Lethal Affairs

Love has never been more lethal. Elite operative Domino is no stranger to peril and impossible situations. Trained all her life to be just as comfortable fighting terrorists as mixing with the gala crowd, she is proficient at playing any role necessary to accomplish her objective and believes the cause sanctifies the means. But her latest assignment to investigate journalist Hayley Ward will test more than her skills, ingenuity, and courage, because this time she faces the ultimate dilemma: a choice between loyalty and love. First in the Elite Operatives romantic intrigue series.

"Brenna Coleman's past has caught up to her on the island of St. Sebastian--and she's not happy to see him. FBI agent Casey McBride has a job to do, and he won't let feelings for his ex-fiancee foil his mission. While investigating the activities of Marcus Bradley--a powerful billionaire commissioning a series of Brenna's paintings--Casey discovers the island's darkest atrocity"--Page 4 of cover.

Blood is thicker than pride. The final book in the Elite Operative Series brings together foes, family, and friends to start a new order. Special Agent Switch needs to get close to Greek tycoon Konstantinos Lykourgos, the prime suspect in the theft of a priceless ancient icon from a monastery on Mount Athos. His accomplice is the EOO’s recurring nemesis: Theodora Rothschild, aka TQ, the Broker. Ariadne Lykourgos, heir to her father’s shipping empire, expects to have a much-needed holiday on the family yacht with her friends. But the arrival of a new crew member challenges her values and tests her loyalties. Will Agent Switch be strong enough to keep secrets from Ariadne, and will Ariadne be able to cope with the truth?

Can you out run death? Zoe Anderson-Howe's pampered life is abruptly shattered when she's taken hostage by FARC guerrillas while on a business trip to Bogota. While her father struggles to come up with the ransom, the British socialite must endure hardships that test her both mentally and physically. Elite Operative Fetch has been living in the Colombian jungle for six months on a mission to infiltrate the FARC and orchestrate the rescue of western hostages. When Zoe is added to her assignment, Fetch's sense of duty must override the disdain she initially feels for the self-indulgent tabloid queen. The task of freeing Zoe gains new urgency when it appears she may be key in stopping a mysterious new virus that is racing across the globe, killing indiscriminately. The support Fetch counted on is needed elsewhere. Can she get Zoe out of there on her own, and will that be enough to save the millions of lives in peril? Fourth in the romantic intrigue series: Elite Operatives

Drawing together an international team of historians, lawyers and historical sociolinguists, this volume investigates urban cultures of law in Scotland, with a special focus on Aberdeen and its rich civic archive, the Low Countries, Norway, Germany and Poland from c. 1350 to c. 1650. In these essays, the contributors seek to understand how law works in its cultural and social contexts by focusing specifically on the urban experience and, to a great extent, on urban records. The contributions are concerned with understanding late medieval and early modern legal experts as well as the users of courts and legal services, the languages and records of law, and legal activities occurring inside and outside of official legal fora. This volume considers what the expectations of people at different status levels were for the use of the law, what perceptions of justice and authority existed among different groups, and what their knowledge was of law and legal procedure. By examining how different aspects of legal culture came to be recorded in writing, the contributors reveal how that writing itself then became part of a culture of law. Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe: Scotland and its Neighbours c.1350–c.1650 combines the historical study of law, towns, language and politics in a way that will be accessible and compelling for advanced level undergraduates and postgraduate to postdoctoral researchers and academics in medieval and early modern, urban, legal, political and linguistic history.

This important new history of the development of a leadership corps of officers during World War I opens with a gripping narrative of the battlefield heroism of Cpl. Alvin York, juxtaposed with the death of Pvt. Charles Clement less than two kilometers away. Clement had been a captain and an example of what a good officer should be in the years just before the beginning of the war. His subsequent failure as an officer and his redemption through death in combat embody the question that lies at the heart of this comprehensive and exhaustively researched book: What were the faults of US military policy regarding the training of officers during the Great War? In The School of Hard Knocks, Richard S. Faulkner carefully considers the selection and training process for officers during the years prior to and throughout the First World War. He then moves into the replacement of those officers due to attrition, ultimately discussing the relationship between the leadership corps and the men they commanded. Replete with primary documentary evidence including reports by the War Department during and subsequent to the war, letters from the officers detailing their concerns with the training methods, and communiqués from the leaders of the training facilities to the civilian leadership, The School of Hard Knocks makes a compelling case while presenting a clear, highly readable, no-nonsense account of the shortfalls in officer training that contributed to the high death toll suffered by the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I.

Agent Harper “Shield” Kennedy’s specialty within the Elite Operatives Organization is security, although she’s long lost any gratification from babysitting most VIPs. However, her new assignment—to safeguard the U.S. president—will prove to be the biggest challenge of her career. Shield’s mission to protect the first female chief executive is complicated by threats to her own life when she begins to question the president’s orders. Loner Ryden Wagner is content with her life as a florist until she becomes a pawn in a political deception involving the highest office in the land. Trapped in a dangerous game where one false move could cost Ryden her life, she has to rely solely on the president’s new bodyguard. As an attraction between the two women grows, so does the urgency for answers, but will the truth bring them together or tear them apart? Sixth in the romantic intrigue series: Elite Operatives.

A study of the Arab Spring and its aftermath alongside the revolutions of the 1970s. The revolutionary wave that swept the Middle East in 2011 was marked by spectacular mobilization, spreading within and between countries with extraordinary speed. Several years on, however, it has caused limited shifts in structures of power, leaving much of the old political and social order intact. In this book, noted author Asef Bayat—whose Life as Politics anticipated the Arab Spring—uncovers why this occurred, and what made these uprisings so distinct from those that came before. Revolution without Revolutionaries is both a history of the Arab Spring and a history of revolution writ broadly. Setting the 2011 uprisings side by side with the revolutions of the 1970s, particularly the Iranian Revolution, Bayat reveals a profound global shift in the nature of protest: as acceptance of neoliberal policy has spread, radical revolutionary impulses have diminished. Protestors call for reform rather than fundamental transformation. By tracing the contours and illuminating the meaning of the 2011 uprisings, Bayat gives us the book needed to explain and understand our post–Arab Spring world. Praise for Revolution without Revolutionaries “Bayat is in the vanguard of a subtle and original theorization of social movements and social change in the Middle East. His attention to the lives of the urban poor, his extensive field work in very different countries within the region, and his ability to see over the horizon of current paradigms make his work essential reading.” —Juan Cole, University of Michigan “An astute analyst of the Middle East, Asef Bayat is one of the very few researchers equipped to historicize the region’s contemporary uprisings. In Revolution without Revolutionaries, he deftly and sympathetically employs his own observations of Iran, immediately before and after the 1979 revolution, to reflect on the epochal shifts that have re-worked the political regimes, economic structures, and revolutionary imaginaries across the region today.” —Arang Keshavarzian, New York University “Bayat provocatively questions the Arab Spring’s apparent moderation, tracing its softness to decades of neoliberalism that have undermined the national state and discarded old-fashioned forms of revolutionary violence. This groundbreaking book is not an obituary for the Arab Spring but a hopeful glimpse at its future.” —Olivier Roy, author of The Failure of Political Islam