In the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013, Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, shooting her multiple times while she cowered behind the locked door of their bathroom. His trial has attracted more international media attention and public scrutiny than any since that of OJ Simpson. What went on behind the scenes though? And what was the real Reeva like, away from the photo shoots and the attention of the media? A beautiful 29 year old from Port Elizabeth, Reeva graduated as a lawyer and campaigned for human rights causes before deciding to try the world of modelling in South Africa's most vibrant city. Her relationship with international hero Oscar Pistorius seemed like a fairy tale of triumph over adversity - double amputee turned champion athlete meets small town girl with beauty and brains wanting to make her mark on the world. No one could have predicted the tragic and horrifying conclusion to that fairy tale. Reeva's mother, June Steenkamp, has kept a dignified silence throughout the long months since she received the phone call every mother dreads. In this painfully honest and unflinching account of Reeva's life, she talks about what really went on in her mind as she sat in the packed Pretoria court room day after day and how she is coping in the aftermath of the verdict. Reeva is the only true insider's account of this tragic story.

What really transpired on the upper storey of Number 286 in the Silver Woods Estate of Pretoria on the night of St. Valentine's Day 2013? What did happen in the luxury ensuite bathroom of Oscar Pistorius' master bedroom? "She died in my arms," a distraught Oscar heartbrokenly and tearfully told police. They returned to arrest him later for pre-meditated murder, though he claimed he had mistaken his beautiful model lover Reeva Steenkamp for a burglar. Violent crime and home invasion is a real problem in South Africa; but Oscar's home was in a secure, guarded and gated estate. He had two large dogs on his property as well, who would have barked and alerted him to the presence of intruders. Still, a man with prostheses such as the legendary Blade Runner had, would feel vulnerable to attack...... Pamela Valemont, crime research numerologist of more than 35 years, goes on the search for clues at the scene of the alleged crime using her uniquely different set of detective tools. What she finds will astound you.

In February 2013 the news of successful model Reeva Steenkamp's fatal shooting by her boyfriend and global sporting star Oscar Pistorius stunned the world. Over the ensuing months, as Pistorius appeared in court, applied for bail and was eventually put on trial, every detail that emerged was analysed, debated, justified and digested. The world was haunted by the events as they were repeated and discussed at length. Public perception vacillated from version to version and from hour to hour. Finally, Judge Masipa found him to be not guilty of premeditated murder - but guilty of culpable homicide. Written by Mandy Weiner and Barry Batemen, the go-to journalists on the case for the world's media, Behind the Door is a compelling narrative that meticulously unpacks the evidence that has been so heavily scrutinised on all sides. But more than that, this book seeks to go beyond the facts of the case in search of the wider context behind this shocking tragedy: the back story of the police investigation, the nature of the South African criminal justice system, the culture of violence in South Africa and the need of society to create flawed heroes who are destined to fail. Vivid and gripping, Behind the Door is the most authoritative and insightful account of what really happened behind closed doors that fateful Valentine's morning.

Just when the world thought Oscar Pistorius’ meteoric rise to Olympic glory and international celebrity had terminated abysmally in prison, Brent Willock’s scientific perspective reopens this gripping narrative for an astonishing re-view. Olympian Oscar Pistorius’ spectacular assent to fame ground to a screeching halt in the wee hours of Valentine’s Day, 2013. Hearing a sound emanating from his bathroom, he grabbed his pistol and he stumbled to the washroom, screaming at the intruders to leave. Fearing someone was about to emerge to harm him and his girlfriend, Reeva, he fired four bullets into the bathroom. Soon he realized he had killed his lover. Horrified, he summoned the authorities. The investigating detective believed this was yet another case of an escalating argument where a man murdered his partner. World opinion is split. Some believe Oscar. Others are convinced he committed a despicable crime of passion. Distinguished clinical psychologist Brent Willock brings an entirely new perspective to bear on these horrific events: that Oscar’s horrific actions occurred while he was in a state of paradoxical sleep, also known as parasomnia. Throughout this book, Willock uses scientific scrutiny and legal precedence to resolve the crucial anomalies surrounding the Oscar Pistorius trial. Willock also discusses how mental health experts and the defense team might have overlooked the hypothesis of parasomnia that could have exonerated Oscar. Millions who followed the Blade Runner’s astonishing achievements, uplifted and inspired by his triumph over physical adversity, were crushed by his precipitous plunge from grace. They were baffled. Even Oscar himself, in a television interview shortly before his sentencing, achingly asked, “I always think, How did this possibly happen? How could this have happened?” At last, Willock’s elegant work responds to these poignant questions that have so plagued and pained Reeva’s family, friends, Oscar, and, indeed, the world.

Leading scholars consider Iraq's history and strategic importance from the vantage point of its residents, neighbors (Iran, Turkey, and Kurdistan), and the Great Powers.

Despite considerable research on the Jewish diaspora in the Middle East and North Africa since 1800, there has until now been no comprehensive synthesis that illuminates both the differences and commonalities in Jewish experience across a range of countries and cultures. This lacuna in both Jewish and Middle Eastern studies is due partly to the fact that in general histories of the region, Jews have been omitted from the standard narrative. As part of the religious and ethnic mosaic that was traditional Islamic society, Jews were but one among numerous minorities and so have lacked a systematic treatment. Addressing this important oversight, this volume documents the variety and diversity of Jewish life in the region over the last two hundred years. It explains the changes that affected the communities under Islamic rule during its "golden age" and describes the processes of modernization that enabled the Jews to play a pivotal role in their respective countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first half of the book is thematic, covering topics ranging from languages to economic life and from religion and music to the world of women. The second half is a country-by-country survey that covers Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, the Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.