Can bitter enemies ever be friends? Harry Brigandshaw is presumed dead, missing in the wilds of Africa. And Colonial Shipping is stolen. Tina is miserable on Elephant Walk whilst the new generation of Brigandshaws and St Clairs are on the threshold of new beginnings. Young, carefree, full of excitement and eager for success. The Great War is behind them, the world has licked their wounds and a new future beckons. But menacing undercurrents are permeating. There’s talk. The Fourth Estate spinning their stories. Scaremongering. Rumours. Hitler inciting hatred. His power, seductive. Yet the Allies are grinding Germany into the dust but for how long? The Gestapo and the Brownshirts are lurking, raising national pride, waiting to strike. And back in England, the youngsters are living the high life, trying to ignore the gossip. But how can they when all the signs are there for the inevitable? It’s the calm before the storm! The world is on the brink of tears.

Contemplating how and why art, music, film, literature, theatre, theory and material artifacts make us weep, this collection of essays considers the ways in which tears implicate us in tragedy, comedy and horror.

If you want to know why American Indians have the highest rates of poverty of any racial group, why suicide is the leading cause of death among Indian men, why native women are two and a half times more likely to be raped than the national average and why gang violence affects American Indian youth more than any other group, do not look to history. There is no doubt that white settlers devastated Indian communities in the 19th, and early 20th centuries. But it is our policies today—denying Indians ownership of their land, refusing them access to the free market and failing to provide the police and legal protections due to them as American citizens—that have turned reservations into small third-world countries in the middle of the richest and freest nation on earth. The tragedy of our Indian policies demands reexamination immediately—not only because they make the lives of millions of American citizens harder and more dangerous—but also because they represent a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with modern liberalism. They are the result of decades of politicians and bureaucrats showering a victimized people with money and cultural sensitivity instead of what they truly need—the education, the legal protections and the autonomy to improve their own situation. If we are really ready to have a conversation about American Indians, it is time to stop bickering about the names of football teams and institute real reforms that will bring to an end this ongoing national shame.

A cross between a human and a bonobo? Carl Sagan and others have speculated: Is it possible? What kind of creature would it be? And how might this affect our world? Kelpie Wilson takes the premise and runs with it in this engaging novel. Primal Tears is the story of Sage, born to a young woman who has volunteered to be a surrogate mother for an endangered species of chimpanzee. The process goes awry, and Sage, a lovable youngster, is neither completely one species nor the other. When her existence becomes public knowledge, she needs all the best characteristics of both species to find a place for herself in our human-dominated world.

A writer of rare imagination, Sarah Ash lends her unique vision to epic fantasy. In this captivating continuation of her saga, the author of Lord of Snow and Shadows revisits a realm filled with spirits and singers, daemons and kings. . . . Gavril Nagarian has finally cast out the dragon-daemon from within himself. The Drakhaoul is gone—and with it all of Gavril’s fearsome powers. No longer possessed, he is instead being driven mad by the Drakhaoul’s absence. Worse, he has betrayed his blood, his people, and put the ice-bound princedom of Azhkendir at risk—and lost.At the mercy of the victorious Eugene of Tielen, Gavril is sentenced to life in an insane asylum. For the power-hungry Eugene longs to possess a Drakhaoul of his own, and his prisoner seems the best way to achieve that goal. Meanwhile, a shattered empire reunites. But peace is as fragile as a rebel’s whisper—and a captive’s wish to be free. . . . Praise for Prisoner of the Iron Tower “A new fantasy series [that] will leave readers drooling to get their hands on the sequel.”—Publishers Weekly “Solid, wonderful fantasy, sparkling and imaginative!”—Booklist “Ash takes her large and colorful cast of characters from horror to pathos, from triumph to betrayal, smoothly and convincingly. a roller-coaster ride of events and emotions in the best modern fantasy manner.”—Kirkus Reviews

Sebastian is stolen away from his lover, Emily, and forced across the sea in order to allow his older brother to take Emily's hand instead. In the wild unknown colonies of Southern Africa, Sebastian becomes one of the first white elephant hunters. There he will see the bloodiest faces of man as loyalty and friendship are divided in the Boer War.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank takes a fair and balanced look at the unsettling rise of the silly Fox News host Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that “the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” In America in 2010, Glenn Beck provides the very refreshment Jefferson had in mind: Whether he’s the patriot or the tyrant, he’s definitely full of manure. The wildly popular Fox News host with three million daily viewers perfectly captures the vitriol of our time and the fact-free state of our political culture. The secret to his success is his willingness to traffic in the fringe conspiracies and Internet hearsay that others wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole: death panels, government health insurance for dogs, FEMA concen­tration camps, an Obama security force like Hitler’s SS. But Beck, who is, according to a recent Gallup poll, admired by more Americans than the Pope, has nothing in his background that identifies him as an ideologue, giving rise to the speculation that his right-wing shtick is just that—the act of a brilliant showman, known for both his over-the-top daily out­rages and for weeping on the air. Milbank describes, with lacerating wit, just how the former shock jock without a college degree has managed to become the most recognizable leader of antigovernment conservatives and exposes him as the guy who is single-handedly giving patri­otism a bad name.