. .Japan, and the year is 1853. Growing up among the samurai of the Satsuma Clan, in Japan's deep south, the fiery, beautiful and headstrong Okatsu has - like all the clan's women - been encouraged to be bold, taught to wield the halberd, and to ride a horse.But when she is just seventeen, four black ships appear. Bristling with cannon and manned by strangers who to the Japanese eyes are barbarians, their appearance threatens Japan’s very existence. And turns Okatsu’s world upside down.Chosen by her feudal lord, she has been given a very special role to play. Given a new name -- Princess Atsu -- and a new destiny, she is the only one who can save the realm. Her journey takes her to Edo Castle, a place so secret that it cannot be marked on any map. There, sequestered in the Women’s Palace - home to three thousand women, and where only one man may enter: the shogun - she seems doomed to live out her days. But beneath the palace's immaculate facade, there are whispers of murders and ghosts. It is here that Atsu must complete her mission and discover one last secret - the secret of the man whose fate is irrevocably linked to hers: the shogun himself . . .

    Suddenly the rock cracked wide open, and that part of the ledge on which Kostyakov was lying tilted slightly, then broke off and hurtled into the water below. A desperate scream mingled with the splash of the water and the clatter of the boulders smashing against each other; a column of dust and water rose in the air, burying one of the members of the expedition. There were five of them. Courageous travelers, they set out to find a mysterious island that was seen for the first time amidst the ice of the Arctic by Yakov Sannikov. After crossing interminable ice-fields, they at last found Sannikov Land, "discovered it for science." This land, or rather the crater of a huge volcano, was the home of the flora and fauna of a remote geological period. There the travelers met men of the Stone Age and their contemporaries, mammoths, cave-bears and other animals. The expedition unriddled the island's secret, elucidated the reason for the disappearance of the Onkilon tribe, which at one time lived in North Siberia. This fascinating scientific romance takes the reader into a lost world. Academician Vladimir Obruchev (1863-1956) was an outstanding Soviet geologist and geographer, a famous traveler and investigator of Central Asia and Siberia, an indefatigable popularizer of scientific knowledge. Vladimir Obruchev's scientific romances Plutonia (1924), Sannikov Land (1926), Gold Prospectors in a Desert (1928) and In the Heart of Central Asia (1951) enjoy wide popularity. They call upon young people to study the past of the Earth and to solve the mysteries of Nature.

    I'm here to celebrate the mad energy of this strange novel. In it we have the pleasure of seeing Mark Twain's imagination go berserk," writes Bobbie Ann Mason in her introduction. The American Claimant is a comedy of mistaken identities and multiple role switches--fertile and familiar Mark Twain territory. Its cast of characters include an American enamored of British hereditary aristocracy and a British earl entranced by American democracy. The central character, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, is an irrepressible, buoyant mad scientist, Mason writes, "brimming with harebrained ideas. Nothing is impossible for him.... He's totally loopy." His voluble wackiness leaves the reader reeling in the wake of inventions that prefigure DNA cloning, fax machines, and photocopiers. Twain uses this over-the-top comic frame to explore some serious issues as well--such as the construction of self and identity, the role of the press in society, and the moral and social questions raised by capitalism and industrialization in the United States. A unique melange of science fiction and fantasy, romance, farce, and political satire, Twain's least-known comic novel is both thought-provoking and entertaining.

    Gorgeous Grace and Charming Charity are soon hot favourites on everybody's guest-list. Except that of their neighbour, Marcella Hunter. Heiress Marcella doesn't want the competition and when Grace starts dating Marcella's 'Plan B' man - dull but extraordinarily rich Choate Fitzgerald - the gloves are off. Marcella determines to find out where the sisters really came from. And exactly how they can afford to rent a six-bedroom beach house in this millionaires' playground. In the process, however, it's discovered that quite a few of the people spending that summer in Little Elbow are not exactly what they seem...

    Dianne Williams needs a man . . . but only for a night. The night of the Port Blossom Community Center’s Valentine’s dinner, to be precise. As the dinner approaches, she grows more and more exasperated by her children’s relentless efforts to set her up on a blind date. But one day, when a kind stranger helps her with car troubles, Dianne decides to take matters into her own hands. Steve Creighton fits the bill perfectly: He’s handsome, he’s charming, and he owns a decent suit. When Dianne asks him to accompany her to a Valentine’s dinner after only just having met him, he can’t help but find the offer amusing. As he and Dianne grow closer, however, his feelings for her only intensify—and, to Dianne’s surprise, so do hers.

    During a clandestine dive to an old shipwreck, archaeologist Isabella Warnock unearths an artefact unlike anything she has ever seen: an astrarium, a powerful ancient device rumoured to have shaped the destinies of pharaohs and kings since the beginning of time. But her discovery comes at a terrible price.

    Raised apart, their past bound by one  extraordinary woman-the legendary Jenny Haven. She  gave them life. She gave them everything they  needed to "make it." then-suddenly,  mysteriously-she was gone, leaving them only a tangled web  of lies... "Elizabeth Adler weaves the saga  and mystery genres together." --  Kirkus Reviews  "Elizabeth Adler writes with charm, wit, warmth, and a  good deal of raw suspense... the way things should  happen in big, glitzy novels."  --Rave Reviews

    What happens when your comfortable life is suddenly denied you?When the Chanel make up’s dried up, the designer gear’s been flogged on eBay and the Persian rug has been well and truly pulled out from under you?Meet Francesca Milton-Harris as she realises that one ‘little mistake’ is going to change her life in ways she could never have imagined.The All or Nothing Girl …because sometimes you have to lose it all to see how much more you can gain.

    Peppered with aphorisms and laced with wit and humour, this text is a clever, inspirational allegory about living life to its fullest.

    Today. A contemporary romance.Simone Doucet, a woman caught between her own ambition and loyalty to her boss, her ruthless mother, is determined to prove herself during a critical business trip to London. That means staying focused, efficient, and predatory.But when a last minute staff change places a man called Blue at the hatch of her private jet moments before she's scheduled for takeoff, Simone's focus starts to blur.Thomas Bludell opted out of the corporate game years ago. He knows how it plays, knows the rules—or lack of them—and doesn't want any part of it. This trip to London and taking orders from a female corporate shark, is a favor to a friend nothing more. Trouble is Blue isn't good at taking orders. What Blue is good at is seduction.

    And from the start it had been a real marriage, not an "in name only" one. Yet hadn't Tara any mind of her own at all? Why hadn't she flatly refused to marry him? Why didn't she try to run away? After all, she loved her fiancé David, didn't she, and wanted nothing but to get back to him. This feeling she had for her pagan husband, a feeling she couldn't deny, was only physical attraction, wasn't it? So what was stopping her?

    Prior to that time, most of the Eastern energy practices transmitted to the West were incomplete, dealing only with the ascending yang/masculine channel, which shoots life-force energy up the spine. The Microcosmic Orbit showed practitioners how to establish the descending yin/feminine channel of the life-force energy loop. Within Taoist systems, cultivating feminine energy has always been seen as the key to gaining balance and wholeness.Healing Light of the Tao presents the more advanced methods of chi cultivation in the Microcosmic Orbit, offering a full understanding of Taoist spiritual theory through its comprehensive overview of the complete Taoist body/mind/spirit system. The book also includes more advanced meditation methods for absorbing the higher frequencies of Earth Force, Cosmic Force, and Universal Force (Heavenly chi) into the basic orbit. It establishes a spiritual science that not only emphasizes practical benefits to health, sexual vitality, and emotional balance, but also shows how changes made in the energy body can lead to physical rejuvenation that the Taoists called immortality.