A refreshingly original history of the lost countries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examined and illustrated with the countries' postage stamps

"Not real?" Coyote howled. "A filthy lie." He grabbed a wiener and shoved the end of a willow stick through its middle. The Nowherians were deployed around a rusty wheelbarrow used as a grill for their annual Fourth of July weenie roast. Jackrabbit examined the puffy black wiener on the end of his stick. "You still upset about Frijoles saying that Funnies from Nowhere is fiction?" Coyote jabbed the coals, creating an explosion of sparks and coating his wiener in ash. "You bet I am. If we're not real, then neither is Nowhere, and the cartoon character who was boner-fidee elected President of the United States isn't either." He rapped his stick to knock off the ash, and his wiener fell into the fire. "If your wiener were parallel to the stick instead of perpendicular, that wouldn't happen," offered Pearl. He stared at her until the answer came to him. "Parallel is safer but limits you to one wiener." He seized a handful, mounted a row of six, and suspended the drooping load over the fire. "My only limitations are the length of my stick and the size of the fire."

A blizzard is coming to Nowhereland, land of endless winter. Nibs lives in the Snowy Wood like any other Lost Boy. The Pirates live over in the port town under rule of Governor Rackham. The Lost Boys used to be free before the Governor's men started in on them. Swords have been outlawed for the Lost Boys but after being hassled by Pirates and assaulted by Curly, Nibs wants one anyways. To afford a sword, Nibs works for Tootles in selling Pixie dust for the Lost Boy's parties. After the Governor's pistol is stolen from his study by Twin boys flying down his chimney, the oppression of the Snowy Wood is notched up. The Lost Boys aren't going to just take that, they fight back. Based on the universe of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan.

Through an inter-subjective lens, this open access book investigates the initial labour market integration experiences of these migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, who are characterised by different biographies and migration/asylum trajectories. The book gives voice to the migrants and seeks to highlight their own experiences and understandings of the labour market integration process, in the first years of immigration. It adopts a critical, qualitative perspective but does not remain ethnographic. The book rather refers the migrants’ own voice and experience to their own expert knowledge of the policy and socio-economic context that is navigated. Each chapter brings into dialogue the migrant’s intersubjective experiences with the relevant policies and practices, as well as with the relevant stakeholders, whether local government, national services, civil society or migrant organisations. The book concludes with relevant critical insights as to how labour market integration is lived on the ground and on what migrants ‘do’ with labour market policies rather than on what labour market policies ‘do’ to or for migrants.

After a young member of the Jehovah's Witness Church is abducted in conjunction with a ritualistic triple homicide in the mountains outside of Los Angeles, the church engages cult specialist Stephan Raszer to find her perilous trail. Based on evidence that the girl may have been trafficked into a sex and terrorism ring with a Middle Eastern nexus, Raszer soon unveils an inside–out reality that begins on the Internet and ends in a fabled fortress on the borderlands of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, where a powerful figure known only as the Old Man is said to hold the strings. With the dubious aid of the abductee's wayward sister, along with a renegade CIA agent and a fraternity of sojourning gamesters, Raszer journeys far from the rational world and deep into a dangerous and erotically charged netherland. Piece by piece, he gathers evidence of a world–altering criminal conspiracy linked to an ancient Persian sect that uses an Internet role–playing game to recruit its foot soldiers. To solve the puzzle and find the girl, Stephan Raszer must play the game and try to hold on to his soul and his sanity in a world turned on its head.

Metaphysics of Children's Literature is the first sustained study of ways in which children's literature confronts metaphysical questions about reality and the nature of what there is in the world. In its exploration of something and nothing, this book identifies a number of metaphysical structures in texts for young people-such as the ontological exchange or nowhere in extremis-demonstrating that their entanglement with the workings of reality is unique to the conditions of children's literature. Drawing on contemporary children's literature discourse and metaphysicians from Heidegger and Levinas, to Bachelard, Sartre and Haraway, Lisa Sainsbury reveals the metaphysical groundwork of children's literature. Authors and illustrators covered include: Allan and Janet Ahlberg, Mac Barnett, Ron Brooks, Peter Brown, Lewis Carroll, Eoin Colfer, Gary Crew, Roald Dahl, Roddy Doyle, Imme Dros, Sarah Ellis, Mem Fox, Zana Fraillon, Libby Gleeson, Kenneth Grahame, Armin Greder, Sonya Hartnett, Tana Hoban, Judy Horacek, Tove Jansson, Oliver Jeffers, Jon Klassen, Elaine Konigsburg, Norman Lindsay, Geraldine McCaughrean, Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris, Edith Nesbit, Mary Norton, Jill Paton Walsh, Philippa Pearce, Ivan Southall, William Steig, Shaun Tan, Tarjei Vesaas, David Wiesner, Margaret Wild, Jacqueline Woodson and many others.

Finding a note in Joseph's lost wallet referring to dungeons and warriors, Nick becomes involved in a fantasy game which takes a dangerous turn when gang members send him on a quest which involves betraying Joseph.