On a planet torn apart by class and economic divisions and feuding factions, a scientist and a rebel are drawn together in a forbidden love that could change their world forever.... Nolan uses his rational powers of observation to examine more closely the privileges he was born to enjoy—and the people he was raised to despise. Katrini follows her fiercest passions in the struggle to overthrow a legacy of hate—one that has poisoned her family for generations. Between rich and poor, strong and weak, intellect and feeling, only one thing could bring these two opposites together: a passion that is strictly forbidden.

Trainee midwife Bethan Powell lives in the shadow of the workhouse during the Depression. It's difficult to say which is harder for her and fellow nurse Laura Ronconi - their gruelling work in the hospital, or the frictions and financial hardships at home. Bethan's Communist miner father, rigidly Chapel mother, unruly brothers and delightful but dubiously honest aunt, and Laura's vast Italian cafe-running family, cause the girls as much worry as any difficult case or strict ward sister. But working-class Pontypridd agrees on one thing - the 'crache', or gentry, who live in the big houses on the Common, may be just the other side of town, but they inhabit a different world. So when Bethan and Laura are smitten by two young doctors, can love really bridge the divide? Or is the pull of family too strong, the gulf too wide?

Three women from very different backgrounds, bound by friendship, separated by destiny It was impossible, but in full view of the church, the Governor and wedding guests ... The bride had vanished. Some girls are born to be loved, some are born to be useful. Some girls are born to be bad. Indulged and wealthy Kat Fitzhubert is seemingly 'sold off' in an arranged marriage in a colony across the world. Lady Viola Montefiore is the dark-skinned 'changeling' of a ducal family, kept hidden and then shipped away. Titania Boot is as broad as a carthorse, and as useful. In the turmoil of an Australia in 1853 that reinvents itself from convict colony to a land of gold, one woman forges a business empire. One brews illegal poteen with a bushranger. And the third vanishes on her wedding day in a scandal that will mystify the world. In this magnificent and broad-sweeping saga, Jackie French defies the myth of colonial women as 'merely' wives, servants or whores. Instead portraying them as business women, farmers, bushrangers and brewers of illegal poteen, as well as arbiters of their destiny.

Goodness has nothing to do with it as a hard-luck private eye in 1940s Hollywood takes a case for legendary silver screen sex symbol Mae West. In the early days of talking pictures, the greatest sex symbol in Hollywood was the platinum-blonde bad girl Mae West. Naughty and gorgeous with a razor-sharp wit, West wrote her own material and controlled her own image—until the censors came in and outlawed the racy repartee that made her famous. By the forties, her star has faded and she’s banking everything on a scandalous memoir that she hopes will set the stage for a comeback. When the only copy is stolen, she calls in a favor from an old beau—the brother of wisecracking PI Toby Peters. When Mae West asks, “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” you don’t say no. Peters arrives at a party at West’s house, where every guest is a man dressed as the woman herself—and one of them may be the thief who stole the manuscript. But before he can tear off the culprit’s wig, Peters finds that this is about more than theft. The crook wants to destroy Mae West, and he has murder on his mind. The star of Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky’s fun forties private eye series, “Peters is a good guy with a sense of humor, and every appearance he makes is a welcome one” (Booklist).

Golden Harvest or Hearts of Gold? is a collection of essays on Polish-Jewish relations during World War II. In search of the much-debated truths about those times - truths that are often distorted by a neo-stalinist analysis shaped by the Soviet occupation of Poland after its capture from the Nazis - the authors present the results of their historical research and analyses based on forensic evidence, primary sources and documents, and testimonials. Throughout the volume, the writers reject as extreme and indefensibly reductive two of the most popular - and contradictory - interpretations of the relations between Poles and Jews. The authors refer to these interpretations as the "black legend" and the "heroic mythology." In particular, the authors directly challenge the premise of Princeton University Professor Jan T. Gross, in his poorly documented book, Golden Harvest (Oxford, 2012). Alleging widespread and willful looting of Jewish homes, bodies and graves for a harvest of gold teeth, Gross perpetuates the myth of widespread Polish collaboration with the Nazi invaders of their country, including systematic looting of Jewish homes and cemeteries, and willful and mass-based participation in the extermination of their Jewish countrymen in Nazi death camps. In this book, the authors respond to Gross's "golden harvest" thesis with a "hearts of gold" rejoinder. Using exhaustive case studies, statistical data and archival research, the authors carefully document widespread Polish sympathy for their doomed Jewish countrymen, and acts of heroic resistance to the Nazis' "final solution." At a time when the simple act of sheltering a Jew for a night, sharing some bread or water, or simply not informing the authorities meant a death sentence for oneself and one's family, countless Polish citizens - especially peasants in the countryside - risked their very existence to help Jews escape and survive. Much of that heroism has taken mythological proportions to confront the demonization of the Poles. The authors document the fiction of the Golden Harvest and the extent of Poland's Hearts of Gold.

Covers the history of the Special Olympics, the various events in which mentally and physically handicapped athletes compete, and some of the people involved in this international competition.