The Hunter And The Hunted

In Off-Duty Angel, dark witch and half-demon Eve Levine is desperate for a little entertainment while her lover, Kristof Nash, is detained in afterlife court--enough to volunteer an extra week's worth of angel corps duty just to pass the time. Luckily something even better comes up: a real celestial bounty-hunter mission to trail a shaman, someone who might prove to be a useful lead in Kristof's court case. Following the target goes smoothly, until he leads Eve to the British Museum, where she inadvertently steps into a secret dimensional passage and stumbles upon a far more enticing puzzle . . . and a much greater danger. Packed with suspense and surprising twists, Off-Duty Angel reveals fascinating new insights into a beloved series character. It's not a good sign when Elena Michaels and Clayton Danvers resort to everyday activities on their long-awaited honeymoon in St. Louis. But their encroaching boredom is about to take a backseat to an unexpected threat that catches Clay's attention. A non-pack werewolf is clearly stalking them--out to claim Elena for himself--and Clay has no intention of letting the upstart mutt spoil their romantic getaway, even if that means deceiving Elena as he pursues the rival werewolf on his own. Originally part of an anthology of supernatural romance stories, Stalked is the perfect introduction to Kelley Armstrong's Otherworld series and an action-packed interlude for fans to revisit some of their favorite characters. Includes an exclusive early look at 13, the epic finale to the Otherworld series, coming July 24, 2012.

New York Times bestselling author Meagan Spooner spins a thoroughly thrilling Beauty and the Beast story for the modern age, expertly woven with spellbinding romance, intrigue, and suspense that readers won’t soon be able to forget. Beauty knows the Beast's forest in her bones—and in her blood. After all, her father is the only hunter who’s ever come close to discovering its secrets. So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters out of their comfortable home among the aristocracy and back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there’s no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas…or to submit to marrying a wealthy gentleman. But Yeva’s father’s misfortune may have cost him his mind, and when he goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on one prey: the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance. The Beast. Deaf to her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange creature back into his own territory—a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of magical creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin, or salvation. Who will survive: the Beauty, or the Beast?

Man the Hunted argues that primates, including the earliest members of the human family, have evolved as the prey of any number of predators, including wild cats and dogs, hyenas, snakes, crocodiles, and even birds. The authors' studies of predators on monkeys and apes are supplemented here with the observations of naturalists in the field and revealing interpretations of the fossil record. Eyewitness accounts of the 'man the hunted' drama being played out even now give vivid evidence of its prehistoric significance. This provocative view of human evolution suggests that countless adaptations that have allowed our species to survive (from larger brains to speech), stem from a considerably more vulnerable position on the food chain than we might like to imagine. The myth of early humans as fearless hunters dominating the earth obscures our origins as just one of many species that had to be cautious, depend on other group members, communicate danger, and come to terms with being merely one cog in the complex cycle of life.

The hunt, like the church, courthouse, and family, played an integral role in southern society and culture during the antebellum era. Regardless of color or class, southern men hunted. Although hunters always recognized the tangible gains of their mission—meat, hides, furs—they also used the hunt to communicate ideas of gender, race, class, masculinity, and community. Hunting was very much a social activity, and for many white hunters it became a drama in which they could display their capacity for mastery over women, blacks, the natural world, and their own passions. Nicolas Proctor argues in Bathed in Blood that because slaves frequently accompanied white hunters into the field, whites often believed that hunting was a particularly effective venue for the demonstration of white supremacy. Slaves interpreted such interactions quite differently: they remained focused on the products of the hunt and considered the labor performed at the behest of their owners as an opportunity to improve their own condition. Whether acquired as a reward from a white hunter or as a result of their own independent—often illicit—efforts, game provided them with an important supplementary food source, an item for trade, and a measure of autonomy. By sharing their valuable resources with other slaves, slave hunters also strengthened the bonds within their own community. In a society predicated upon the constant degradation of African Americans, such simple acts of generosity became symbolic of resistance and had a cohesive effect on slave families. Proctor forges a new understanding of the significance of hunting in the antebellum South through his analyses of a wealth of magazine articles and private papers, diaries, and correspondence.

Amber Fang enjoys life's simple pleasures. A perfect evening for her includes a good book, a glass of wine and, of course, a great meal, preferably straight from the jugular. Raised to eat ethically, Amber dines only on delicious cold-blooded killers. But confirming that her chosen victims deserve to die takes time. And patience. So it's a good thing Amber is studying to be a librarian. Her extraordinary research skills help her hunt down her prey, seek out other vampires and stay on the trail of her mother, who has been missing for over two years now. But one day while Amber is stalking a rather tasty-looking murderer, things go horribly wrong. Amber has walked into a trap. The hunter becomes the hunted. Now on the run, Amber receives the perfect job offer out of the blue. Someone wants to pay her to kill (and eat) the world's worst criminals. It sounds too good to be true. Amber Fang: Hunted is the first book in this exciting vampire series.

The author of Churchill’s Thin Grey Line shares case histories from World War II’s Battle of the Atlantic featuring the German U-boat. In the early stages of World War II, Donitz’s U-boats generally adhered to Prize rules, surfacing before attacking and making every effort to preserve the lives of their victims’ crews. But, with the arming of merchantmen and greater risk of damage or worse, they increasingly attacked without warning. So successful was the U-boat campaign that Churchill saw it as the gravest threat the nation faced. The low point was the March 1943 attack on convoys SC122 and HX229 when 44 U-boats sank 22 loaded ships. The pendulum miraculously swung with improved tactics and technology. In May, 1943, out of a force of over 50 U-boats that challenged ONS5, eight were sunk and 18 were damaged, some seriously. Such losses were unsustainable, and, with allied yards turning out ships at ever increasing rates, Donitz withdrew his wolf packs from the North Atlantic. Expert naval author and historian Bernard Edwards traces the course of the battle of the Atlantic through a series of thrilling engagement case studies. Praise for From Hunter to Hunted “Expertly written, it portrayed the perils and dramas of warfare in the North Atlantic between the convoys and German U boats . . . Reading [Edwards’s] accounts made me feel as though I was present. A cracking and informative read— I will definitely read more by Captain Edwards and I highly commend it.” —Adrian Greaves, author of The Zulus at War

"Amongst scientists involved [in taphonomy], C. K. Brain stands out as the pioneer; this impressive book is a statement of his investigations. . . . The Hunters or the Hunted? is a very important book for paleoanthropology. It presents the first thorough analysis of the Sterkfontein Valley assemblages, contributes significantly to the resolution of lingering controversies and, by placing the old information in a fresh perspective, enables new and more sophisticated questions to be asked not only of the South African material but of similar assemblages elsewhere. Another contribution is that it reinforces the recent change in feelings as to what constitutes data, for the value of looking at fossil and contemporary bones as closely as this is clear. Brain urges the necessity of recovering fossils with a high regard for subtle detail. I hope excavators of any vertebrate fossil site will be persuaded to follow his advice and pay more attention to these features of bone accumulations that have been previously neglected; for taphonomy can be a powerful tool in elucidating the problems of fossil assemblages, especially when handled with the care and caution that Brain brings to the subject."—Andrew Hill, Nature