Two nations. One crown. 1328. After years of civil unrest between England and France, Charles IV dies, leaving no apparent heir. His closest heir to the throne is Edward III of England, but it passes instead to Charles' cousin, Phillip, spurring both countries on to war.1346. Landing at Normandy, Edward's immense army makes inroads into French territory, burning everything in their path. But the mysterious assassination of an English knight reveals a terrible truth: there is a traitor in their midst. The king charges Simon Merrivale, the Prince of Wales’ herald, with solving the case.As the army marches on towards its destiny, at the awesome scenes of the Battle of Crécy, Simon will uncover a conspiracy that goes to the heart of the warring nations. Among the ashes and the rubble, their fate will be decided: on the battlefield... and in the shadows.

    Tolkien, which tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father.Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters. ‘Hapless Kullervo’, as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and who tries three times to kill him when still a boy, Kullervo is alone save for the love of his twin sister, Wanona, and guarded by the magical powers of the black dog, Musti. When Kullervo is sold into slavery he swears revenge on the magician, but he will learn that even at the point of vengeance there is no escape from the cruellest of fates.Tolkien himself said that The Story of Kullervo was ‘the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own’, and was ‘a major matter in the legends of the First Age’. Tolkien’s Kullervo is the clear ancestor of Túrin Turambar, tragic incestuous hero of The Silmarillion. In addition to it being a powerful story in its own right, The Story of Kullervo – published here for the first time with the author’s drafts, notes and lecture-essays on its source-work, The Kalevala – is a foundation stone in the structure of Tolkien’s invented world.

    Britain's underbelly was exposed.The Dark Ages had begun... Rome had abandoned Britannia, leaving its people undefended. Anglo Saxon warriors, previously employed as mercenaries, now saw themselves as conquerors. The scene was set, as more war bands crossed the North Sea to take British gold, slaves, and land. One Briton, alone in the forest, wanting only to live as a hunter and trapper, was about to have his life changed forever. Dominic would become the hope of abandoned Britons. Dominic the wolf slayer would become the nemesis of any evil that entered his forest realm.

    Taking the first comprehensive look at the growing commercialization of our academic institutions, Derek Bok probes the efforts on campus to profit financially not only from athletics but increasingly, from education and research as well. He shows how such ventures are undermining core academic values and what universities can do to limit the damage.Commercialization has many causes, but it could never have grown to its present state had it not been for the recent, rapid growth of money-making opportunities in a more technologically complex, knowledge-based economy. A brave new world has now emerged in which university presidents, enterprising professors, and even administrative staff can all find seductive opportunities to turn specialized knowledge into profit.Bok argues that universities, faced with these temptations, are jeopardizing their fundamental mission in their eagerness to make money by agreeing to more and more compromises with basic academic values. He discusses the dangers posed by increased secrecy in corporate-funded research, for-profit Internet companies funded by venture capitalists, industry-subsidized educational programs for physicians, conflicts of interest in research on human subjects, and other questionable activities.While entrepreneurial universities may occasionally succeed in the short term, reasons Bok, only those institutions that vigorously uphold academic values, even at the cost of a few lucrative ventures, will win public trust and retain the respect of faculty and students. Candid, evenhanded, and eminently readable, Universities in the Marketplace will be widely debated by all those concerned with the future of higher education in America and beyond.

    Before he did, he carefully eliminated all obstacles in his way—or so he thought. Despite all his efforts, a wide network of spies and soldiers are planning to remove him from power and put his niece, the First Princess, on the throne.Fourteen-year-old Ellery Rider is an orphan living in a frontier village cut off from the terror Jadeth has caused. When a knight arrives to recruit men for the army massing against the king, her only worry is that her cousin and only friend will be dragged into the war.When the knight gives her an emerald necklace, Ellery discovers that she has much bigger things to worry about. The emerald is a dragonstone, and Ellery has become one of the Draikon, the mythical race of dragon shapeshifters who are the shadow king’s only enemies. Despised throughout Prell for abandoning Jadeth’s eldest brother in his hour of need, they are nevertheless the only thing that stands between the shadow king and absolute power.

     When Moray Allen is left in charge of Muir Castle the fortnight before Yule, he doesn't anticipate any excitement. The excitement is all down south, where the Grant and Ramsay cousins are embroiled in their final battle with the Channel of Dubh, smugglers who trade in human cargo. But the chieftain hasn’t been gone for more than a day when Moray spots a golden-haired lass in the wilds surrounding Castle Muir. He suspects she’s lost and in need of food, but she runs from him. Meanwhile, the chieftain’s son, Steenie, is preparing for Yule with his beloved pet, Paddy, who seems to have his own plans for the holiday--plans that involve the mysterious stranger. Although Shona escaped the Channel of Dubh with her brother and three other bairns, she knows they’re not safe. Their food supply has run out and winter weather is settling in across the Highlands, seeping into the cave they're using for shelter. To protect herself and the others, Shona must place her faith in someone, although she’s hesitant to trust any man, even the handsome Highlander she keeps seeing. Moray and Shona are both in need of a little Yuletide magic. Who better to help them than Paddy the Pony?

    The Highland Mist series continues . . . Once sworn enemies, the fearsome knight Sir Galen de Ogilvy and the beautiful, headstrong Scotswoman, Laoghaire MacKinnon, have been ordered by Robert the Bruce to wed one another in order to end the blood feud between their two families. And though their marriage is born of ancient hatreds, beneath the newlyweds’ fiery exchanges an explosive passion simmers. But Laoghaire soon discovers a far more dangerous enemy lurking in the shadows, one who will stop at nothing to sever the burgeoning bond between her and Galen. When the treachery is finally revealed, it will put their love and their lives in deadly peril. HER SCOTTISH WARRIOR is a sensuous and spirited tale in which swords and hearts clash, as a formidable warrior and a bold-hearted bride discover that love, and not revenge, is the one thing worth fighting for.ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kate Wingo is the pseudonym of a two-time Golden Heart finalist. Born in Washington DC, she graduated from George Mason University with a degree in art history. Although Kate began her writing career in the romance genre, she switched gears several years ago, making the leap to thrillers. Having completed an esoteric thriller series for Penguin UK under the pen name C.M. Palov, she has happily returned to her romance roots. Kate lives and writes from her home in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

    Where the legend ends, the story begins... Lancashire, England, AD 1480 The story of England's last wolf plays a large part in Kate's life. The man who killed the wolf is her father, Sir John Harrington, lord and master of Wraysholme Manor. Strangely, though, her knowledge of the tale is all second-hand. Her father, for unknown reasons, refuses to speak of exactly what happened the day the wolf was killed. Nor will he speak of Kate's mother, who died soon after giving birth. So, Kate is left to wonder about her past, although lately her curiosity has been overshadowed by a series of unusual dreams. Indeed, her lonely heart has been captured by the handsome stranger who speaks to her in sleep. But he is not the only man who haunts her nights. There is another who lurks in the shadows of her subconscious. Who is he, and why does she feel so threatened by him? When Kate is brutally snatched from her home, she begins to understand the meaning behind her dreams and the incredible truth about her past. Her captor is a man void of emotion and without conscience, yet Kate finds herself irresistibly drawn to his dark charisma. As the reason for her kidnapping is revealed, Kate is faced with a decision. Will she find the courage to make the right choice? Can the love of a gentle heart hope to save an unfeeling and corrupted soul? Perhaps – especially if their destinies were preordained long ago. The death of the wolf, it seems, is part of an much older legend.

    When they are unable to fend off the invading army, the leader of their enemies claims Christiana was promised to him as his wife, along with her home and her family's lands. Betrothed to another, she fights him, but finds herself married quickly.Roland joined William of Normandy for the potential to become a land owner. A second son, he knows the only way he will ever own anything is by joining forces with the powerful ruler. He's told there are three sister witches defending their home and the oldest is his promised bride. Both Christiana and Roland are used to being in charge. Will the sisters be able to fight off the coming evil to fulfill their destiny? Is it possible for two headstrong people from different cultures to find a way to live as husband and wife?

    Maybe after he made a deal they would stop their raids and maintain the peace of the Laird’s lands and keep the promises they had broken again, and again. But what my father hadn’t bargained on was that Lachlann Mackay, the fearsome leader of the warlike clan at our doorstep, would want a bride in exchange for his peace. A promise is a promise, and my sister will do her duty to our father, but when she disappears on her wedding day there is only one person who could take her place, but the last thing I want is to be tied to a filthy barbarian for the rest of my life. But if I do not—if I go against my father’s wishes and break the oath that was made, all of our lives are in danger. Reader beware — “An Unwilling Bride” features lots of plaid, possible historical inaccuracies, a high-spirited heroine facing off against a sword-swinging alpha-hero worthy of some serious swooning, and a dastardly plot that could ruin everything. There is no cheating to be found here, and (by the trilogy's end) a Highland HEA is guaranteed. Inside every history book is a heartthrob waiting to be discovered... Highlander’s Honor Book 1 - An Unwilling Bride Book 2 - A Stolen Bride - COMING February 2020 Book 3 ~ A Warlord’s Prize - COMING March 2020

    In Ecstasy and Terror, Mendelsohn once again casts an eye at literature, film, television, and the personal essay, filtering his insights through his training as a scholar of classical antiquity in illuminating and sometimes surprising ways.Many of these essays look with fresh eyes at our culture’s Greek and Roman models: some find an arresting modernity in canonical works (Bacchae, the Aeneid), while others detect a “Greek DNA” in our responses to national traumas such as the Boston Marathon bombings and the assassination of JFK. There are pieces on contemporary literature, from the “aesthetics of victimhood” in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life to the uncomfortable mixture of art and autobiography in novels by Henry Roth, Ingmar Bergman, and Karl Ove Knausgård. Mendelsohn considers pop culture, too, in essays on the feminism of Game of Thrones and on recent films about artificial intelligence—a subject, he reminds us, that was already of interest to Homer.This collection also brings together for the first time a number of the award-winning memoirist’s personal essays, including his “critic’s manifesto” and a touching reminiscence of his boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, who inspired him to study the Classics.

    When he is lost in battle she loses everything, even their children. Her fight to win them back recalls the terror of the shield wall, the harsh lives of convict slaves, and the enormous difficulties a lone woman must face in a male dominated heroic age."This is a really excellent read, a page turner that gives a vivid, convincing picture of 7th century Mercian England." The Historical Novels Review