics that carries an emancipatory potential. The chapters of this book take up this suggestion by locating this emancipatory potential in the biopolitical feature of the human condition that Arendt called “natality.” The book proceeds to illustrate how natality is the basis for a republican articulation of an affirmative biopolitics. It aims to renew the critical theory of civil society by pursuing the traces of natality as a “surplus of life” that resists the oppressive government of life found in the capitalist political economy, in the liberal system of rights, and in the bourgeois family. By contrast, natality offers the normative foundation for a new “republic of the living.” Finally, natality permits us to establish a relation between biological life and contemplative life that reverses the long-held belief in a privileged relationship of thinking to the possibility of our death. The result is a materialist, atheological conception of contemplative life as eternal life.

Love as confusing as it is, has a routine set of rules. You have a Boy & a Girl, both get-together and fall in love. But what happens when that love falls apart, what happens when even after loving the girl with all his heart the boy keeps hurting her in every moment. What happens when the girl gets her heartbroken & decides to walk away, leaving the boy question his own existence. What happens when another girl comes in & makes that boy dream again, only to become a part of that dream herself. What happens when unexpectedly the first girl comes back into his life, leaving the boy perplexed, whom to love whom to not? Perfectly Imperfect Love is the Story of Sanjay & Sonam who were deeply in love, but they eventually fell apart. It is also about Diya who somehow becomes a part of this Story that was always supposed to be about the other two. Will Sanjay give in to his infatuation for Diya? Will Sanjay & Sonam move on in life or their love will eventually bring them back together? What will happen when love is all they have & still no one knows will it ever be enough.

Public Speaking: A Meta-Communicative Approach provides an innovative approach to acquiring public speaking skills, stressing both the theoretical underpinnings as well as the practical tools one needs to structure and deliver meaningful, dynamic presentations. It offers alternative ways of looking at public speaking: the significance of passion; a prismatic-way-of-thinking; the pervasiveness of persuasion; the assumption that teaching is taking place in every presentation; the power of meta-messages; and overarching ways to look at the public speaking enterprise. This one-of-a-kind textbook also offers real-world scenarios to equip students for speaking engagements they may face in professional contexts.

Across the country are hundreds of high school football rivalries. Each might lay claim that it is special in many ways. In the heart of the great central valley of California is one such rivalry that is exceptional in its power over the people who have been part of it. Two high schools, Redwood and Mt. Whitney, began playing an annual football game against each other in 1955. The 50th game of this traditional rivalry was played in 2004 before 10,000 fans and a live television audience. The two schools, located only a few blocks from each other in Visalia, California, a city of 100,000 people, have maintained this intense rivalry for over 50 years like very few schools have ever done. The game is played before a packed stadium every year and the community claims it as the biggest event during the entire year. Part 1 explores the history of the Cowhide game, relating the early humble beginning when the original high school split into two schools. The evolution of the game over 50 years is explored. Using hundreds of questionnaires, newspaper accounts, and many interviews with those involved over the years, the real meaning of the Cowhide tradition is explored and the reasons are brought out as to why this rivalry has not only endured but has actually increased in strength over the years. Part 2 gives a detailed account of each of the 50 games, including the teams' records coming into the game, the results of any subsequent playoffs, and a complete roster of the teams for each year. The article of the local newspaper about the game is included in each chapter. At the end is an appendix of stats, a listing of head and assistant coaches, and other interesting items over the years. Finally there is an index of all the players who played in the game and what years they played.