They had a pact. SEAL Team Seven, seven men who had formed an unbreakable bond while fighting to protect their country. None of them would marry until their service to home and country had been fulfilled. Now five of the brothers have found love, smack dab in the middle of them trying to chase down a madman who's out to destroy them and everything they love.As the only two left standing, Quinn and Devon decided that their job now was to protect their brothers and their women. Though they got a kick out of watching the by-play between their brothers and their new sisters, neither man believed that life was for him.Quinn, who has a special gift that he keeps hidden from everyone but his brothers, didn't think he'd ever fall into the marriage trap. What woman would saddle herself with someone with his history? Then in the middle of the night he's awakened by his senses to the threat of danger. Since none of his family is in imminent danger, he can find no reason for his 'gift' to show up now. When the feeling persists, and he follows his mind, it leads him to the woman who would win his heart with just one look at her. When she turns out to be the daughter of one of his old commander's closest friends, the mystery only deepens.Kelly knew that one day her daddy's time in the Navy was going to come back to bite her in the rear end. Home from college for the summer, she's looking forward to some relaxation in the small town where she'd been born and raised, after the hustle and bustle of the city. But that all changes when she's snatched and dragged across three states.She doesn't know what's going on but she knows one thing, she's not going down without a fight. When she sees the figure off in the distance on the beach as her kidnappers are dragging her into the fog, she makes a run for it, and right into the arms of her destiny.Devon's getting a kick out of the way his brothers had all fallen. Then his new sisters started whispering behind their hands and keeping him in their sights and he knew they were plotting his demise. Thankfully he and his brothers were embroiled in a dangerous game of cat and mouse that helped take the heat off.After they rescue Quinn's woman from traffickers on the beach, she's overheard mentioning another grab the kidnappers have planned and they head off to California to rescue the son of another one of the commander's old team mates.Only when they get there there's a surprise waiting. A surprise that will turn Devon's world upside down and make him question the life he'd had planned for himself.Ariel Samson is a woman of mystery. Raised in secret her whole life, she doesn't show up in anyone's database. The men and their friends who have banded together to help them take care of the threat are left scrambling to put the pieces of who she is together.Her sweet innocence reminds Devon of the mother he lost so long ago, but there was something else growing inside him, something that refused to be denied. But the deeper he digs into who she is he finds that there might be more than just his doubts that can keep them apart.

When ex SEAL Connor Malone and his six brothers in arms inherit a plot of land in the small Georgia town they decide it's just what they need to fulfill their dream of staying together stateside. The seven men have lived hard and fought harder all their lives and now all they're looking forward to is a life of ease running the construction company they've started together. Connor isn't really looking to settle down. During his years in service he and his brothers had made a pact never to get hitched while they were still signed up. But after their old CO the man who'd been like a father to the seven young men he'd taken under his wing and molded into the men they were today died. They learned some things that didn't sit too well with them so they decided as a team to cash out. Now their homes are built and the business is going fine. There's just one blur on their otherwise perfect horizon. It seems someone has decided to use their quiet little slice of paradise for illegal activities. Not only that but the young and genteel Danielle Dupree has set her sights on the rough and rugged Connor and no matter what he does he can't seem to shake her. So he does the only thing left for him to do, he takes her. But can the well-bred southern belle and the street kid turned soldier find a balance?

A study of the mysterious stone carvings of naked females exposing their genitals on medieval churches all over the British Isles.

This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.

On 24 January 2013, the Secretary of Defense (SecDef) rescinded the 1994 Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule (DCAR) that excluded women from assignment to units and positions whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground. In doing so, the SecDef directed the opening of all occupational specialties, positions and units to women; the validation of gender-neutral standards for those positions; and establishment of milestones for implementation. In a March 2013 memorandum, Commander USSOCOM directed several initiatives as a result of the SecDef's DCAR rescission. While other studies examined individual performance and standards, the JSOU Center for Special Operations Studies and Research examined the effects on team dynamics. The challenge for this study was to determine if changing the gender component of Special Operations Forces elite teams from single-gender (masculine) to mixed-gender would affect team dynamics in a way that would compromise the ability of the team to meet a mission objective.

In Black Sexual Politics, one of America's most influential writers on race and gender explores how images of Black sexuality have been used to maintain the color line and how they threaten to spread a new brand of racism around the world today.

The seashore has long been the subject of fascination and study - the Ancient Greek scholar Aristotle made observations and wrote about Mediterranean sea urchins. The considerable knowledge of what to eat and where it could be found has been passed down since prehistoric times by oral tradition in many societies - in Britain it is still unwise to eat shellfish in months without an 'r' in them. Over the last three hundred years or so we have seen the formalization of science and this of course has touched intertidal ecology. Linnaeus classified specimens collected from the seashore and many common species (Patella vulgata L. , Mytilus edulis L. , Littorina littorea (L. )) bear his imprint because he formally described, named and catalogued them. Early natural historians described zonation patterns in the first part of the 19th century (Audouin and Milne-Edwards, 1832), and the Victorians became avid admirers and collectors of shore animals and plants with the advent of the new fashion of seaside holidays (Gosse, 1856; Kingsley, 1856). As science became professionalized towards the end of the century, marine biologists took advantage of low tides to gain easy access to marine life for taxonomic work and classical studies of functional morphology. The first serious studies of the ecology of the shore were made at this time (e. g.

The Encyclopedia of Caves and Karst Science contains 350 alphabetically arranged entries. The topics include cave and karst geoscience, cave archaeology and human use of caves, art in caves, hydrology and groundwater, cave and karst history, and conservation and management. The Encyclopedia is extensively illustrated with photographs, maps, diagrams, and tables, and has thematic content lists and a comprehensive index to facilitate searching and browsing.