The Ruins Of Us

What do you do when the one that got away comes back?CarterI thought I was doing right by those Emilia and I both love when I let her go. So why has not a single thing in my life felt right since she left? Emilia is back now, and I'm ready to fight like hell for her. But how do I convince Emilia to give me another chance when she keeps going out of her way to avoid me?EmiliaIt's been years since I've been back in Woodstock. Had it been up to me, I'd never have come back at all. I don't want to be here - I don't want to be around Carter. So why does life keep pushing me back to him?Author's Note: The Ruins Of Us is the final book in the Stolen Moments trilogy. This trilogy was previously titled Mayhem.

More than two decades after moving to Saudi Arabia and marrying powerful Abdullah Baylani, American-born Rosalie learns that her husband has taken a second wife. That discovery plunges their family into chaos as Rosalie grapples with leaving Saudi Arabia, her life, and her family behind. Meanwhile, Abdullah and Rosalie’s consuming personal entanglements blind them to the crisis approaching their sixteen-year-old son, Faisal, whose deepening resentment toward their lifestyle has led to his involvement with a controversial sheikh. When Faisal makes a choice that could destroy everything his embattled family holds dear, all must confront difficult truths as they fight to preserve what remains of their world. The Ruins of Us is a timely story about intolerance, family, and the injustices we endure for love that heralds the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in contemporary fiction.

Dougald Hine, a social thinker and writer, has spent most of his life in university classrooms, think tank seminars, government offices, and on theatre stages around the world talking about climate change. And then on one sunny afternoon in the second year of the pandemic, he realized he had nothing left to say. Why would someone who cares so deeply about ecological change want to stop talking about it now? At Work in the Ruins is the book that grew out of Dougald’s attempt to answer that question. He delves deeply into what he discovered during the globally shared, isolating Covid moment; why the virus and the measures taken against it drove so many of us to despair; and how we can refind our bearings if the pandemic is not the big event that changes everything but simply one in a chain of emergencies that are bringing about the end of the world as we knew it. At Work in the Ruins explores the role science is playing in shaping public policy and how this is deteriorating our appreciation for the natural world, our capacity for short and long-term problem-solving, which results in the erosion of our freedom. Dougald questions our seemingly unbreakable attachment to modernity and how it blinds us to the numbing effects of relentless emergencies, including climate change and the pandemic. At Work in the Ruins is a book for anyone who has found themselves needing to make sense of what we’ve been through, what is ending, and how we learn to talk about it. Only then can we choose to face the problems that really matter so that we can find solace at work in the ruins.

Amongst the Ruins explores the loss of ancient civilizations, the collapse of ruling elites, and the disappearance of more recent communities and their local traditions. Some of these are now sealed under 3,000-year-old peat, others lost to rising seas or sands, and the carcasses of twentieth-century buildings which serve as reminders of the destructive power of war. These compelling stories of fallen or lost places are brought together through themes of war, climate change, natural hazards, human self-destruction, and simple economics. From the ice of the Arctic fringe, through to the desert landscapes of North Africa, by way of South America's high mountains and Southeast Asia's urban sprawl, Amongst the Ruins charts the rise and fall of places and communities around the world, the fascinating characters associated with them, and the important events that punctuate their history. Exploring wide-ranging examples from prehistory to the present day, John Darlington challenges us to recognize past failures and identify what we need to do to protect the cultures of our current world.

How have ruins become so valued in Western culture and so central to our art and literature? Covering a vast chronological and geographical range, from ancient Egyptian inscriptions to twentieth-century memorials, Susan Stewart seeks to answer this question as she traces the appeal of ruins and ruins images, and the lessons that writers and artists have drawn from their haunting forms. Stewart takes us on a sweeping journey through founding legends of broken covenants and original sin, the Christian appropriation of the classical past, myths and rituals of fertility, images of decay in early modern allegory and melancholy, the ruins craze of the eighteenth century, and the creation of “new ruins” for gardens and other structures. Stewart focuses particularly on Renaissance humanism and Romanticism, periods of intense interest in ruins that also offer new frames for their perception. The Ruins Lesson looks in depth at the works of Goethe, Piranesi, Blake, and Wordsworth, each of whom found in ruins a means of reinventing art. Ruins, Stewart concludes, arise at the boundaries of cultures and civilizations. Their very appearance depends upon an act of translation between the past and the present, between those who have vanished and those who emerge. Lively and engaging, The Ruins Lesson ultimately asks what can resist ruination—and finds in the self-transforming, ever-fleeting practices of language and thought a clue to what might truly endure.

Retired Special Forces officer Brad Taylor's thrilling new short story sets Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill on a hunt for an ancient Mayan temple and reveals the origin of their archaeological company, the cover for their clandestine work with the Taskforce. Deep in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, a huge protected tract of rain forest in northern Guatemala, lies the mythical Temple of Priests. Only one man knew of the temple's location, but he was killed before he could relay the coordinates. Now, newly reinstated Taskforce operator Pike Logan has the grid location of the ruins, and he's convinced Jennifer Cahill to travel to Guatemala in search of the Mayan temple her uncle died trying to find. But Pike and Jennifer are not the only ones heading into the rain forest in search of hidden treasure. A Canadian mining company is determined to explore the Biosphere for rare earth metals, even if it means destroying the way of life for local villagers. When they learn that Pike and Jennifer's impending historical discovery might thwart their plans, it sets the newly minted team on a crash course with a group of men hellbent on getting their hands on the prize, no matter the cost. Includes an excerpt from Brad Taylor's latest Pike Logan thriller, Daughter of War.

Booksclub.in organized a competition, titling 10 different anthologies based on 10 different themes and emotions. Each theme decipts the high and low of the life. 120 Writers contributed in this free venture, published by Spectrum of Thoughts, An affiliate of FanatiXx