Harmoni and her team are faced with a different kind of mission when they return to Augury from their latest job. One of the wolves who guards Omen’s property is in trouble. Rescuing the shifter will have repercussions that none of them could have expected. It will change the dynamic of the group entirely. Thanks to her unexpected influx of power, Harm will have to relearn how to use all of her talents again. They’ll need every edge they can get during their war against Aion Corp and the Octet who run the company. Their enemies are now aware that Harmoni is far more powerful than they’d realized. They’re even more determined to bring her and Ares beneath their control. Omen has to choose someone to search for the syrictae now that they have an idea of where he’s lurking. Ares is his hated rival, so the last thing he wants to do is aid him. Harmoni will take her team and leave if he does nothing, so he has no choice but to ask for help from someone he’d rather avoid at all costs.

Updated discussion of the processing, microstructure, properties, and applications of fibers such as polymers, metals, ceramics and glass.

Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. Purpose in the Universe develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. The book borrows traditional theist arguments to defend a cosmic purpose. These include cosmological, teleological, ontological, meta-ethical, and mystical arguments. It then borrows traditional atheist arguments to reject a human-centred purpose. These include arguments based on evil, diversity, and the scale of the universe. Mulgan also highlights connections between morality and metaphysics, arguing that evaluative premises play a crucial and underappreciated role in metaphysical debates about the existence of God, and Ananthropocentric Purposivism mutually supports an austere consequentialist morality based on objective values. He concludes that, by drawing on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions, a non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about something, the universe is not about us.

With only six weeks left before the war between Chaos and Order will begin, Harmoni can’t let despair rule her. She knows it’s inevitable that Ares will be recaptured by Aion Corp. Nothing can change their fates, but it doesn’t make it any easier to bear. Everything is finally coming together for both sides of the conflict. Yuri Isakov and his squad are closing in on the enchanted heart. The force that’s been slowing them down will redouble its efforts to prevent them from obtaining the relic. With the threat of retirement hovering over them if they fail, Yuri won’t allow anything to stop him from doing his duty. Ares dreads the battle that’s rapidly approaching. He’d rather die than harm his queen, but he has no control over what’s coming. Becoming Harmoni’s enemy will crush him, but it’s his fate. He can only hope that she’ll be able to destroy him before he can kill her first.

The award-winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and the Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist Tom Toles have been on the front lines of the fight against climate denialism for most of their careers. They have witnessed the manipulation of the media by business and political interests and the unconscionable play to partisanship on issues that affect the well-being of billions. The lessons they have learned have been invaluable, inspiring this brilliant, colorful escape hatch from the madhouse of the climate wars. The Madhouse Effect portrays the intellectual pretzels into which denialists must twist logic to explain away the clear evidence that human activity has changed Earth's climate. Toles's cartoons collapse counter-scientific strategies into their biased components, helping readers see how to best strike at these fallacies. Mann's expert skills at science communication aim to restore sanity to a debate that continues to rage against widely acknowledged scientific consensus. The synergy of these two climate science crusaders enlivens the gloom and doom of so many climate-themed books—and may even convert die-hard doubters to the side of sound science.

People believe what they want to believe. It is a striking-yet all too familiar-fact about human beings that our belief-forming processes can be so distorted by fears, desires, and prejudices that an otherwise sensible person may sincerely uphold a false claim about the world despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When we describe someone as being "in denial," we mean that he or she is personally threatened by some set of facts and consequently fails to assess the situation properly according to the evidence, instead arguing and interpreting evidence in light of a pre-established conclusion. In a world polarized over politics, culture, race, and religion, it is evident that ideological commitments can influence one's perception of reality in socially destructive ways, especially when one perceives a threat to these commitments. When group interests, creeds, or dogmas are threatened by unwelcome factual information, biased thinking can become ideological denialism. This is a problem that affects everybody: Whereas denial can interfere with individual well-being, ideological denialism can stand in the way of urgent advancements in public policy. This book offers an accessible, historically and scientifically informed overview of our understanding of denial and denialism. Adrian Bardon introduces the reader to the latest developments in the interdisciplinary study of denial, and then investigates the role of human psychology and ideology in, respectively, science denial, economic policy, and religious belief.