The Sunburst Crown

Over 10,000 years in the future, Harthan Empire is conquering known space, using psionics. A Garvan woman and a Harthan man are propelled by the invasion and his secret power toward a new destiny.

Love and Destiny in the Far FutureThe Harthan Empire, unknown, warlike, and terrifying, has turned its sights on Garv. Their secret weapon is not the usual armaments but psionics-teleportation, telepathy and psychokinesis. Feärnis Vel-Darscenn, trapped by her society and family demands, has had a dream of Harthans invading her planet, and capturing her. When the Harthans attack, and Garvan defenses collapse almost immediately, her vision is coming true. Dressed as a boy, she and her brother flee. When they are cornered, they find old ballistic weapons, and she ends up killing one of the enemy. Migal Horne, a Harthan soldier with a very explosive secret, manages to capture Feärnis. Thinking she's a boy, Migal takes her to be processed, and only then he discovers the beautiful Garvan. He is utterly dazzled by her. When she escapes from him again, and he goes after her, these two enemies find themselves overwhelmed by their intense attraction. They end up in a passionate kiss, followed soon after by Garvan sabotage against the Harthans. The only way to stop the loss of life is for Migal to use his secret talent. He is a Control telepath. With a word, he can make people obey him. Once home on Hartha, it's clear that Migal and Feärnis have a deep bond between them, that unsettles them both. He vows to go against Harthan society to make her his wife. As the two of them work to transform the mighty but deeply flawed Harthan Empire from within, other forces beyond the Empire are seeking to find and control Migal and his power. Unbeknownst to him, the Khurrians have learned that Migal is the person they have been waiting for after thousands of years, and their arrival will drive Migal and Feärnis toward a destiny unimagined by either one-or the Harthan Empire itself.

Presents a brief history of the Statue of Liberty and describes how France gave the statue to New York City to commemorate the realtionship between the two countries, the creation and erection of the statue, and how its meaning has changed.

Welcome to The Sunbearer Trials, where teen semidioses compete in a series of challenges with the highest of stakes, in this electric new Mexican-inspired fantasy from Aiden Thomas, the New York Times bestselling author of Cemetery Boys. “Only the most powerful and honorable semidioses get chosen. I’m just a Jade. I’m not a real hero.” As each new decade begins, the Sun’s power must be replenished so that Sol can keep traveling along the sky and keep the chaotic Obsidian gods at bay. Sol selects ten of the most worthy semidioses to compete in the Sunbearer Trials. The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser has the greatest honor of all—they will be sacrificed to Sol, their body melted down to refuel the Sun Stones, protecting the world for another ten years. Teo, a seventeen-year-old Jade semidiós and the trans son of the goddess of birds, isn't worried about the Trials . . . at least, not for himself. His best friend, Niya is a Gold semidiós and a shoo-in for the Trials, and while he trusts her abilities, the odds of becoming the sacrifice is one-in-ten. But then, for the first time in over a century, the impossible happens. Sol chooses not one, but two Jade competitors. Teo, and Xio, the thirteen-year-old child of the god of bad luck. Now they must compete in five trials against Gold opponents who are more powerful and better trained. Worst of all, Teo’s annoyingly handsome ex-best friend and famous semidiós Hero, Aurelio is favored to win. Teo is determined to get himself and his friends through the trials unscathed—for fame, glory, and their own survival.

Conceived in the aftermath of the American Civil War and the grief that swept France over the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Statue of Liberty has been a potent symbol of the nation's highest ideals since it was unveiled in 1886. Dramatically situated on Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island) in the harbor of New York City, the statue has served as a reminder for generations of immigrants of America's long tradition as an asylum for the poor and the persecuted. Although it is among the most famous sculptures in the world, the story of its creation is little known. In Enlightening the World, Yasmin Sabina Khan provides a fascinating new account of the design of the statue and the lives of the people who created it, along with the tumultuous events in France and the United States that influenced them. Khan's narrative begins on the battlefields of Gettysburg, where Lincoln framed the Civil War as a conflict testing whether a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal... can long endure." People around the world agreed with Lincoln that this question—and the fate of the Union itself—affected the "whole family of man." Inspired by the Union's victory and stunned by Lincoln's death, Édouard-René Lefebvre de Laboulaye, a legal scholar and noted proponent of friendship between his native France and the United States, conceived of a monument to liberty and the exemplary form of government established by the young nation. For Laboulaye and all of France, the statue would be called La Liberté Éclairant le Monde—Liberty Enlightening the World. Following the statue's twenty-year journey from concept to construction, Khan reveals in brilliant detail the intersecting lives that led to the realization of Laboulaye's dream: the Marquis de Lafayette; Alexis de Tocqueville; the sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, whose commitment to liberty and self-government was heightened by his experience of the Franco-Prussian War; the architect Richard Morris Hunt, the first American to study architecture at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris; and the engineer Gustave Eiffel, who pushed the limits for large-scale metal construction. Also here are the contributions of such figures as Senators Charles Sumner and Carl Schurz, the artist John La Farge, the poet Emma Lazarus, and the publisher Joseph Pulitzer. While exploring the creation of the statue, Khan points to possible sources—several previously unexamined—for the design. She links the statue's crown of rays with Benjamin Franklin's image of the rising sun and makes a clear connection between the broken chain under Lady Liberty's foot and the abolition of slavery. Through the rich story of this remarkable national monument, Enlightening the World celebrates both a work of human accomplishment and the vitality of liberty.