Having discovered a monstrous conspiracy to overthrow the pharaoh, Ramses the Great, Judge Pazair has been deported for a crime he did not commit and sentenced to die in a prison camp. But the conspirators have reckoned without the love of Neferet, the young woman doctor Pazair has just married, and the courage of Suti, his friend with the hot head and the generous heart. Together, Neferet and Suti attempt to rescue Pazair so that he can resume his investigation. For there are many questions yet to be answered. Who murdered the veteran guards of the Great Sphinx? Who violated the Great Pyramid and stole the Testament of the Gods, which guarantees Pharaoh's legitimacy? Who killed Pazair's spiritual master?

Desertwalk is an odyssey into that unusual world of cactus and creosote, of intense heat and vast space. It is stories of exploring desert trails, experiencing elusive wildlife and learning to appreciate the spirit and temper of that stark, mysterious and hauntingly beautiful land where rains are seldom and winds sweep the sands. Over 100 delicate and realistic watercolor paintings by the author illustrate the chapters and contribute to the inspirational tone of desert understanding.

Naturalist Craig Childs's "utterly memorable and fantastic" study of the desert's dangerous beauty is based on years of adventures in the deserts of the American West (Washington Post). Like the highest mountain peaks, deserts are environments that can be inhospitable even to the most seasoned explorers. Craig Childs, who has spent years in the deserts of the American West as an adventurer, a river guide, and a field instructor in natural history, has developed a keen appreciation for these forbidding landscapes: their beauty, their wonder, and especially their paradoxes. His extraordinary treks through arid lands in search of water are an astonishing revelation of the natural world at its most extreme. "Utterly memorable and fantastic...Certainly no reader will ever see the desert in the same way again." —Suzannah Lessard, Washington Post

*Includes pictures *Includes Fawcett's accounts of his own expeditions *Profiles all the theories surrounding the expedition's disappearance *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "There, I believed, lay the greatest secrets of the past yet preserved in our world of today. I had come to the turn of the road; and for better or worse I chose the forest path." - Percy Fawcett The heroes of each generation reflect the conditions, priorities, and goals of the era in which they reside. In the United States and throughout Europe, the wilderness explorer enjoyed widespread public adulation long before leading sports figures, rock stars, and astronauts of later decades. The ingenuity of the Industrial Revolution gave way to early manned flight, and other breakthroughs in communication, and travel. The British Empire flourished across the globe, incorporating entirely dissimilar cultures into its stylized world view. Within this social canon, the explorer of the Victorian and post-Victorian eras fit perfectly within a nationalistic urge to unveil the secrets of every continent. Even expeditions to both poles became the rage among home-bound vicarious adventurers. Throughout climes featuring thick ice and palm trees alike, the maps of the day featured enormous blank spots where no modern man or woman had ever set foot. Among the largest was, and continues to be, the rain forest of the Amazon, particularly in the vast Mato Grosso region of Brazil. The explorers who stepped forward to cast light on such unknown expanses were often driven by obsessive personalities, and lived in the cracks between hard science and the metaphysical. None were more driven than Colonel Percival (Percy) Harrison Fawcett of the British Army. Fawcett, a veteran of the service, a skilled surveyor, and a tough-minded swashbuckler with a soft spot for psychics and astrologists, captured the public's fascination with his numerous treks into the untraveled jungles of Brazil, which he called "the last great blank space in the world." The first few were simple map-making expeditions, none of them intending to turn the world of archaeology or anthropology upside down. It was, however, Fawcett's later expeditions and his final trek in 1925 that piqued the imaginations of the masses who hung on every outlandish discovery of the age. In the end, he drew more attention to the world of the Amazon by being devoured by it, disappearing without a trace, never to be seen again. The subject of his search was equally riveting, the pursuit of the Lost City of 'Z', somewhere in the Brazilian Amazon. The literary world had already been set ablaze by Tarzan, and other works by Edgar Rice Burroughs and his contemporaries. Readers were still consumed by the stories of Jules Verne, and a collective fantasy viewed the remaining exotic regions of the world as haunted by strange creatures once thought extinct or impossible, indigenous people with no knowledge of the outer world, and even the secretive work of extraterrestrial beings. Shangri-la, El Dorado, and the gold-laden Seven Cities of Cibola served as prime material for the era's imagination. Against that backdrop, the Amazon served as the perfect stage for a generation of literary thrills, and Colonel Fawcett seemed eager to oblige. Percy Fawcett and the Lost City of Z: The History of the Explorer's Mysterious Disappearance in Search of El Dorado looks at the history of Fawcett's expeditions in search of the reputed lost city, and his controversial disappearance. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Percy Fawcett and the Lost City of Z like never before.

This action packed drama is set in the harsh desert of ancient Egypt. Her brother Jonas is missing! The unexpected news sends Egyptologist Anina Shapiro on a journey into the desert and to historical sites. Connor O’Hearn, Jonas’s best friend accompanies her. He is in love with her and hopes that this trip will bring her closer to him. Anina is unaware of this. To her, he is just her brother’s friend. By coincidence Anina meets the mysterious Bedouin, Shekhar Fahir. He takes over the search when Connor is unable to continue. During their troublesome journey, a deep bond between Shekhar and Anina develops. But when the search ends, Shekhar realises that his tradition and culture would not allow a future for them. Will Connor make Anina his bride or is fate going to play another hand?

When a Chinese monk broke into a hidden cave in 1900, he uncovered one of the world’s great literary secrets: a time capsule from the ancient Silk Road. Inside, scrolls were piled from floor to ceiling, undisturbed for a thousand years. The gem within was the Diamond Sutra of AD 868. This key Buddhist teaching, made 500 years before Gutenberg inked his press, is the world’s oldest printed book. The Silk Road once linked China with the Mediterranean. It conveyed merchants, pilgrims and ideas. But its cultures and oases were swallowed by shifting sands. Central to the Silk Road’s rediscovery was a man named Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-born scholar and archaeologist employed by the British service. Undaunted by the vast Gobi Desert, Stein crossed thousands of desolate miles with his fox terrier Dash. Stein met the Chinese monk and secured the Diamond Sutra and much more. The scroll’s journey—by camel through arid desert, by boat to London’s curious scholars, by train to evade the bombs of World War II—merges an explorer’s adventures, political intrigue, and continued controversy. The Diamond Sutra has inspired Jack Kerouac and the Dalai Lama. Its journey has coincided with the growing appeal of Buddhism in the West. As the Gutenberg Age cedes to the Google Age, the survival of the Silk Road’s greatest treasure is testament to the endurance of the written word.

Twilight in the Desert reveals a Saudi oil and production industry that could soon approach a serious, irreversible decline. In this exhaustively researched book, veteran oil industry analyst Matthew Simmons draws on his three-plus decades of insider experience and more than 200 independently produced reports about Saudi petroleum resources and production operations. He uncovers a story about Saudi Arabias troubled oil industry, not to mention its political and societal instability, which differs sharply from the globally accepted Saudi version. Its a story that is provocative and disturbing, based on undeniable facts, but until now never told in its entirety. Twilight in the Desert answers all readers questions about Saudi oil and production industries with keen examination instead of unsubstantiated posturing, and takes its place as one of the most important books of this still-young century.

The only book that examines the lifestyles and motivations of the world’s biggest gamblers, the whales, and how the casinos harpoon and beach them. This definitive exposé reveals the shrouded world of ultra-high rollers and the Faustian pacts they forge with their hosts, the casino representatives whose job it is to part them from their fortunes. The third edition includes an extensive update about Las Vegas, the "greening" of gambling, the nightclub and day club scenes, the evolution of the host position, and much more--all in the words of superhost Steve Cyr.

In pre-1990s Las Vegas, casino marketing executives were all cut from the same cloth; sharply-dressed and smooth-talking with street-savvy. They rose through the ranks of operations -- dealer, floor-man, pit boss, shift boss and casino manager. When it was time to leave the trenches, they went "upstairs" into the executive offices, where they hosted a handful of established players according to the unwritten rules of old-school Vegas. Then Steve Cyr showed up.