Princess Arianna Garcia believes something is missing from her life. But there is only one problem: she has no idea what it is. Her father has always controlled her life on the planet of Margaritan. But as she prepares to turn seventeen, Arianna knows that very soon, she will finally acquire the power to control her own world. During a special birthday ceremony, Arianna is chosen to bear the galaxys life sourcea golden pearl. Unfortunately she is also declared to be a Sorceress, clearly not a desirable gift in the kingdom. After all, the last time a sorcerer was called, he was eradicated to another planet for committing murder. Despite Ariannas rank in society, she too is banished to Earth. But when she meets Max, the man she is destined to be with forever, Arianna soon learns that someone is searching for the pearl she bears. Now it is up to her to formulate a plan to save herself, Max, and the future of the universe, before it is too late. The Golden Pearl shares the tale of a teenage princess as she embarks on a thrilling adventure on Earth that tests her limits, special gifts, and the power of everlasting love.

"The greatest novel of physical love which China has produced." —Pearl S. Buck A saga of ruthless ambition, murder, and lust, The Golden Lotus (Jin Ping Mei) has been called the fifth Great Classical Novel in Chinese literature and one of the Four Masterworks of the Ming novel. Admired in its own time for its literary qualities and biting indictment of the immorality and cruelty of its age, it has also been denigrated as a "dirty" book for its sexual frankness. It centers on Ximen Qing, a wealthy, young, dissolute, and politically connected merchant, and his marriage to a fifth wife, Pan Jinlian, literally "Golden Lotus." In her desire to influence her husband and, through him, control the other wives, concubines, and entire household, she uses sex as her main weapon. The Golden Lotus lays bare the rivalries within this wealthy family while chronicling its rise and fall. It fields a host of vivid characters, each seeking advantage in a corrupt world. The author of The Golden Lotus is Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng, whose name, a pseudonym, means "Scoffing Scholar of Lanling." His great work, written in the late Ming but set in the Song Dynasty, is a virtuoso collection of voices and vices, mixing in poetry and song and sampling different social registers, from popular ballads to the language of bureaucrats, in order to recreate and comment mordantly on the society of the time. This edition features a new introduction by Robert Hegel of Washington University, who situates the novel for contemporary readers and explains its greatness as the first single-authored novel in the Chinese tradition. This translation contains the complete, unexpurgated text as translated by Clement Egerton with the assistance of Shu Qingchun, later known as Lao She, one of the most prominent Chinese writers of the twentieth century. The translation has been pinyinized and corrected.

This beguiling story is woven around the life of Fragrant Lotus, who has her feet bound in the supreme Golden Lotus style when she is six years old. Events in Fragrants Lotus’ life twist and unfold in a series of witty and often wicked ironies, obliterating easy distinctions between kindness and cruelty, history and fable, forgery and authentic work. The novel’s waggish narrator exists in the tension between judgement and description, wryly deflating his reader’s certainties along the way. Written in 1985, The Three-Inch Golden Lotus is a deeply affecting, thoroughly enjoyable literary revelation.

"Looks at the origins of footbinding, the reasons why it was allowed to flourish, and its effects on the women who had to endure it."--Google Books viewed March 4, 2022.

The economy has an increasingly powerful role in the contemporary global world. Academic scholars who study names have recognised this, and, as such, onomastic research has expanded from personal and place names towards names that reflect the new commercial culture. Companies are aware of the significance of naming. Brand, product and company names play an important role in business. Culture produces names and names produce culture. Commercial names shape cultures, on the one hand, and changes in cultures may affect commercial names on the other. The world of the economy and business has created its own culture of names, but this naming culture may also affect other names; even place names and personal names are influenced by it. Names in the Economy: Cultural Prospects is composed of 20 articles that were produced from a collection of papers presented in 2012 at the fourth Names in the Economy symposium in Turku, Finland. These articles will equally be of interest to both academics and professionals. The goal of this book is multidisciplinary and theoretically diverse: it contemplates commercial-bound names from the viewpoints of linguistics and onomastics, as well as marketing and branding research. In addition to traditional onomastic standpoints, there are newer linguistic theories, sociological and communicational views, multimodality theory, and branding theories. The authors are scholars from three continents and from ten different countries.

The Showa Teihon Nichiren Shonin Ibun (Writings of Nichiren Shonin standardised in the Showa period) compiled by the Rissho Daigaku Nichiren Kyogaku Kenkyu Jo (Center for the Study of Nichiren Buddhism) in four volumes and published by Kuonji Temple in 1952-1959 are considered the most authoritative collection of Nichiren Shonin's writings. Because of the difficulty of reading Nichiren Shonin's original writings, the Nichiren Shonin Zenshu (Complete Writings of Nichiren Shonin) were published in 1992 and 1996 to provide access for everyone in an easy-to-read modern Japanese form. In 2000, the Nichiren Overseas Propagation Promotion Association began the English translation of the 7-volume Nichiren Shonin Zenshu. Although this work is titled as the complete writings, it only contains the writings that are considered bibliographically authentic in light of modern scholarship. There are a few writings included in the 7 volumes that are of questionable authenticity; these are specifically indicated in their introductions. Volumes 1-5 are already available available.