-ALL PERSONNEL TO BATTLE STATIONS! Words that would change the fate of what remains of humanity. As a third generation searcher, it never occurred to Clary Starborn that she might someday be in charge of anything other than her little botany lab. One hundred and fifty years ago the most powerful countries of Earth built and launched five ships. Ships meant to carry what remained of humanity out into the space beyond their known galaxy to search for a new home. From birth, they had trained and drilled, prepared as best they could for the inevitable contact with other species. One hundred and fifty years, and their first contact with alien life is hostile. The starship Aria is under attack. Within a matter of hours, the crew of thousands is decimated. -PRIMARY TARGET ACQUIRED. PREPARE TO ENGAGE. The First Warship came out of the Void and Tarek, Commander of the Sarazen Armada, had anticipated the victory of finally destroying the enemy ship that had been evading him for weeks. Instead, they come upon a smaller vessel, woefully unequipped to deal with the bombardment of the attacking Na'ah. One shuttle managed to escape with seven life signs registering. Tarek ordered the shuttle to board the Sarazen warship, never even considering one of the fragile beings on board, might be his One. Nothing could have prepared Clary for Tarek. She had never seen anything like him, never experienced the rush of instant connection or deep yearning to be called, his One. She didn't know what it would mean for her or the other human survivors. But the offer of a new home, a new solar system to explore and a gigantic alien mate who claimed she was his to share it with, was far too good an offer to pass up.

Inventing Americans in the Age of Discovery traces the linguistic, rhetorical, and literary innovations that emerged out of the first encounters between Europeans and indigenous peoples of the Americas. Through analysis of six texts, Michael Householder demonstrates the role of language in forming the identities or characters that permitted Europeans (English speakers, primarily) to adapt to the unusual circumstances of encounter. Arranged chronologically, the texts examined include John Mandeville's Travels, Richard Eden's English-language translations of the accounts of Spanish and Portuguese discovery and conquest, George Best's account of Martin Frobisher's voyages to northern Canada, Ralph Lane's account of the abandonment of Roanoke, John Smith's writings about Virginia, and John Underhill's account of the Pequot War. Through his analysis, Householder reveals that English colonists did not share a universal, homogenous view of indigenous Americans as savages, but that the writers, confronted by unfamiliar peoples and situations, resorted to a mixed array of cultural beliefs, myths, and theories to put together workable explanations of their experiences, which then became the basis for how Europeans in the colonies began transforming themselves into Americans.

In an unusual view of one of the English language's greatest writers, an Arab scholar analyzes the oriental influences on Milton's work, and Milton's own influence on Arab writers and critics John Milton's great poems, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, are among the greatest pieces of writing in the English language. Like other writers of his time, Milton had only a sketchy idea of Islam and the Arab world, from travelers and linguists who had made the arduous journey to and from the Middle East. But buried in his works are signs that Milton had absorbed ideas and influences from Islam and Arab culture. Professor Dahiyat shows how from the Middle Ages, partly as an attempt to counteract Islam with Christianity, a wide range of writers and researchers spoke, read, and wrote Arabic and published books in the earliest days of printing which Milton could have read. He then shows how many different references there are to the Orient and Islam in Milton's writings, and discusses the later response of Arab writers and scholars to Milton's major works.

Textual Imitation offers a new critique of the space between fiction and truth, poetry and philosophy. In a nimble, yet startlingly wide-ranging argument, esteemed scholar Jonathan Hart argues that recognition and misrecognition are the keys to understanding texts and contexts from the Old World to the New World.

Engendering the Fall argues that early seventeenth-century women's writing influenced Paradise Lost, while later seventeenth-century texts reworked central aspects of Milton's epic in order to reconfigure the politically resonant gendered hierarchy laid out by the story of the Fall.