A wonderful collection of stories from the much-loved Salley Vickers.

African-American Andra Williams is about to do the craziest thing she has ever done in her characteristically sane, if not monotonous, life. Standing at the altar, she is ready to commit her life forever to her soulmate, her GREEK soulmate, Jayson Theonopilus. The naive newlyweds believe their love can conquer all, but Jaysons older brother Stefano, patriarch to the Theonopilus olive oil fortune, feels otherwise. Possessing a terrible secret, Stefano summons Jayson to Greece hoping to destroy what he believes to be an unholy union and convince his sibling to stay in Athens and run the family business alongside him without Andra. Yet upon meeting Andra, Stefanos prejudice quickly turns to passion. He develops a powerful attraction to her, imagining her as the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Worse, Andra also finds herself drawn to the brooding, charismatic Stefano. But when Andra is kidnapped by a deranged serial killer, the brothers must put aside their differences and work together to rescue the woman they both love before she becomes the kidnappers next corpse. Aphrodites Stand shares the captivating tale of true love, forbidden passion, irrational prejudice and international intrigue where despite the stacking odds, it pays to take a stand for love.

Can a horse bring two lost souls together? Sheltered by her parents while growing up, Miller is the epitome of a city girl. Her life changes drastically when her parents die in a car accident. In need of a guardian so she doesn't end up in foster care, Miller is sent to Alberta to live with an aunt she has never seen before. At her aunt's ranch, Miller faces an entirely new reality and falls in love with horses. The secret she also kept from her parents is now accepted by her aunts and her new crush. But as time goes by, Miller finds out heartbreak, another family's secret, and at what length some people go for money. With her soul scarred by a failed love, she meets the mysterious and gorgeous Shane and her horse: Aphrodite’s' Brush. It's love at first sight. But Miller is reluctant to let another woman hurt her. As Shane and Miller become closer, Miller finds out about Shane's secret. A secret that can destroy their lives. Especially because someone from Miller's past is targeting them and trying to ruin their happiness. Will Miller and Shane's love survive or aren't they meant to be together no matter how much they love each other? Follow Miller as she tells you her side of her love story and gives us glimpses of her tragic and dangerous past. Aphrodite's Brush is a tale of love, second chances, family, and self-discovery.

Aphrodite and Venus in Myth and Mimesis is a broad, flexible source book of comparative literature and cultural studies. It promotes the wide-ranging presence and impact of prominent idiosyncratic personalities in fabled goddess mythology and its emphatic notions of endearment and allure. The book brings together seven hundred acknowledged sources drawn from successive historical, global and literary eras, including principal commentaries, along with factual information and important renditions in art, prose and verse, within and beyond mainstream western culture. A lengthy, detailed introduction presents a copious documented preview of the viable adaptation and mimesis of ‘divine’ characterization and its respective centrality from the long distant past to the present day. Myth, rarely latent, demonstrates varied modes of expression and open-ended flexibility throughout the six comprehensive chapters which illuminate and probe, in turn, aspects of the ideological presence, sensibilities, trials and triumphs and interventions of the goddess, whether sacred or profane. Particular literary extracts and episodes range across ancient cultures alongside quite recent expressions of hermeneutics, blending myth with the contemporary in the multi-layered reception or admonishment of the goddess, whether by one designation or the other. As such, this book is wholly relevant to all stages of the evolution and expansion of a dynamic European literary culture and its leading authors and personalities.

Roland Tankowicz hates Venus. The last time he went there, he died. So, no one could really blame him if he never went back. Nevertheless, when a squad of Venusian assassins ruins date night, everybody’s least-favorite Army-surplus cyborg decides to take a trip to Earth’s sister planet and have a sit-down with an infamous group of terrorists. Perhaps it’s because he really likes date night. Maybe he just wants to keep the promise he once made to a troubled young man. It is even conceivable that he might still have a heap of unresolved issues with the separatists who blew his body apart years ago. For whatever reason, the big man and his motley crew of misfits strap on their guns and hurl themselves into murky world of interplanetary terrorism. To his dismay, Roland discovers that Venus has changed since his last visit. The black-and-white politics of the fanatics and governments he remembers have now merged into complicated shades of gray. Cyborg killers walk the halls without fear, and the soldiers stationed there seem no better than the thugs they fight. The sweltering underworld of Venus holds terrors and trials that will test the old soldier in ways he is not prepared for, while a crafty assassin stalks them all from shadows both real and imagined. The team must to walk a narrow path between terrorists, soldiers, and their own dark pasts if they expect to get out of this one alive. Is The Fixer strong enough to pull an entire population from the ashes of civil war? If he isn’t, they may all drown in a flood of: APHRODITE’S TEARS.

Greek women routinely wore the veil. That is the unexpected finding of this meticulous study, one with interesting implications for the origins of Western civilisation. The Greeks, popularly (and rightly) credited with the invention of civic openness, are revealed as also part of a more Eastern tradition of seclusion. Llewellyn-Jones' work proceeds from literary and, notably, from iconographic evidence. In sculpture and vase painting it demonstrates the presence of the veil, often covering the head, but also more unobtrusively folded back onto the shoulders. This discreet fashion not only gave a priviledged view of the face to the ancient art consumer, but also, incidentally, allowed the veil to escape the notice of traditional modern scholarship. From Greek literary sources, the author shows that full veiling of the head and face was commonplace. He analyses the elaborate Greek vocabulary for veiling and explores what the veil meant to achieve. He shows that the veil was a conscious extension of the house and was often referred to as `tegidion', literally `a little roof'. Veiling was thus an ingeneous compromise; it allowed women to circulate in public while mainting the ideal of a house-bound existence. Alert to the different types of veil used, the author uses Greek and more modern evidence (mostly from the Arab world) to show how women could exploit and subvert the veil as a means of eloquent, sometimes emotional, communication. First published in 2003 and reissued as a paperback in 2010, Llewellyn-Jones' book has established itself as a central - and inspiring - text for the study of ancient women.