In the city of Elversult, a human-elf thief and a crippled ex-warrior find themselves pitted against the Purple Masks, the Cult of the Dragon, and other nefarious foes Among the dark streets of Elversult move thieves and cutthroats—and they don't like independent operators like Lhasha Moonsliver. While on the run from the Purple Masks, she crosses paths with former White Shield mercenary Corin One-hand, whose drunken ways and injuries have not completely diminished his skills as a swordsman. But when Lhasha hires him to be her bodyguard, hoping her gnomish mentor will restore Corin’s lost arm, she gets far more than she bargained for. Together, the unlikely duo must battle the thieves' guild, the Cult of the Dragon, and other, darker foes. And Corin will have to remember the proud warrior he once was.

When Lhasha Moonsilver, a fledgling thief, hires former warrior and town drunk, Corin, as a bodyguard, the two unlikely companions take on the Thieves' Guild, the Cult of the Dragon, and other deadly foes in the city of Elversult.

The devotional poems of Annamaya (15th century) are perhaps the most accessible and universal achievement of classical Telugu literature, one of the major literatures of pre-modern India. Annamaya effectively created and popularized a new genre, the short padam song, which spread throughout the Telugu and Tamil regions and would become an important vehicle for the composition of Carnatic music - the classical music of South India. In this book, Rao and Shulman offer translations of 150 of Annamaya's poems. All of them are addressed to the god associated with the famous temple city of Tirupati-Annamaya's home-a deity who is sometimes referred to as "god on the hill" or "lord of the seven hills." The poems are couched in a simple and accessible language invented by Annamaya for this purpose. Rao and Shulman's elegant and lyrical modern translations of these beautiful and moving verses are wonderfully readable as poetry in their own right, and will be of great interest to scholars of South Indian history and culture.

In the words of late Professor Moshe Kochavi, the Philistine repository pit at Yavneh is the kind of discovery made only once every fifty years. It is the richest repository pit ever found from Bronze and Iron Ages Israel/Palestine, containing thousands of cultic finds originating from a temple, including an unprecedented number - more than a hundred - of cult stands (so-called 'architectural models') carrying rich figurative art, dozens of fire-pans, chalices and other objects. The present volume includes the full publication of the excavation, the stratigraphy, the cult stands and the figures detached from cult stands, several clay and stone altars and some pottery vessels related to burning of plant material, most likely incense. This exceptional book raises a host of highly important and intriguing questions. Is this a favissa, or even a genizah? Why are many cult stands badly broken, while some are intact - were cult stands broken on purpose? What is the explanation for the unique stratigraphy and for the layer of gray ash in the pit - was fire kindled inside as part of a ritual? How do we know that these finds are Philistine? Are they part of the 'furniture' of the temple or objects dedicated by worshippers as votives? Do the figures on the cult stands represent mortal beings, or divinities? If divinities, can we relate them with Biblical or extra-biblical data on the gods of the Philistines? What was the function/s of cult stands? Were they models of buildings, supports for images, offering tables, altars, or perhaps incense burners? Why are female figures dominant, while male figures are virtually absent? In discussing such topics, Yavneh I treats issues that are central to many fields of study: religion and cult in Iron Age Israel/Palestine; the history and archaeology of the Philistines and their 'western' relations; Near Eastern iconography, the meaning of cult stands/architectural models and the understanding of votive objects and of repository pits in general. Literally salvaged from the teeth of a bulldozer, these rare finds are now published. Generations of scholars will discuss and reinterpret them - there is no 'final word' for such finds and hence, this final excavation volume is not an end, but a beginning.

The Bah' House of Worship sits on the shores of Lake Michigan, just 5 miles north of Chicago. How it came to be built in the heart of the United States is a story that begins with the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Inspired by news of the first Bah' Temple in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, members of the Chicago Bah' House of Spirituality drafted a petition in 1903 asking for permission to begin their own. Fifty years later, in 1953, a completed Bah' House of Worship was dedicated in Wilmette. The story of how very few believers in a new faith built the "Great Bell" of the North Shore--during the Great Depression and World War II years--is shown with archival photographs from every stage of construction up to the present. This includes ongoing restoration projects preserving the beauty of the "Temple of Light."