A lonely divorcee living in a tacky development in Dusky Beach, Florida, Theresa Tierney is an educated hick and her own worst enemy. She has a wild streak and a bit of a drinking problem, both leading to a few too many bad choices. When her neighbor’s new roommate arrives, a good-looking body god, Theresa is both curious and disgusted. A brash New Yorker, Vario Fumesti says what he's thinking and looks sexy as hell doing it. The brawny mountain of pumped muscle is mega alpha male. But his frequent hot tub parties with friends from a local strip club fire up Theresa’s anger. In fact, Vario continually makes her feel and do things she isn't expecting. A series of screw-ups, lust, and love set Theresa on a rollercoaster ride that’s out of control and threatening to jump the tracks.

These stories of heroism and magic, and of terrifying encounters with Baba Yaga, Zmei the serpent and Koschchei the Immortal, represent at least one example of every wondertale type known in Russia.

Something bad has happened in Dusky Beach, and Rita Deltone, a tough talking waitress from Lemon Run, Florida, is smack in the middle of it. Waking in a hospital with a bandage on her head and her hands tied to the bed can't be good. Yet, she knows all too well the dirt road she took to get down so low and doesn't mind taking the long way around in the telling. Liam Donell is the new detective in town. His partner is on vacation so he has to handle all the dirty work. The suspect sure has a strange story to tell. But this Rita chick is pretty smokin’. In fact, she's so hot, he's not making the best decisions regarding the case. Then it turns ugly. An unlikely couple, Rita and Liam try to make the best of a bad situation with steamy, hilarious, and surprising results.

First in the dark and sexy paranormal romance series starring the immortal warriors of the zodiac. Charming, proud, and impulsive, Leo Warrior Brody Talbot is fighting what may be his final battle. Enyo, the Goddess of War, plans to fulfill an ancient prophecy to destroy humanity by harnessing the dark power of the Summoning Stones of Egypt. There's only one person who knows enough about the stones to help Brody stop her-beautiful museum curator Ava Harrison. Never in all his centuries has Brody met a woman who enthralls him like Ava. But, bound to protect her, he struggles to deny his passion as they are drawn into a dark and dangerous final reckoning between good and evil.

"I know of no other book exactly like this one, yet it is part of a tradition. One thinks of the best work of John McPhee, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard. The writing is at once eloquent, elegant, and evocative. In short, it is a beautifully written work: a genuine pleasure to read, and to re-read." -George Garrett "Casey Clabough's unique vision, his curious and important quest, his personable and earnest manner of expression draw us into his world just that engagingly. His world is our world, too, the trace our ancestors followed into the wilderness to transform a landscape into a nation. History, memoir, travel journal, meditation--The Warrior's Path is all these things at once, its firm understanding of the past made lyric with lively language. This is a volume to keep close at hand when doubts about our American destiny begin to assail. Solid, durable, and--entrancing." --Fred Chappell "This account draws us deep into an intimacy with our geography and culture, with all the triumphs, failures, and contradictions we are heir to." -Robert Morgan, author of Brave Enemies and Boone: A Biography One of North America's oldest and most storied routes, "the Warrior's Path," as it was known by the Iroquois, was formed centuries ago by migrating animals and the humans who followed them. It spanned from the Iroquois lands of what is today New York State down the Appalachian Valley system and into the Cherokee country of Tennessee and North Georgia. Casey Clabough recently set out to hike more than five hundred miles of the route from Maryland to Tennessee and, in the process, to connect history, culture, and nature to the story of his own colonial German ancestors who traversed that particular section en route to the Smoky Mountains at the close of the 1700s. The Warrior's Path is both the story of Clabough's journey and a philosophical meditation upon the extraordinary people and events that have populated the thoroughfare over the course of several centuries. Rich in energy and lore, Clabough deftly employs both his ancestors' journey and his own as springboards for understanding the path's and the region's centrality in the American experience. As he contemplates the past, Clabough conjures and evokes countless historical images: from sketches of the grand French-Indian and Revolutionary struggles to the hardscrabble circumstances of his own Appalachian ancestors. At once richly philosophical, minutely historical, and highly personal, the book invites the reader to accompany Clabough on his journey as he recounts a contemplative, provocative, and at times harrowing, experience that is sure to delight and fascinate readers. Casey Clabough is Associate Professor of English and English Graduate Coordinator at Lynchburg College in Virginia. He also serves as literature editor for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities' Encyclopedia Virginia. The author of scholarly books on James Dickey and Fred Chappell, his work has appeared in Callaloo, Contemporary Literature, Shenandoah, The Hollins Critic, The Sewanee Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.

Since the failure of the interplanetary communications system, the ages-long peace within the Republic of the Sphere has begun to shatter. Power-hungry factions—such as the Steel Wolves—are raiding vulnerable worlds to establish their own rule. As a gateway to Earth, the planet of Northwind has strategic value, making it an exposed target to the splintering factions emerging across The Republic—and Duchess Tara Campbell will not allow her home to fall into enemy hands. Offering military assistance, The Republic sends Paladin Ezekiel Crow and his fully armed BattleMech to help defend Northwind. MechWarrior Anastasia Kerensky, she of the infamous bloodline, has her sights set on possessing Northwind, and what Anastasia wants, Anastasia usually gets. But first she must contend with the deadly politics of the Steel Wolves before she embarks on a conquest that could lead to the very heart of the republic itself.

The main attraction is here! This poetry book will enrich you with wisdom, give you guidance to survive the streets, love, loyalty, getting an education and finding purpose. This book will mold your character into a championship mentality like Aaron Donald, to embrace all walks of life like 2 Pac Shakur and to provide hope for those in need like Nipsey Hussle. The poetry within this book will enlighten you with True Christianity, the enlightenment of Buddhism and a light of life in Islam. This book is about Unity, keeping promises, to stay sober and remain in the true light of Jesus. A Warrior's Path is a book about social positive changes and getting rid of racism in the World. Kobe Bryant, "Mamba Mentality Forever," that's what you got to be. God bless the U.S.A. government and all the parties within.

Thirty years ago, anthropologist Laurel Kendall did intensive fieldwork among South Korea’s (mostly female) shamans and their clients as a reflection of village women’s lives. In the intervening decades, South Korea experienced an unprecedented economic, social, political, and material transformation and Korean villages all but disappeared. And the shamans? Kendall attests that they not only persist but are very much a part of South Korean modernity. This enlightening and entertaining study of contemporary Korean shamanism makes the case for the dynamism of popular religious practice, the creativity of those we call shamans, and the necessity of writing about them in the present tense. Shamans thrive in South Korea’s high-rise cities, working with clients who are largely middle class and technologically sophisticated. Emphasizing the shaman’s work as open and mutable, Kendall describes how gods and ancestors articulate the changing concerns of clients and how the ritual fame of these transactions has itself been transformed by urban sprawl, private cars, and zealous Christian proselytizing. For most of the last century Korean shamans were reviled as practitioners of antimodern superstition; today they are nostalgically celebrated icons of a vanished rural world. Such superstition and tradition occupy flip sides of modernity’s coin—the one by confuting, the other by obscuring, the beating heart of shamanic practice. Kendall offers a lively account of shamans, who once ministered to the domestic crises of farmers, as they address the anxieties of entrepreneurs whose dreams of wealth are matched by their omnipresent fears of ruin. Money and access to foreign goods provoke moral dilemmas about getting and spending; shamanic rituals express these through the longings of the dead and the playful antics of greedy gods, some of whom have acquired a taste for imported whiskey. No other book-length study captures the tension between contemporary South Korean life and the contemporary South Korean shamans’ work. Kendall’s familiarity with the country and long association with her subjects permit nuanced comparisons between a 1970s "then" and recent encounters—some with the same shamans and clients—as South Korea moved through the 1990s, endured the Asian Financial Crisis, and entered the new millennium. She approaches her subject through multiple anthropological lenses such that readers interested in religion, ritual performance, healing, gender, landscape, material culture, modernity, and consumption will find much of interest here.

"Former navy SEAL Charlie Rand embarks on the most dangerous mission of his career when he dives through a portal to rescue the only person who knows how to seal the gates between the Esri faery land and the world. But meeting up with his guide and companion through the adventure, the beautiful Tarrys, turns out to be his true revelation. As the pair traverses the dangerous plains, the Forest of Nightmares and the crystal mines of Esria, they're pursued by beings who seek to kill Charlie and enslave Tarrys. But the greatest danger of all becomes the love that grows between the couple, a love that threatens to doom their mission to save humanity"--Publisher.

This anthology gathers a broad selection of Russian folktales, legends, and anecdotes, and includes helpful features that make them more accessible and engaging for English-language readers. Editor Jack V. Haney has selected some of the best tales from his seven-volume "Complete Russian Folktale" collection and added examples of anecdotes and the long 'serial tales' told in the far north.The 114 tales included here represent every genre found in the Russian tradition. They date from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries and come from all geographic regions of the Russian-speaking world. The collection is enhanced by a detailed introduction to the folktale and its types, brief introductions to each grouping of tales, head notes with interesting background for individual tales, and a glossary explaining Russian terms.