He was 19 years old, a direct descendant of the Su Clan of the Western Lion Country. He had a devastatingly beautiful appearance, was proficient in zither, chess, painting, calmness, wittiness, cunning and had a person he liked and a person he didn't like that would be tortured to death. He was somewhat crazy, but he was very deep in love and had excellent medical skills. Her father was Prime Minister Su Qian, and her mother came from a foreign land. She had an immortal body, so Su Xueli also had an immortal body. She had liked the Fourth Prince from a young age, Mu Rong Chen. When he was 15, his entire family was executed. He was saved by Mu Rong Chen and lived in seclusion on the mountain outside the imperial city. When she was twenty, Murong Chen was ordered to marry the direct daughter of the Public Office's Assistant Minister. Su Xueli jumped off the cliff to commit suicide out of grief, but because she had an immortal body, she revived. She was saved by the passing Emperor of the Western Lion Country, Murong Chen.

The Empress Game, the tournament fought to decide the Empress Apparent, has been called and the females of the empire will stop at nothing to secure political domination for their homeworlds. The empire's elite gather to forge, strengthen or betray alliances in a dance that will determine the fate of the empire for a generation.

News travels quickly thanks to spies planted around here and there. Soon, the Empress comes to know that her son was in love with his personal maid. As a mother, she would never agree with their relationship! Their first meeting was done without the Third Prince’s knowledge. It ended with the Empress fainting, but Xiao Hua was exempted from punishment with the Third Prince interfering. But after the Third Prince went to the border to guard against the attack from another country, the Empress made an even bigger move against Xiao Hua. However, before the verdict decided on who was the victor this round, someone had tried to poison Xiao Hua and pin the blame on the Empress. [Book 4 of 9 The Dragon's Flower]

A world where martial arts ran rampant and magic flew everywhere. This was an unlucky opportunity where Lin Feng, who had been knocked down by a car, had transmigrated into this world full of legends, where battle qi and magic went hand in hand and he possessed the son of a general, who had just died. Let's see how Lin Feng, with his devilish brain, exceptional battle qi and talent in magic, can sweep through the entire world. Facing the general's family that was on the verge of shattering, how he would bring it to its peak. Lin Feng's dream was to carry out his class as a Brawler to the very end.

In the first book of an epic futuristic fantasy trilogy, this is the coming-of-age story of Reza Gard, a young boy of the Human Confederation who is swept up in the century-long war with the alien Kreelan Empire. Nightmarish female warriors with blue skin, fangs, and razor sharp talons, the Kreelans have technology that is millennia beyond that of the Confederation, yet they seek out close combat with sword and claw, fighting and dying to honor their god-like Empress. Captured and enslaved, Reza must live like his enemies in a grand experiment to see if humans have souls, and if one may be the key to unlocking an ages old curse upon the Kreelan race. Enduring the brutal conditions of Kreelan life, Reza and a young warrior named Esah-Zhurah find themselves bound together by fate and a prophecy foretold millennia before they were born.

Rhosmari trembled as the Empress walked over to her. 'Oh, do not struggle. There is nowhere for you to escape,' the Empress said, her voice silken and sweet. Then she unsheathed a small dagger from her waist. 'This will only hurt a little...' Rhosmari has lived her whole life on a sheltered chain of faery islands. But with the Empress's power growing, and her desire to enslave the entire faery race becoming a reality, Rhosmari knows she must fight back...

What you see (at first) is not what you get in this collection of nine previously published tales of shape shifting and transformation. An Alaskan student of wildlife biology finds it difficult to write convincingly about what she knows. A proud and beautiful princess loses her popularity when cursed (in a way probably familiar to many readers) by a wicked enchanter. A lonely Cajun fiddler has a close encounter with his royal but scaly ancestor. In the secret story of the railroad that transformed the American West, Chinese and Irish workers compete to complete the job with a little help from supernatural friends. A lowly jeweler creates a wondrous bauble for the sultan's favorite, but his reward, an exalted royal elephant, eats him out of house and home until he unlocks her secret. An Irish nurse discovers the identity of the lone fiddler who plays at the bedside of a critically ill patient. A middle-aged woman, suddenly invisible, improves her love and social life during Mardi Gras. And a predatory bill collector meets his match in a story so dark that the author even changed her name. In these shifty stories, you'll be wondering who happens next!

..". a wide array of time periods, cultures, and formats... " --Library Journal The first collection of source readings of women's important writings in political and social theory from ancient times to the twentieth century. From Sappho of Lesbos to Mary Wollstonecraft and from Jane Addams to Simone Weil, these works fill a major gap in materials available for teaching the history of political thought and opens paths for exploring the rich and diverse contributions of women as creators of theory.

Traditional Japanese Literature features a rich array of works dating from the very beginnings of the Japanese written language through the noted age of aristocratic court life into the period of warrior culture. The anthology contains new translations of such canonical texts as The Tales of the Heike and generous selections from Man'yoshu, The Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book, and Kokinshu. It includes a stunning range of folk literature, war epics, poetry, and n? drama, and an impressive collection of dramatic, poetic, and fictional works from both elite and popular cultures. Also represented are religious and secular anecdotes, literary criticism, essays, and works written in Chinese by Japanese writers. Arranged by chronology and genre, the readings are carefully introduced and placed into a larger political, cultural, and literary context, and the extensive bibliographies offer further study. Intended as a companion to Columbia University Press's Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900, Traditional Japanese Literature significantly deepens our understanding of Japanese literature as well as of ancient, classical, and medieval Japanese culture.