Havoc is a barbarian living on the planet Charm, where technology has been lost but Magic has been found. He has the strongest gift for it, and is forced to become king of the unstable new planet.

On 7th March 2004, former SAS soldier and mercenary Simon Mann prepared to take off from Harare International Airport with an aeroplane full of heavy weaponry and guns for hire. Their destination: the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea. Their mission: to remove one of the most brutal dictators in Africa in a privately organised coup d'etat. The plot had the tacit approval of Western intelligence agencies and, according to Mann, the backing of a European government. Simon Mann had personally planned, overseen and won two wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. Everything should have gone right. Why, then, did it go so wrong? When Simon was released from five years' incarceration in two of Africa's toughest prisons, he made worldwide headlines. Since then, he has spoken to nobody about his experiences. Now, he is telling everything, including: * His belief that the CIA deliberately compromised the coup to court favour with Equatorial Guinea's President Obiang, in return for access to the country's vast oil resources. * How the British government approached Simon in the months preceeding the Iraq war, asking him to suggest ways in which a justified invasion of Iraq could be engineered. * The real story behind the involvement of Mark Thatcher in the coup plot * Simon will also tell of his pain when he had to tell his wife, Amanda, who gave birth to their fourth child while he was incarcerated, that he believed he would never be freed.This is Simon's remarkable first-hand account of his life: an account that will read like a thriller as it takes us into the world of mercenaries and spooks: of murky imternational politics, big oil and big bucks; of action, danger, love, despair and betrayal.

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Ultimate series, an MMA fighter and a sassy stunner team up to take down trouble... Sexy, sculpted extreme fighter Dean “Havoc” Connor has knee-melting good looks—and thick skin. But not from his brutal sport’s enclosed rings. Orphaned and torn from his sisters as a boy, he has no family. That is, until he gets a letter revealing how much the once-little girls want him back in Harmony, Kentucky. To stop his sister from marrying a man as sleazy as he is wealthy, Dean finds himself teaming up with her pretty-but-smart-mouthed friend Eve—who’s heard of “Havoc’s” reputation and doesn’t need some hunk trampling on her heart. Now all Dean has to do is protect his sisters, win Eve over, and expose a devious criminal. And he thought winning the heavyweight cage fighting belt was hard…

Key to Chroma The Second Novel in the Epic ChroMagic Fantasy Series Settled by a human expedition over 1,000 years ago, the planet Charm is both magical and dangerous. Volcanoes, scattered throughout the vast landscape, erupt with a fantastic array of colors creating Chroma zones and permeating everything and everyone with magic. The barbarian Havoc became king of this strange land and immediately found himself a target to unknown powerful assassins. Having finally secured a firm grip on governing the planet with the help of the God-like Glamors, Havoc and his companions must now set off in search of seven mysterious ikons to attempt to learn the secret of the Changelings . a secret that could answer all of Havoc's questions, or lead him to his doom.

Opponents rarely go to war without thinking they can win--and clearly, one side must be wrong. This conundrum lies at the heart of the so-called "war puzzle": rational states should agree on their differences in power and thus not fight. But as Dominic Johnson argues in Overconfidence and War, states are no more rational than people, who are susceptible to exaggerated ideas of their own virtue, of their ability to control events, and of the future. By looking at this bias--called "positive illusions"--as it figures in evolutionary biology, psychology, and the politics of international conflict, this book offers compelling insights into why states wage war. Johnson traces the effects of positive illusions on four turning points in twentieth-century history: two that erupted into war (World War I and Vietnam); and two that did not (the Munich crisis and the Cuban missile crisis). Examining the two wars, he shows how positive illusions have filtered into politics, causing leaders to overestimate themselves and underestimate their adversaries--and to resort to violence to settle a conflict against unreasonable odds. In the Munich and Cuban missile crises, he shows how lessening positive illusions may allow leaders to pursue peaceful solutions. The human tendency toward overconfidence may have been favored by natural selection throughout our evolutionary history because of the advantages it conferred--heightening combat performance or improving one's ability to bluff an opponent. And yet, as this book suggests--and as the recent conflict in Iraq bears out--in the modern world the consequences of this evolutionary legacy are potentially deadly.

Shortly after the planet Charm was colonized 1,000 years ago, Earth finally suffered World War III. Almost everyone was destroyed and those remaining fell into a barbarian society when technology was lost. To prevent future wars, Earth's women took control and governed with a more sensible approach. Over the next thousand years, Earth rebuilt itself to an advanced technological power again and now needed more resources for its continued existence and growth. To fulfill their needs, Earth's lost colonies must be found and brought back under control. Now Earth has sent a ship with a planet-busting bomb to reclaim the colony Charm, and it appears that the only way Havoc and his planet can survive the invasion is if his children are sacrificed as hostages.