In appearance they are the same, but their personalities are strangely different. Intertwined in their lives is the Marques de Mansura, who seems to defy time and the normal bounds of reality and whose fascination with identical twins contains the perverse wish to induce the annihilation of one twin by the other. His powerful influence and occult powers threaten to bring about this very end. For those who wish to save them, there will be a monumental struggle that will take them to Paris in the decadent 1860s, to the Tabernas Desert in Spain, and even, through an occult trick of time, Ancient Alexandria of the 2nd Century BC. Their paths will cross with Cora Pearl, the renowned Parisian courtesan, the artists, Gustave Moreau, Gustave Dore, and the flamboyant, Felicien Rops. The poet, Alfred Tennyson, will also play a role and the twin Mariana bears an uncanny resemblance to the Mariana of his tragic poem, 'Mariana in the South', written before she was born. Whilst Mariana hopes for peace and solace in the desert, her twin, Marguerite, moves towards villainy as her dark, guiding star.This novel is a striking exploration of the fascination of identical twins cleverly set across 1860s Paris, the Tabernas Desert in Spain and Ancient Alexandria.

“A fantastic story, thrillingly told. This book has a superpower—you can’t put it down.” —Jonathan Stroud, author of the bestselling Bartimaeus Trilogy The truth about the Super children—who have real powers like flight and super strength—is finally exposed, and the town of Noble’s Green has created a special boarding school for its superpowered children. That’s where all Daniel’s friends are headed, while he—regular kid that he is—is headed to summer school. But all is not well at the Academy for the Extraordinarily Gifted. A clique of popular kids (led by a pair of sinister twins) has taken over the school, and once again, it’s powerless Daniel who may be able to stop them. To do so, he will have to turn to his sworn enemy, the Shroud, for help.

Once upon a time, I was a princess in a tower. One night, and my entire life went up in flames. All because of him. Jafar. As my world burned down around me, he offered me a choice. Walk away with nothing but my freedom… Or rise to his challenge and win my fortune back. I bargained. I lost. Now Jafar owns me, body and soul. Even as my mind rails against his rules, my body loves the punishments he deals out when I break them. But a gilded cage is still a prison, I’ll do anything to obtain my freedom. Even betray the man I’m falling for. In DESPERATE MEASURES, you’ll find: -> Enemies to lovers -> Captive Heroine -> Kinky Roleplay -> Daddy/baby girl -> Alpha hero

There are two faces to every coin, two sides to every story, and two parts to every person. One part wants us to succeed, promoting health, vitality, and happiness. The other part wants us to fail. To live a financially sound, physically fit, and psychologically fulfilling life, we need to know how to embrace the hero within us and defeat the inner villain. In this remarkable book, Kenneth Castiel shows you how to never let anything hold you back. By working with his unconscious mind, discovering his

I'm the one they all fear. The one they whisper about. A faceless ghost. My hands are coated with the blood of my victims. I've never missed a target, and I always deliver. I'm the Grim Reaper of the Cosa Nostra. Then there's her. The cellist whose music soothes the malignance of my existence. For years I've lurked in the shadows watching her play. Waiting. Anticipating the day I'll come for her. Her innocence tempts me. My blackened heart craves to ruin it, to smother her light with my darkness. She's the nucleus of my obsession... and my next victim.

Almost every thoughtful person wonders at some time why morality says what it says and how, if at all, it speaks to us. David Wiggins surveys the answers most commonly proposed for such questions--and does so in a way that the thinking reader, increasingly perplexed by the everyday problem of moral philosophy, can follow. His work is thus an introduction to ethics that presupposes nothing more than the reader's willingness to read philosophical proposals closely and literally. Gathering insights from Hume, Kant, the utilitarians, and a twentieth-century assortment of post-utilitarian thinkers, and drawing on sources as diverse as Aristotle, Simone Weil, and Philippa Foot, Wiggins points to the special role of the sentiments of solidarity and reciprocity that human beings will find within themselves. After examining the part such sentiments play in sustaining our ordinary ideas of agency and responsibility, he searches the political sphere for a neo-Aristotelian account of justice that will cohere with such an account of morality. Finally, Wiggins turns to the standing of morality and the question of the objectivity or reality of ethical demands. As the need arises at various points in the book, he pursues a variety of related issues and engages additional thinkers--Plato, C. S. Peirce, Darwin, Schopenhauer, Leibniz, John Rawls, Montaigne and others--always emphasizing the words of the philosophers under discussion, and giving readers the resources to arrive at their own viewpoint of why and how ethics matters.