Four thousand years in the future, the Republic of Earth is at war with the oppressive Yajiran Empire. Meanwhile, on a primitive world, a half-human/half-Yajiran girl named Avala learns that her people’s beliefs are lies created by the Yajirans to keep them in a primitive state, so they can rule over them. While working with the Republic of Earth’s intelligence service in a collaborative effort to free her planet from its alien overlords, she discovers she has the same psychic and body-swapping powers that the elite Yajirans, the Yajixa, possess. In the process of learning how to master these powers, she awakens a long-lost precursor race from her planet called the Echarikith, who have magical god-like powers. The Echarikith offer to help Avala in her quest to free her people, in exchange for her help in freeing them from being enslaved in the Yajixa’s mindscapes. This is the beginning of Avala’s lifelong journey to become one of the spirits of the mindscapes.

Set one year after the start of Book 1. Avala finds herself fighting off a new enemy, this time, one of shadows and death. She narrowly escapes the clutches of the Echhaar, the Echarikith severed after the fall of their seventh core. However, it is not without a cost, as a friend is left behind, and a city on Earth is turned to rubble. Avala's journey continues is this sequel to Avala Book 1: Hope. However, this time, the forces of Death come to claim everything. Not only that but the Yajiran Empire will stop at nothing to assure victory over the Republic, using this new enemy to their advantage. Will Avala survive the forces of the Echhaar? Will she stop the plans of the Yajiran Empire? Who will die, and who will survive? This is Avala's second step to becoming one of the Spirits of the Mindscapes.

Set one year after the start of Avala Book 2, this stunning tale tells the continued story of Avala's journey to becoming a Spirit of the Mindscapes. As the war between the Republic of Earth and the Yajiran Empire continues, Avala struggles against her arch nemesis Namjila in battles across the galaxy. However in the midst of the fighting, the fate of two worlds hang in the balance. Can Avala save her people from the cruel oppressors of the Yajixa? And if so can she save them all? This is the moment she has been fighting for since she joined the Republic. Will she prevail? Or will Namjila win? This is the third installment of Avala's lifelong journey to become a Spirit of the Mindscapes.

Set one year after the start of Book 1. Avala finds herself fighting off a new enemy, this time, one of shadows and death. She narrowly escapes the clutches of the Echhaar, the Echarikith severed after the fall of their seventh core. However, it is not without a cost, as a friend is left behind, and a city on Earth is turned to rubble. Avala's journey continues is this sequel to Avala Book 1: Hope. However, this time, the forces of Death come to claim everything. Not only that but the Yajiran Empire will stop at nothing to assure victory over the Republic, using this new enemy to their advantage. Will Avala survive the forces of the Echhaar? Will she stop the plans of the Yajiran Empire? Who will die, and who will survive? This is Avala's second step to becoming one of the Spirits of the Mindscapes.

A haunting tribute to the heroic pioneers who shaped the American Midwest This powerful novel by Willa Cather is considered to be one of her finest works and placed Cather in the forefront of women novelists. It tells the stories of several immigrant families who start new lives in America in rural Nebraska. This powerful tribute to the quiet heroism of those whose struggles and triumphs shaped the American Midwest highlights the role of women pioneers, in particular. Written in the style of a memoir penned by Antonia’s tutor and friend, the book depicts one of the most memorable heroines in American literature, the spirited eldest daughter of a Czech immigrant family, whose calm, quite strength and robust spirit helped her survive the hardships and loneliness of life on the Nebraska prairie. The two form an enduring bond and through his chronicle, we watch Antonia shape the land while dealing with poverty, treachery, and tragedy. “No romantic novel ever written in America...is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.” -H. L. Mencken Willa Cather (1873–1947) was an American writer best known for her novels of the Plains and for One of Ours, a novel set in World War I, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943 and received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1944, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments. By the time of her death she had written twelve novels, five books of short stories, and a collection of poetry.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." —The Wall Street Journal One of our greatest scientists—and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants—gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities. Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principles underlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.

In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor Turner examines rituals of the Ndembu in Zambia and develops his now-famous concept of "Communitas." He characterizes it as an absolute inter-human relation beyond any form of structure.The Ritual Process has acquired the status of a small classic since these lectures were first published in 1969. Turner demonstrates how the analysis of ritual behavior and symbolism may be used as a key to understanding social structure and processes. He extends Van Gennep's notion of the "liminal phase" of rites of passage to a more general level, and applies it to gain understanding of a wide range of social phenomena. Once thought to be the "vestigial" organs of social conservatism, rituals are now seen as arenas in which social change may emerge and be absorbed into social practice.As Roger Abrahams writes in his foreword to the revised edition: "Turner argued from specific field data. His special eloquence resided in his ability to lay open a sub-Saharan African system of belief and practice in terms that took the reader beyond the exotic features of the group among whom he carried out his fieldwork, translating his experience into the terms of contemporary Western perceptions. Reflecting Turner's range of intellectual interests, the book emerged as exceptional and eccentric in many ways: yet it achieved its place within the intellectual world because it so successfully synthesized continental theory with the practices of ethnographic reports."