Joe Wilder is focused on turning a successful bodybuilding career into a billion-dollar international health and fitness conglomerate. He thinks he’s safely left behind his dangerous past as a CIA field agent—except for nightmares about gunfire, screams, and holding the lifeless body of a boy he cannot save. Facing massive price increases that could bankrupt his company, Joe travels to China for a confrontation with the ministry of trade. To his surprise, the deputy minister offers a deal in exchange for Joe helping her twelve-year-old son, Charley, travel to America. But when the minister is murdered within hours of signing the new contracts, Joe becomes both a suspect and the guardian of a boy with a secret. Relying on skills from his former life to stay alive, Joe has just four days to get Charley to safety before the most powerful criminal gang in China tracks them down. Hunted by every drug dealer, thug, and petty criminal who owes allegiance to the gang, can Joe and Charley survive long enough to see America? The Secret Empress is the gripping tale of an American entrepreneur’s dangerous quest to fulfill the last wish of a Chinese official before she is brutally murdered.

The Empress's Secret is a sixteen-point scientific program based on traditional Chinese medicine that calls on the body's own natural healing resources to completely rejuvenate the facial appearance. This method of light fingertip massage of certain points on the face and body results in an increase of circulation of blood and energy, or chi, to the face. This not only makes you feel better-more relaxed-it allows the lines of the face to soften while it tones the skin and supports the muscles of the face, so that you actually look younger and more vibrant. It is, in effect, an energetic facelift, right in your own fingertips.By following this ten-to-fifteen-minute regime daily for thirty days, you will most definitely see significant improvements, based on your age. At first these changes will be small and incremental. Within one month of starting this regime, with daily practice, you will notice considerable improvement in the tone of your face and the texture of the skin. The overall effect will be one of great rejuvenation. Over time, these youthening effects will continue, as this program derives its greatest benefits from its ongoing practice.

Long ago, war ravaged the lands of Estrana, until an agreement was set. A tentative peace is now on the verge of collapse from centuries-old prejudices. Verena never sought to conquer, nor rule, but betrayal forced her hand. To protect the forsaken, she must attend the quarter century meeting. And assume her place at the demon High Lord's table, just as her parents before. The blood in Verena's veins determined her path, but other's secrets will decide her fate. A lineage she has always denounced now weighs heavy upon her shoulders. The power of an Empress was never a weapon she wanted to wield, but for her people, she will take what is hers, by battle and blood. High Lady she was born, but an Empress she was destined to become.

Where Theodora went, trouble followed…. In sixth-century Constantinople, one woman, Theodora, defied every convention and all the odds and rose from common theater tart to empress of a great kingdom, the most powerful woman the Roman Empire would ever know. The woman whose image was later immortalized in glittering mosaic was a scrappy, clever, conniving, flesh-and-blood woman full of sensuality and spirit whose real story is as surprising as any ever told…. After her father dies suddenly, Theodora and her sisters face starvation and a life on the streets. Determined to survive, Theodora makes a living any way she can—first on her back with every man who will have her, then on the stage in a scandalous dramatization of her own invention. When her daring performance grants her a backdoor entry into the halls of power, she seizes the chance to win a wealthy protector—only to face heartbreak and betrayal. Ever resilient, Theodora rises above such trials and, by a twist of fate, meets her most passionate admirer yet: the emperor’s nephew. She thrives as his confidant and courtesan, but many challenges lie ahead. For one day this man will hand her a crown. And all the empire will wonder—is she bold enough, shrewd enough, and strong enough to keep it? READERS GUIDE INCLUDED

The Empress Eugénie was one of the most glamorous, celebrated and ultimately tragic figures of the nineteenth century. Wife of Napoleon III and close friend of Queen Victoria, she suffered the loss of her beloved sister, her only son, and her adopted country. But did Eugénie take her greatest secret-an illegitimate child, conceived when she was a teenager in Spain and fathered by the only man she ever truly loved-to the grave with her? And if so, what became of the child? After half a lifetime's research Joyce Cartlidge has pieced together evidence from historic records and clues in correspondence from Eugénie and her family and friends, some of it never printed before, to tell a compelling story of love and motherhood that ties the Spanish house of Montijo and the French throne to a small family in Victorian Lancashire. 'An extraordinary odyssey into family history' -The Mail on Sunday

If you enjoy current best-selling thriller novels by authors such as Clive Cussler, James Rollins, Steve Berry and Brad Thor, if you like high adventure, exotic locations and action thrillers with a historical twist, then this is page-turner for you THE EMPRESS HOLDS THE KEY is a mystery action thriller for the thinking reader who has an open mind and likes to be challenged. In THE EMPRESS HOLDS THE KEY, author Gabriel Farago takes you on an exciting journey of discovery where the stakes are high, the rewards great, but where the price of failure is oblivion. This fast-paced international thriller weaves fact and fiction into an adventure of epic proportions as it follows the lives of a handful of diverse individuals tied together by destiny and fate. Journalist Jack Rogan knows a great story when he finds one. A charred old photograph found in the ruins of a burnt-out Blue Mountains cottage hints at dark secrets and unwittingly reignites an ancient and deadly quest for a holy relic mysteriously erased from the pages of history. Federal Police officer Jana Gonski in pursuit of a suspected Nazi war criminal joins forces with Rogan, barrister and amateur archaeologist Marcus Carrington QC, and celebrated composer Benjamin Krakowski. Together they uncover a murky web of intrigue and greed, hoards of Nazi gold and hidden Swiss bank accounts. All implicate wealthy banker Sir Eric Newman. When Newman goes on trial, unexpected clues are discovered pointing the way to a mystery that has haunted the Catholic Church for centuries. On a dangerous journey to find the relic, Rogan and his companions trace links back as far as the reign of Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh of ancient Egypt, and King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. What is this dark secret guarded by the Knights Templar, and so feared by the Vatican? Will religious fanatics foil the quest which could destroy the very foundations of their Church and challenge Christianity itself? To preview the opening chapters, please click on the Look Inside Feature.

Sandry, Daja, Briar, and Tris, are older now and back together again, in an exciting and much-awaited, stand-alone novel by everyone's favorite mage, Tamora Pierce. For years the Empress of Namorn has pressed her young cousin, Lady Sandrilene fa Toren, to visit her vast lands within the Empire's borders. Sandry has avoided the invitation for as long as it was possible. Now Sandry has agreed to pay that overdue visit. Sandry's uncle promises guards to accompany her. But they're hardly a group of warriors! They're her old friends from Winding Circle: Daja, Tris, and Briar. Sandry hardly knows them now. They've grown up and grown apart. Sandry isn't sure they'll ever find their old connection again - or if she even wants them to. When they arrive at the pala

The epic story of a sisterhood where blood relations are nothing compared to the unbreakable bond of the secret sisters -- the bond of Jin-Shei.

Dishonored won the 2012 Spike Video Game award for Best Action Adventure Game, and the 2013 BAFTA Award for Best Game. The artworks, manuscripts, and scraps of information gathered throughout Dunwall are collected at last. It has been a long and difficult journey to archive these tales of our cursed city, but it is my hope that you, reading this now, will take heed, and learn from those gone before you to forge your own destiny.

The era of the Tudors was one of danger, intrigue, conspiracy, and, above all, spies. Summer 1553: A time of danger and deceit. Brendan Prescott, an orphan, is reared in the household of the powerful Dudley family. Brought to court, Prescott finds himself sent on an illicit mission to the king's brilliant but enigmatic sister, Princess Elizabeth. But Brendan is soon compelled to work as a double agent by Elizabeth's protector, William Cecil, who promises in exchange to help him unravel the secret of his own mysterious past. A dark plot swirls around Elizabeth's quest to unravel the truth about the ominous disappearance of her seriously ill brother, King Edward VI. With only a bold stable boy and an audacious lady-in-waiting at his side, Brendan plunges into a ruthless gambit of half-truths, lies, and murder. Filled with the intrigue and pageantry of Tudor England, C. W. Gortner's The Tudor Secret is the first book in The Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles.