Demented, greedy, and perverse--Invictus will stop at nothing, not even an unspeakable act of sorcery, to merge his sister's power with his. Jim Melvin's acclaimed adult fantasy series, the Death Wizard Chronicles, takes a dark turn into the tormented world of Laylah, a captive sorceress who is subjected to her brother's cruel control. For more than seventy years, the most powerful sorcerer in the world has held his own sister prisoner in a magical tower--forcing her to be his "queen." Even the immense power Laylah draws from moonlight does not give her the strength to free herself . . . until she forms an unlikely alliance with two of the sorcerer's most trusted soldiers as well as an ancient demon with diabolical motives. Laylah's dramatic escape leads her to the one man who might be able to save her--Torg, the Death-Knower wizard. Drawn together by supernatural passion, the pair attempts to outrun Invictus' minions and reach the safety of the White City.

To work off a family debt, 10-year-old Hastin leaves his desert village in India to work as a circus elephant keeper but many challenges await him, including trying to keep Nandita, a sweet elephant, safe from the cruel circus owner.

They say family is where you find solace, a safe haven, but what if the same people who are supposed to protect you, are the ones who abuse you? Chained: The Lives of Six Children tells the sad but bitter reality of pain and suffering that starts at home. Abuse can forever mark the abused, but some are remarkably strong. Witness the essence of survival and true strength amidst the darkest of sufferings

In Chained to History, Steven J. Brady places slavery at the center of the story of America's place in the world in the years prior to the calamitous Civil War. Beginning with the immediate aftermath of the War of the American Revolution, Brady follows the military, economic, and moral lines of the diplomatic challenges of attempting to manage, on the global stage, the actuality of human servitude in a country dedicated to human freedom. Chained to History shows how slavery was interwoven with America's foreign relations and affected policy controversies ranging from trade to extradition treaties to military alliances. Brady highlights the limitations placed on American policymakers who, working in an international context increasingly supportive of abolition, were severely constrained regarding the formulation and execution of preferred policy. Policymakers were bound to the slave interest based in the Democratic Party and the tortured state of domestic politics bore heavily on the conduct of foreign affairs. As international powers not only abolished the slave trade but banned human servitude as such, the American position became untenable. From the Age of Revolutions through the American Civil War, slavery was a constant factor in shaping US relations with the Atlantic World and beyond. Chained to History addresses this critical topic in its complete scope and shows the immoral practice of human bondage to have informed how the United States re-entered the community of nations after 1865.

Includes spinning wheel puzzle in plastic pouch.

The most terrifying novel you will read this year... Just as he's celebrating his last day on the job, FBI agent E L Pender receives a letter from Dorie Bell. Dorie is afraid. Last year she attended a convention for Persons with Specific Phobia Disorder. Since then, a couple of the delegates have died in suspicious circumstances. Carl Polander had acrophobia. Fear of heights. So what would he be doing on the 12th floor of the building the police say he jumped from? Mara Agajanian had haemophobia. Fear of blood. So how could she have cut her own wrists in the bathtub? Dorie, who suffers from an irrational fear of masks, wants Pender to look into these cases. She suspects there may be a twisted serial killer on the loose. Someone, who quite literally, enjoys scaring his victims to death. Dorie's right. But she has no idea just how close to her the killer is...