Tracing the footsteps of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, Madison Oliver, an engineer and author of The Elusive Cobra: A Memoir, was seduced by the warm tropical trade winds of the South Pacific Islands. In 1963, after a vacation in Tahiti, Oliver and his wife, Gini, put their possessions in storage to begin a South Pacific adventure that would alter their lives forever. Trouble, however, sometimes comes to paradise. Oliver is diagnosed with cancer and must leave his paradise to have radical neck surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The author was diagnosed with his first secondary tumor at the young age of forty-four, in 1970. Three years later, a new-yet very similar-tumor developed on the opposite side of his neck requiring more radical surgery. Following the building of a new image, developing an exercise program that included running two marathons, and completing a successful career, cancer struck again. Mr. Oliver's encounter with recurring cancer, which he likens to the unpredictable attack of a hooded cobra, not only has a message for his fellow cancer survivors, but is inspiring, moving, and the pinnacle of bravery. Book jacket.

Stephanie Laurens, the phenomenal New York Times bestselling superstar is back with The Elusive Bride—the second book in her magnificent Black Cobra Quartet. Never before in print, this masterful blend of passion and intrigue follows The Untamed Bride, the first in the four-part historical romance series that Booklist calls, “fabulously entertaining.” A spellbinding tale of destiny, duty, desire, and peril—with ties to her popular Bastion Club novels and her well-loved romantic adventures featuring the endearing family of rogues, the Cynsters—The Elusive Bride confirms Laurens’s well-deserved standing as one of the genre’s premier storytellers.

EARTH'S ONLY HOPE WAS THE COBRAS The colony worlds Adirondack and Silvern fell to the Troft forces almost without a struggle. Outnumbered and on the defensive, Earth made a desperate decision. It would attack the aliens not from space, but on the ground¾with forces the Trofts did not even suspect. Thus were created the Cobras, a guerilla force whose weapons were surgically implanted, invisible to the unsuspecting eye, yet undeniably deadly. But power brings temptation, and not all the Cobras could be trusted to fight for Earth alone. Jonny Moreau would learn the uses¾and abuses¾of his special abilities and what it truly meant to be a Cobra. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

The definitive story of the extraordinary marriage of a classic British AC Ace sportscar to a large capacity American V8.

“A fabulously entertaining new quartet—with links to her popular Cynster series….Laurens adds a dash of exotic spice to her always reliable mix of sexy romance and risky intrigue.” —Booklist The fourth book in New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Stephanie Laurens’s sensational Black Cobra Quartet, The Reckless Bride is a brilliant mix of intrigue, danger, and historical romance from one of the very best in the business. A breathtaking adventure set in England’s Regency Era, The Reckless Bride continues the acclaimed romance novelist’s extraordinary chronicle of love and duty, as brave ex-officers of the Crown band together to destroy the traitorous fiend known as The Black Cobra.

Known as the original “Snakemaster” from his various television shows, Austin Stevens is one of the most famous herpetologists in the world. From his show Austin Stevens: Snakemaster on Animal Planet to his many appearances in the media, Stevens is known as an incredibly smart, yet incredibly insane animal lover. In Snakemaster, Austin Stevens tells incredible stories of his many run-ins with dangerous animals and reptiles. From wrestling with a reticulated python to panicking after being bitten by the infamous Gaboon viper, Stevens brings you into his world of wildlife and tells the story of how a boy from Pretoria, South Africa, became one of the most widely known herpetologists in the world. With incredible photographs taken by Stevens himself, you’ll be able to place yourself in his world—from the deserts of Africa to the jungles of Borneo. Sharing incredible stories of his love of animals and nature, this one-of-a-kind collection of stories will make you laugh, cry, and shiver with fear!

Being a missionary in Ivory Coast, West Africa is not only about dangers, hard work, and culture shock, interspersed with moments of high joy and deep sorrow; it is life found in the small and daily things, the quotidian experience which renders familiar a vastly different way of life, a life at the edge of the village. This book collects Lisa Leidenfrost's sketches of missionary life, compiled from letters sent home from Ivory Coast to her church in the United States, and they tell of the ordinary and extraordinary, the solemn and the playful, the mundane and the exotic, together creating a down-to-earth portrait of the Gospel at work in a family and society. For over sixteen years, Lisa Leidenfrost has lived, served, and raised four children in Ivory Coast with her husband, Csaba Leidenfrost, a Wycliffe translator to the Bakwe people.

For a limited time and at a special price, discover #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens's The Black Cobra Quartet with The Untamed Bride, plus special excerpts from the next three novels in the series. In The Untamed Bride, They're battle-hardened, sinfully wealthy, completely unstoppable—and all male: Four officers of the Crown, fighting against a deadly foe known only as the Black Cobra. He is a man who has faced peril without flinching, determined to fight for king and country. She is a bold, beautiful woman with a scandalous past, destined to become an untamed bride. Together they must vanquish the ruthless enemy, while confronting the dangers of the heart . . .

Body of Writing focuses on the traces that an author’s “body” leaves on a work of fiction. Drawing on the work of six important Spanish American writers of the twentieth century, René Prieto examines narratives that reflect—in differing yet ultimately complementary ways—the imprint of the author’s body, thereby disclosing insights about power, aggression, transgression, and eroticism. Healthy, invalid, lustful, and confined bodies—as portrayed by Julio Cortázar, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Gabriel García Márquez, Severo Sarduy, Rosario Castellanos, and Tununa Mercado—become evidence for Roland Barthes’s contention that works of fiction are “anagrams of the body.” Claiming that an author’s intentions can be uncovered by analyzing “the topography of a text,” Prieto pays particular attention not to the actions or plots of these writers’ fiction but rather to their settings and characterizations. In the belief that bodily traces left on the page reveal the motivating force behind a writer’s creative act, he explores such fictional themes as camouflage, deterioration, defilement, entrapment, and subordination. Along the way, Prieto reaches unexpected conclusions regarding topics that include the relationship of the female body to power, male and female transgressive impulses, and the connection between aggression, the idealization of women, and anal eroticism in men. This study of how authors’ longings and fears become embodied in literature will interest students and scholars of literary and psychoanalytic criticism, gender studies, and twentieth-century and Latin American literature.