The Last Blade Of Grass

An epic fantasy with rich world-building and a wry take on genre conventions from a Betty Trask Award-winning author -- Inar is Master Builder for the Kingdom of Mishig-Tenh. Life is hard after the Kingdom lost the war against the League of Free Cities. Doubly so since his father betrayed the King and paid the ultimate price. And now the King’s terrifying chancellor and torturer in chief has arrived and instructed Inar to go and work for the League. And to spy for him. And any builder knows you don’t put yourself between a rock and a hard place. Far away Anton, Blade Priest for Craithe, the God Mountain, is about to be caught up in a vicious internal war that will tear his religion apart. Chosen from infancy to conduct human sacrifice, he is secretly relieved that the practice has been abruptly stopped. But an ancient enemy has returned, an occult conspiracy is unfolding, and he will struggle to keep his hands clean in a world engulfed by bloodshed. In a series of constantly surprising twists and turns that take the reader through a vividly imagined and original world full of familiar tensions and surprising perspectives on old tropes, Inar and Anton find that others in their story may have more influence on their lives, on the future of the League and on their whole world than they, or the reader imagined. File Under: Fantasy [ Nightmare Crows | Scarred Altars | Broken Stone | Unlikely Elves ]

Explores the nature and function of bhakti or devotional involvement in religious practice in India in areas where it is seldom sought or where its existence has been doubted or even denied.

This book explores three themes: the timeless messages of traditional Religion; the modern obscuration of this perennial Wisdom; and the spiritual encounter between East and West. Topics include the Australian Aborigines, the Bodhisattva in Buddhism, and key Perennialist figures such as Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Huston Smith. Characterizing modernism as "a spiritual disease which is spreading like a plague across the globe," Oldmeadow offers insightful criticisms of Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and what he calls the "false prophets of modernity."

It is one thing to study history and it's quite another to have lived it. John J. (Pat) Ryan, a retired USAF lieutenant colonel has done just that. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1920, he grew up during the Great Depression. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Pat applied for and was accepted into the U.S. Army Aviation Cadet program. To fly had been his lifelong dream and WWII gave him his chance to make it come true. He was one of the blessed ones that survived combat in WWII, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, and the Berlin Airlift. His story starts at a time when aircraft and autos were scarce, family radios and television were non-existent, movies were silent and in black and white. During the Great Depression many families had to learn to do more with less to survive. For some people, WWII created jobs in both civilian and military areas. The fortunate ones were those who survived and didn't lose too many family members and friends. Pat was one of the lucky ones. It was in Japan on loan to the CIA where he met his wife-to-be, Mae, during the Korean War. She had been in the OSS in Italy in WWII and at the post-war Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. They had started to write a book of their lives but Mae was stricken with terminal cancer and passed away only five days after she gave final approval to her publisher. The book is entitled A Woman Ahead of Her Time. The Last Mission completes the dream Ryan shared with his wife, and it brings home the lessons of war and humanity, of responsibility and faith, of family and love. Come fly as his co-pilot through a life of adventures, struggles, victories and defeats as he tries to live his life as truly, honestly and fully as any man can.

An account of the English rock band Hawkwind shows them to be one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s. Fifty years on from when it first formed, the English rock band Hawkwind continues to inspire devotion from fans around the world. Its influence reaches across the spectrum of alternative music, from psychedelia, prog, and punk, through industrial, electronica, and stoner rock. Hawkwind has been variously, if erroneously, positioned as the heir to both Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground, and as Britain's answer to the Grateful Dead and Krautrock. It has defined a genre—space rock—while operating on a frequency that's uniquely its own. Hawkwind offered a form of radical escapism and an alternative account of a strange new world for a generation of young people growing up on a planet that seemed to be teetering on the brink of destruction, under threat from economic meltdown, industrial unrest, and political polarization. While other commentators confidently asserted that the countercultural experiment of the 1960s was over, Hawkwind took the underground to the provinces and beyond. In Days of the Underground, Joe Banks repositions Hawkwind as one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s. It's not an easy task. As with many bands of this era, a lazy narrative has built up around Hawkwind that doesn't do justice to the breadth of its ambition and achievements. Banks gives the lie to the popular perception of Hawkwind as one long lysergic soap opera; with Days of the Underground, he shows us just how revolutionary Hawkwind was.

Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set mostly in Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. The Last Boer War is an 1899 non-fiction book by Haggard about the Boer War of 1881. Jess is a story of Jess Croft who lives with sister Bessie and old Silas, a farmer raising ostriches on the great Transvaal veldt. He is a reserved and aloof, with a quietness about her brought on by the misfortunes of her young childhood, when she and Bessie arrived motherless from England to South Africa. Then an Englishman, Captain John Niel, arrives to try his hand at the farming life. To his eyes, Bessie is lively and lovely of face and figure – yet Jess is mystery, with a bright and roving mind and splendid, searching eyes. Unwillingly the three of them are drawn together, then torn apart, by the emotions.