Lust, Vengeance and Non-stop Action Mike Harmon's commando-quality retainers agree: their leader, code-named Ghost, is a peculiar one. An ex-Navy-SEAL, there is no stronghold he cannot penetrate, no target he can't take out. But Ghost is also a man struggling to keep the animal inside at bay and his twisted sexual desires satisfied with a rock-hard integrity and incredible force of will. Now Harmon and his militia have been hired to rescue the daughter of a powerful political mover in America, kidnapped into the Eastern Europe sex trade. Welcome to the Balkan Route: a notorious pathway for human trafficking carved with blood and brutality and passing through Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo to the heart of darkness itself: sexual snuff houses where powerful politicians pay to rape and murder young women for kicks. Turns out some of those politicians hail from Washington, D.C. But now the Route is about to be re-Routed, and the balance of power is about to shift dramatically ¾ to the smoking muzzle of one very angry ex-SEAL's M-4. Sometimes it takes a bad man to destroy an even more terrible evil. And the baddest of them all is Ghost. They'll be sorry they made his girls cry. John Ringo, veteran of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne and fivetimes New York Times best-seller with over a million books in print, delivers another blockbuster military technothriller with the latest entry in his "Ghost" saga. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

From the bestselling author of the Pegasus books, Kate O’Hearn, comes an exciting new series that puts a fresh twist on Norse mythology. Valkyrie: Norse Goddess. Reaper of Souls. Defender of the Weak. Not someone you want to mess with… Freya is dreading her upcoming birthday when she’ll officially have to take up her duties as a Valkyrie. She doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of the legends before her—legends including her mother and sisters. And she certainly doesn’t want anything to do with humans! Freya thinks humans are cruel, hate-filled creatures, but as she observes their world, she begins to wonder what it would be like to make friends with the girls or laugh with the boys she sees. And what would it be like to live without the fear that she could cause someone’s death with a single touch? Then when she’s sent on her first mission, she reaps the soul of a fallen soldier with unfinished business…business that sends her on an epic quest to the mortal world. Will Freya find the true meaning of being a human, or will she finally accept her destiny?

In the tradition of Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra, Brown lays to rest the hoary myth that Viking society was ruled by men and celebrates the dramatic lives of female Viking warriors “Once again, Brown brings Viking history to vivid, unexpected life—and in the process, turns what we thought we knew about Norse culture on its head. Superb.” —Scott Weidensaul, author of New York Times bestselling A World on the Wing "Magnificent. It captured me from the very first page." —Pat Shipman, author of The Invaders In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka, Sweden was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology, history, and literature to imagine her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined. Nancy Marie Brown uses science to link the Birka warrior, whom she names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines her life intersecting with larger-than-life but real women, including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, the Viking leader known as The Red Girl, and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervor’s short, dramatic life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in the Viking Age is based not on data, but on nineteenth-century Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys, Viking women in history, law, saga, poetry, and myth carry weapons. These women brag, “As heroes we were widely known—with keen spears we cut blood from bone.” In this compelling narrative Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life.

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Previously published in 2005 as Exploring the Northern Tradition.

This 1943 book uses a variety of evidence from archaeology and literature concerning Norse funeral customs to reconstruct their conception of future life.