Since I can remember, my parents have recognized a snake father for me.But suddenly, one day, the father snake actually entangled me.I recognize you as my father, how can you be like this!

President Valerie Beaumont is struggling to cope with a crumbling economy and military setbacks. A call for her impeachment is pending from all sides including some of her own constituents. Marine Major Sam Hanson refuses a presidential order to surrender his battalion to be butchered by ISIS when they overrun the Mid-East. He's reduced to the ranks and sent to a company of Marines that provides security to the hospital complex in New York City that serves the now dominant U.N. He meets Dr. Carver, they become friends and cooperate in dealing with the aggressive Arabs. A deadly terrorist attack kills Hanson's son and Carver's daughter. They make a plan to identify the terrorist cell and eliminate them. They target a safe house in Brooklyn and after a brief fight they discover nuclear material, intended for a dirty bomb. Government agencies dismiss the threat of more nuclear material out there, and it will be up to a new President to avoid a nuclear disaster.

Rereading works by Camara Laye, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Rachid Boudjedra, Yambo Ouologuem, Ahmadou Kourouma, Mariama Bâ, and Assia Djebar, this study explores the struggle to craft decolonized Islamic identities within sub-Saharan and North African societies. Linking the politics of these narratives to an Islamic piety rooted in ethical revolt against egotism and idolatry, the study considers the agency of non-Western values in postcolonial literature and the relationship between novelistic and prophetic discursive authority.

The writer's thoughts, feelings, comments, letters, dreams and stories have been recorded over a period of more than twenty years. Through these revelations, one can follow a coarse thread, which has, at times, been broken and tied together again. Written in diary format he touches on sex, religion, astronomy, astrology, birth and death, as well as a whole range of emotions; from anger and hate...to love. Never intending this collection to be read by others, it comes across very intimately, and with a fair amount of humour. This certainly shows how the dice have fallen in his life of Snakes and Ladders.

A collection of true and fictional tales from various sources about wild, domestic, and mythical animals.

Wil and Sophie are back in their battle against the Serpent’s Chain! Cousins Wil Wychwood and Sophie Isidor unearth yet another dastardly scheme from this dangerous secret society. Now the Serpent’s Chain plans to seize the Manitoba Legislative Building – or The Palace of the Blazing Star, as it is known in MiddleGate. Catfysh, Spirit of the River, comes to help Sophie and Wil as they struggle to unlock the Palace’s hidden code and thwart its destruction. Tyndall stone sphinxes, cow skulls, lions, bison, and even Medusa herself spring to life, but will their magic be enough to help defeat the Serpent’s Chain once and for all?

Jiangnan, that part of east-central China watered by the Yangzi River, is the ironically Edenic setting for these six powerful tales of devotion, betrayal, and defilement. Zhu Lin, a uniquely angry female voice on China’s literary scene, takes a particular interest in the plight of young women whose exceptional qualities condemn them to exploitation by men. No other contemporary Chinese writer renders the hostility of rural society toward women in such stark and ultimately tragic terms. Serpents tyrannize the innocent in this fictional Jiangnan garden. The title story refers to a fragrant, blood-red flower known as the snake’s pillow, which symbolizes an innocent girl betrayed and violated by a male figure of authority. Immersed in the heady and sensual imagery of the natural world, Zhu Lin’s female protagonists invite comparisons not only with Eve but also with Thomas Hardy’s Tess. Zhu Lin has said of her fiction that its purpose is to “summon the souls” of readers who have lost themselves in the turbulence of a society in the transition to modernity—and then to restore these lost souls to the bodies they have left. An evocation of both flesh and spirit, these Jiangnan stories give voice to the complex and disturbing experience of women in a changing society.