The Only Essence

Normal.It's not a word in my vocabulary. Growing up in the foster system didn't lead to a normal life, but things really got crazy when I turned sixteen.Things started happening to me that I could neither understand nor explain, so I did the only thing I could do, I left everything behind to live on my own.After years of being hunted because of my unusual power, I finally meet my match. In one night, everything changes when I'm kidnapped by four men who claim I can help save the races. But can I trust them?In a world where everything is unfamiliar, where creatures I never imagined exist, can I learn to harness this power I have inside before it is too late?Author's Note: This is the first book in The White Dragon and ends with a cliffhanger. This book is a medium burn reverse harem story, intended for ages 18 years and older. This story contains strong language and violence.

Strategy is the discipline that sits above all others. Strategy is about how to win. Strategy has the potential to lift us repeatedly and sustainably from the ugliness of a brute force world. I wrote this book because whilst strategy is incredibly important and powerful, it is almost always poorly understood, defined, articulated and executed. Enjoy.

Seventeen-year-old Charlaina "Charlie" Hart has defeated the tyrant Queen Sabara and taken control of Ludania, only to have Sabara's soul fuse itself with her own.

The empire of scent: explore the realm of perfumes, smells, and aromatic incense to reveal the enduring allure of fragrance. Scents are linked with our most cherished memories--life without the ability to smell is unimaginable. Dive deep into the essentials of olfaction; open up the psychology and science of smell, discover the key fragrance families, and come to understand the historical and cultural ramifications that make the multi-billion dollar perfume industry what it is today. The Essence reveals the power of scent and fragrance to captivate--introducing key global locations, from the lavender fields of Provence and the laboratories where perfumes are created, to incense factories in India. The Essence introduces the trailblazers shaping the future and the vital role that technology and scented products will play in the 21st century, making the book an inviting read for fragrance novices and connoisseurs alike, opening up a new and fragrant world.

From antiquity, the history of China has been marked by invading tribes, warring states, and popular uprisings. This heritage of conflict produced a body of martial literature exploring the fundamental principles of warfare and their methods of employment. Fully aware of the tragic consequences of battle, the authors of these texts emphasized that bloodshed and war should be avoided whenever possible. But, they argued, this is possible only when the principles of leadership and strategy have been mastered and the dynamics of conflict thoroughly analyzed. Over the centuries, these texts have been studied throughout Asia, not only by generals on the battlefield but by leaders of all kinds concerned with the management of human conflict in all its forms.The Essence of War presents eight of these classics (written from 500 B.C.E. to 700 C.E.), including Sun-tzu's Art of War and Sun Pin's Military Methods. The book introduces the core principles of Chinese military science, grouping selected passages and key quotations into five thematic sections encompassing forty-one topical chapters: Fundamentals, Tao of Warfare, Tao of Command, Tactical Essentials, and Tactical Specifics. Translator Ralph D. Sawyer provides here a concise introduction to Chinese military thought and influential materials not only of traditional import, but also for contemporary study and enduring value in both business and military circles throughout the world.

Capturing the Essence is a step-by-step personal guide - by one of Australia's greatest living bird artists - to observing, retaining the essential information and then painting birds from field notes and sketches, photographs and other field observations. Painting or drawing any subject well gives great satisfaction. In this book the author hopes to help the reader become competent at drawing and painting birds, or at least to enjoy trying!

When Aldous Huxley's Brave New World first appeared in 1932, it presented in terms of purest fantasy a society bent on self-destruction. Few of its outraged critics anticipated the onset of another world war with its Holocaust and atomic ruin. In 1948, seeing that the probable shape of his anti-utopia had been altered inevitably by the facts of history, Huxley wrote Ape and Essence. In this savage novel, using the form of a film scenario, he transports us to the year 2108. The setting is Los Angeles where a "rediscovery expedition" from New Zealand is trying to make sense of what is left. From chief botanist Alfred Poole we learn, to our dismay, about the twenty-second-century way of life. "It was inevitable that Mr. Huxley should have written this book: one could almost have seen it since Hiroshima is the necessary sequel to Brave New World."—Alfred Kazin. "The book has a certain awesome impressiveness; its sheer intractable bitterness cannot but affect the reader."—Time.

An exciting new talent, shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize, hailed as ‘a triumph’ by The Times, and a poignant observer of human hearts, foibles and follies. ‘’There isn’t a false note in the book, nothing but ravishing grace, wit and tender feelings.’ Mail on Sunday