Intriguing Book of Poetry Published by a Brain Injury Survivor Gray Matters, Brain Injury: The Inside Perspective is a book filled with poetic insights of a woman who lived through a near-fatal brain injury. Her intimate knowledge and sense of humor can help survivors cope, as well as better understand their injuries and themselves. This book gives a personal sense or Inside Perspective of brain injury, thus enabling readers to better understand brain injury survivors. Brain injury occurs around the world in a variety of circumstances; in sports events, motor-vehicle accidents, terrorist attacks & war (and the list goes on)... According to the International Brain Injury Association, head injury is the leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Thirty percent of the soldiers that have returned from Iraq and are returning from Afghanistan have Traumatic Brain Injuries; more than two percent of the United States' population has sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury. Even with brain injury being so widespread, it is still hard to identify people living with the complications of this “invisible disability.” Ms. Lerner knows that the lack of awareness regarding brain injury makes survivors’ lives quite problematic. Writing Gray Matters was aimed at easing the integration of survivors back into the community. With a creative flair, she informs her readers about brain injury; she strikes a chord by sharing personal changes, loss and challenges, thus giving readers a sense of what it is like to walk in the shoes of a brain injury survivor. The chapters of the book cover topics including: brain injury, the symptoms of injury, rehabilitation, the brain, academic rehab, recreational therapy (including nature & the ocean's healing influence) and brain injury peer support. This book will considerably help brain injury survivors to better understand their injury and themselves, it will also aid them by being better understood by others. Gray Matters has helped family members and friends to better understand their loved ones. This book can also be a great asset to rehab professionals, by giving them a more intimate understanding of the dilemmas of a brain injury; for only when you know what an individual’s problem is, can you treat it. Gray Matters offers an articulate, introspective and sometimes humorous view of what it is like to suffer a near-fatal blow to the head and live with its complications. The author presents a thorough, subjective viewpoint as well as a professional and objective understanding of brain injury. Gray Matters presents a deeper understanding of the inner-workings of the mind and how in many ways, brain injury effects life as we know it.

Jae is a slave in a dying desert world. Once verdant with water from a magical Well, the land is drying up, and no one remembers the magic needed to keep the water flowing. If a new source isn’t found soon, the people will perish. Jae doesn’t mind, in a way. By law, she is bound by a curse to obey every order given her, no matter how vile. At least in death, she’ll be free. Elan’s family rules the fading realm. He comes to the estate where Jae works, searching for the hidden magic needed to replenish the Well, but it’s Jae who finds it, and she who must wield it. Desperate to save his realm, Elan begs her to use it to locate the Well. But why would a slave—abused, beaten, and treated as less than human—want to save the system that shackles her? Jae would rather see the world burn. Though revenge clouds her vision, she agrees to help if the realm’s slaves are freed. Then Elan’s father arrives. The ruler’s cruelty knows no limits. He is determined that the class system will not change—and that Jae will remain a slave forever. "Ferocious and intelligent." —Kirkus Reviews "Allen’s lush debut mixes current, pressing questions with fantasy while exploring systematic injustice and historical oppression...readers will clamor for the sequel." —Publishers Weekly

Since Prosper Mérimée and Georges Bizet (with his librettists Meilhac and Halévy) brought the figure of the Spanish Carmen to prominence in the nineteenth century an astonishing eighty or so film versions of the story have been made. This collection of essays gathers together a unique body of scholarly critique focused on that Carmen narrative in film. It covers the phenomenon from a number of aspects: cultural studies, gender studies, studies in race and representation, musicology, film history, and the history of performance. The essays take us from the days of silent film to twenty-first century hip-hop style, showing, through a variety of theoretical and historical perspectives that, despite social and cultural transformations--particularly in terms of gender, sexuality and race--remarkably little has changed in terms of basic human desires and anxieties, at least as they are represented in this body of films. The conception of Carmen's independent sexuality as a source of danger both to men (and occasionally women) and to respectable society has been a constant. Nor has sexual and ethnic otherness lost its appeal. On the other hand, the corpus of Carmen films is more than a simple recycling of stereotypes and each engages newly with the social and cultural issues of their time.

In a brutal desert empire, Jael Crowfeeder survives as a Beast Hunter. Last of his kind and despised by society, he's betrayed and thrown in prison just as a legion of man and monster storm the border. Forcibly conscripted, Jael will soon wet his sword in the front lines.Standing against the invaders is General Larika, warrior princess and heir to the throne. As monsters of legend tear a bloody rent through her soldiers, a treasonous knife readies to strike. Defeat is a breath away. The enemy have harnessed an ancient magic that turns the order of man and beast on its head, a magic created by Jael's ancestors that only he might break. Jael is torn. Larika may become a worthy Queen but can he fight for an empire that slaughtered his people?

The second book in The Song of the Shattered Sands series--an epic fantasy with a desert setting, filled with rich worldbuilding and pulse-pounding action. Çeda, now a Blade Maiden in service to the kings of Sharakhai, trains as one of their elite warriors, gleaning secrets even as they send her on covert missions to further their rule. She knows the dark history of the asirim—that hundreds of years ago they were enslaved to the kings against their will—but when she bonds with them as a Maiden, chaining them to her, she feels their pain as if her own. They hunger for release, they demand it, but with the power of the gods compelling them, they find their chains unbreakable. Çeda could become the champion they've been waiting for, but the need to tread carefully has never been greater. After their recent defeat at the hands of the rebel Moonless Host, the kings are hungry for blood, scouring the city in their ruthless quest for revenge. Çeda's friend Emre and his new allies in the Moonless Host hope to take advantage of the unrest in Sharakhai, despite the danger of opposing the kings and their god-given powers, and the Maidens and their deadly ebon blades. When Çeda and Emre are drawn into a plot of the blood mage Hamzakiir, they learn a devastating secret that may very well shatter the power of the hated kings. But it may all be undone if Çeda cannot learn to navigate the shifting tides of power in Sharakhai and control the growing anger of the asirim that threatens to overwhelm her...

On the verge of creating a breakthrough peace initiative in the Middle East, Dr. Sharif Mahoud is on the run, hunted by purveyors of terror who see the true threat of a powerful visionary bringing bitter rivals to the bargaining table. Dr. Mahoud is good for peace, and good for the world—which is why the Oval Office directs Mack Bolan to track down the brilliant negotiator hiding deep within the Afghan hills, locate his stranded family, then get them all to safety. But the mission is compromised from the start with hostile forces dogging Bolan's every move. Soon, the true face of the enemy begins to emerge: beyond the violent radicals and extremist thugs, stand the rich and powerful investors and shadow men who understand that warfare is big business—and will do whatever it takes to keep turning a profit on blood and suffering.

An intriguing story of a young man performing his rite of passage in the harsh conditions of a middle eastern desert. With danger around every corner, he feels that he has taken nature's worst, but he soon finds out that he has been betrayed, and the worst is still to come...