As Maya perfects her Fire skills she finds there is more to being the Hand of Kali than just wielding Fire. A surprising summons to Mount Kailas takes Maya on a journey to meet the Lord of the Hindu Pantheon – Lord Shiva himself. This time the God’s request may not be so easy to fulfill. Maya and her friends must flee the demons and the ruthless killers on their trail to retrieve the golden bow of Lord Rama. Can Maya get the bow back in time, and also save a certain demon king in the process?

'I'm a daughter of my homeland. We're Irish. It's all we need to know.' 'This isn't Ireland, Niamh.' Kilkenny Pat cut through her words. 'It's a new country. Even the English aren't English here.' It is 1854 and Ballarat is teeming with miners, dreamers and rebels. On the eve of the Eureka Stockade battle, Fintan Donovan is fighting private battles of his own. Torn between his Irish upbringing and his friendship with an English boy called Matthew Ward, Fintan must make a stand. Will he be dominated by the hatreds of the old world or will he find a new way to live in the new country? Vivid and powerful, The Valley of Blood and Gold evokes a moment in history that is entrenched in Australian national heritage.

Social sciences.

Burma is one of the largest countries in Southeast Asia and was once one of its richest. Under successive military regimes, however, the country eventually ended up as one of the poorest countries in Asia, a byword for repression and ethnic violence. Richard Cockett spent years in the region as a correspondent for The Economist and witnessed firsthand the vicious sectarian politics of the Burmese government, and later, also, its surprising attempts at political and social reform. Cockett’s enlightening history, from the colonial era on, explains how Burma descended into decades of civil war and authoritarian government. Taking advantage of the opening up of the country since 2011, Cockett has interviewed hundreds of former political prisoners, guerilla fighters, ministers, monks, and others to give a vivid account of life under one of the most brutal regimes in the world. In many cases, this is the first time that they have been able to tell their stories to the outside world. Cockett also explains why the regime has started to reform, and why these reforms will not go as far as many people had hoped. This is the most rounded survey to date of this volatile Asian nation.

The opening of the world's first railroad in Britain and America in 1830 marked the dawn of a new age. Within the course of a decade, tracks were being laid as far afield as Australia and Cuba, and by the outbreak of World War I, the United States alone boasted over a quarter of a million miles. With unrelenting determination, architectural innovation, and under gruesome labor conditions, a global railroad network was built that forever changed the way people lived. From Panama to Punjab, from Tasmania to Turin, Christian Wolmar shows how cultures were enriched, and destroyed, by one of the greatest global transport revolutions of our time, and celebrates the visionaries and laborers responsible for its creation.

Today, a century and a half after the abolition of slavery across most of the Americas, the idea of monetary reparations for former slaves and their descendants continues to be a controversial one. Lost among these debates, however, is the fact that such payments were widespread in the nineteenth century—except the “victims” were not slaves, but the slaveholders deprived of their labor. This landmark comparative study analyzes the debates over compensation within France and Great Britain. It lays out in unprecedented detail the philosophical, legal-political, and economic factors at play, establishing a powerful new model for understanding the aftermath of slavery in the Americas.

Focusing on the conquest of Mexico, the British onslaught on the Tasmanian Aborigines, the uprooting of the Apaches, and the German campaign against the tribes of southwest Africa, Cocker illuminates the fundamental experiences that underlie colonial expansion around the globe.

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