Gabrielle Lord is one of Australia's bestselling crime writers for adults. Following the Conspiracy 365 series, she already has plans for another three... adult novels and two more young adult books. Research is everything, Gabrielle says. 'Out of my contacts with experts (who are always far too modest to describe themselves that way) I get not only the fine-tuning necessary for today's savvy readers, but also wonderful incidents and images that enrich and enlarge my books.'

The greatest Chinese novel of the twentieth century, Fortress Besieged is a classic of world literature, a masterpiece of parodic fiction that plays... with Western literary traditions, philosophy, and middle-class Chinese society in the Republican era.Set on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, our hapless hero Fang Hung-chien (á la Emma Bovary), with no particular goal in life and with a bogus degree from a fake American university in hand, returns home to Shanghai. On the French liner home, he meets two Chinese beauties, Miss Su and Miss Pao. Qian writes, "With Miss Pao it wasn't a matter of heart or soul. She hadn't any change of heart, since she didn't have a heart." In a sort of painful comedy, Fang obtains a teaching post at a newly established university where the effete pseudo-intellectuals he encounters in academia become the butt of Qian's merciless satire. Soon Fang is trapped into a marriage of Nabokovian proportions of distress and absurdity. Recalling Fielding's Tom Jones in its farcical litany of misadventures and Flaubert's "style indirect libre," Fortress Besieged is its own unique feast of delights.

Do cattle destroy a wilderness? Does a wilderness need to be devoid of people in order to be "saved"? In this hard-hitting book, Dan Brockington argues... that the dominant approach to wildlife conservation in Africa has more to do with Western views of the environment than with what is appropriate for African people and herds. He focuses on the Tanzanian government's decision to evict people and cattle from the Mkomazi Game Reserve in 1988, but he also considers damaging, harmful, and unjust conservation efforts across the continent. Extensive fieldwork and archival investigations enable the author to elucidate the history of the Mkomazi reserve, assess competing explanations of the environmental dynamics of the reserve, and show the negative effects of exclusion on local populations and the regional economy.

On the militarized Turkish-Greek border, Afghan migrants brave minefields to cross into Europe—only to be summarily ejected by Greek border guards. At... Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves in North Africa, migrants are turned back with razor wire and live ammunition. Deportees from the U.K. and France have died of "positional asphyxia" on deportation flights, strapped to chairs, their mouths sealed with tape. In a brilliant and shocking account, Fortress Europe tells the story of how the world’s most affluent region—and history’s greatest experiment with globalization—has become an immigration war zone, where tens of thousands have died in a human rights crisis that has gone largely unnoticed by the U.S. media.Journalist Matthew Carr brings to life these remarkable human dramas, based on extensive interviews and firsthand reporting from the hot zones of Europe’s immigration battles. Speaking with key European policy makers, police, soldiers on the front lines, immigrant rights activists, and an astonishing range of migrants themselves, Carr offers a lucid account both of the broad issues at stake in the crisis and its exorbitant human costs.

A reader-friendly, basic introduction that maps the central ideas of the major theologians of the twentieth century, easily accessible to both the... theological student and the inquiring lay reader.

With clarity and verve, Mark Allan Powell describes the contents and structure of the Gospels, their distinctive characteristics, and their major... themes. An introductory chapter surveys the political, religious, and social world of the Gospels, methods of approaching early Christian texts, the genre of the Gospels, and the religious character of these writing. Included also are comments on the Gospels that are not found in the New Testament. Special features, including illustrations and more than two dozen special topics, enhance this convenient volume.

This thorough and lively overview of Christian history in the United States, from colonial times to the present, is informed by both classical and... recent scholarship and is written for the non-specialist. Four key insights frame the book. Christianity in America: (1) is chiefly a story of popular movements, (2) is influenced by conflict and engagement with modern ideas, (3) directly affects public life, and (4) expresses its identity and seeks its mission in a pluralistic culture. Unlike many histories, Koester offers ample coverage of Protestant, Evangelical, and Roman Catholic developments. Includes black & white illustrations, maps, glossary, and other study aids.

The transformation of the AS/400 into an e-business server, the renaming of the system to the iSeries, and the introduction of Version 5 software mark... a major milestone in the evolution of IBM Rochester systems. Fortress Rochester takes you behind the scenes at IBM Rochester and inside the iSeries to give you a guided tour of the very latest iSeries technologies and functions. Authored by Dr. Frank G. Soltis, IBM's iSeries chief scientist and the creator of the technology-independent architecture used in the AS/400 and iSeries, Fortress Rochester is written for anyone who wants to know more about the iSeries. If you want to understand how the iSeries works so you can make smarter business decisions, write better programs, or simply see what makes the system tick, Fortress Rochester is for you. You'll get detailed looks at these and other key iSeries areas, such as: architectural principles, PowerPC and POWER4 processor technology, memory systems, the new I/O, the technology-independent machine interface, objects, single-level store, file system, partitions, Unix and windows environments, Java and Domino, and Linux. Reappearing in Fortress Rochester is Dr. Soltis's popular "chili pepper" rating system, used to identify the level of technical detail as an aid to readers of various backgrounds, ranging from mild technical content to "smoking hot technical detail." The appendix, "History of Fortress Rochester," provides a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the people and the location that produced such successful and revolutionary computer systems as the iSeries, the AS/400, and their predecessors.

Galdos' four-part "Fortunata and Jacinta" (1886-7), the masterpiece among his almost 80 novels, tells the turbulent story of two women, their husbands... and their lovers, set against the intricate web of dynastic alliances and class contrasts of Madrid in the 1870s.

Fortunately, Ned was invited to a surprise party. Unfortunately, the party was a thousand miles away. Fortunately, a friend loaned Ned an airplane.... Unfortunately, the motor exploded. Fortunately, there was a parachute in the airplane. Unfortunately, there was a hole in the parachute. What else could go wrong as Ned tries to get to the party? Readers will cheer as Ned's luck turns from good to bad to good again, while clever illustrations tell the story of his wacky adventure and narrow escapes.

In spite of remarkable differences, Tommy and Eric are as close as brothers. Tommy, a delicate black boy, is cursed with health problems and drawn to... trouble more often than not. Eric is a Nordic Adonis, graced by a seemingly endless supply of good fortune. When tragedy rips their makeshift family apart, the two boys are set on courses that diverge astonishingly. In a riveting tale of resilience and redemption that traces their parallel lives, Tommy and Eric ultimately reunite after years apart and draw on their childhood bond as they confront together the forces that threaten to destroy them.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Lewis B. Puller, Jr.'s memoir is a moving story of a man born into a proud military legacy who struggles to rebuild his... world after the Vietnam War has shattered his body and his ideals. Raised in the shadow of his father, Marine General Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, a hero of five wars, young Lewis went to Southeast Asia at the height of the Vietnam War and served with distinction as an officer in his father's beloved Corps. But when he tripped a booby-trapped howitzer round, triggering an explosion that would cost him his legs, his career as a soldier ended, and the battle to reclaim his life began.

Elvis Presley was celebrity's perfect storm. His sole but substantial contribution was talent, a fact Charles L. Ponce de Leon is careful to demonstrate... throughout his wonderfully contextual Fortunate Son. Even as the moments of lucidity necessary to exercise that talent grew rarer and rarer, Elvis proved his musical gifts right up to the end of his life. Beyond that, however, he was fortune's child. Fortunate Son succinctly traces out the larger shifts that repeatedly redefined the cultural landscape during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, using Elvis's life to present a brief history of American popular culture during these tumultuous decades.

"Fortune is a woman, and if you want to keep her under, you've got to knock her around some."—Niccolò MachiavelliHanna Pitkin's provocative and... enduring study of Machiavelli was the first to systematically place gender at the center of its exploration of his political thought. In this edition, Pitkin adds a new afterword, in which she discusses the book's critical reception and situates the book's arguments in the context of recent interpretations of Machiavelli's thought."A close and often brilliant exegesis of Machiavelli's writings."—The American Political Science Review