War has begun. Skylar Mandolyn, last heir and first queen of Correnth, is still haunted by what happened during her imprisonment. Trying to stay focused on the impending war with Bellumortis, Skylar can’t help but see the shadow of the one who had caused her kingdom’s downfall, only recognizing him by his black-and-cream façade and his chin that drips with blood. Then, Bellumortis attacks, and suddenly the reality and fantasy she’s tried to keep separate becomes the same battleground. Ghosts become real, enemies become haunting, and Skylar begins to realize that this may actually be the end of everything… including herself. For Sir Harlin Brien, war comes easy. As one of Correnth’s knights in the Order of the Benighted, Harlin knows how to destroy the enemy. But what makes this war different is that he’s the only one from the Order who’s there to fight, and for him this battle is personal. It’s not just the queen he’s trying to save, but the woman he’s fallen in love with. With one realm on the verge of collapse and the other on the verge of power, there’s only one person who knows the truth of why this war really started: Madden Calibre, the captured spy. Madden knows where Bellumortis’s hate originates from, because it didn’t start after the deaths of their ambassadors. It started with the birth of Skylar Mandolyn.

This compelling new book challenges the view that a clear and unwavering boundary exists between nature and technology. Rejecting this dichotomy, the contributors show how the history of each can be united in a constantly shifting panorama where definitions of "nature" and "technology" alter and overlap.

A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

The Illusory Freedom: The Intellectual Origins and Social Consequences of the Sexual "Revolution" describes the profound changes in sexual attitudes and sexual behavior in Britain and other Western countries. The book examines the reliability of the basis for the sexual revolution and whether its benefits outweigh the damages it has brought on society. The author reviews the influence of Dr. Alfred Kinsey's reports on over 12,000 humans subjects where Kinsey claims there is no "normality" or "abnormality" as regards sexual behavior. The author notes that some sexual studies involved some bias, the need to protect the family as an institution if society is to survive, and faithfulness has its long term rewards. His other findings show that no evidence points to sexual experimentation or promiscuity as causing long-term happier relationships, that media tends to present sexual anarchy as the norm, and that guidelines for adolescent and ideals for adults should be established. He notes, quite interestingly, that as the forces of sexual freedom are released by new regimes of generations, it become more apparent that sexual freedom is an illusory freedom. This book can prove interesting reading for feminists, psychiatrists, psychologists, parents, professionals and administrators of educational institutions, as well as heads of public commutations and media.

As the sequel to 'Between Truth and Illusion' (1977), this volume of aphoristic essays and essayistic aphorisms and/or maxims carries on the dualistic theories from where BTAI left off, but does so with greater intellectual freedom and stylistic abandon, creating a substantial essayistic platform from which the aphorisms and maxims were subsequently launched, to dualistic and sometimes more than dualistic effect.

In Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving, historian Peter Norton argues that driverless cars cannot be the safe, sustainable, and inclusive "mobility solutions" that tech companies and automakers are promising us. The salesmanship behind the "driverless future" is distracting us from better ways to get around that we can implement now. Unlike autonomous vehicles, these alternatives are inexpensive, safe, sustainable, and inclusive. Norton takes the reader on an engaging ride--from the GM Futurama exhibit to "smart" highways and vehicles--to show how we are once again being sold car dependency in the guise of mobility. Autonorama is hopeful, advocating for wise, proven, humane mobility that we can invest in now, without waiting for technology that is forever just out of reach.

A groundbreaking monograph on Yuan dynasty Buddhism, Illusory Abiding offers a cultural history of Buddhism through a case study of the eminent Chan master Zhongfeng Mingben. Natasha Heller demonstrates that Mingben, and other monks of his stature, developed a range of cultural competencies through which they navigated social and intellectual relationships. They mastered repertoires internal to their tradition—for example, guidelines for monastic life—as well as those that allowed them to interact with broader elite audiences, such as the ability to compose verses on plum blossoms. These cultural exchanges took place within local, religious, and social networks—and at the same time, they comprised some of the very forces that formed these networks in the first place. This monograph contributes to a more robust account of Chinese Buddhism in late imperial China, and demonstrates the importance of situating monks as actors within broader sociocultural fields of practice and exchange.