Villains have all the fun—everyone knows that—and this anthology takes you on a wild ride through the dark side! The top villains from seventeen urban fantasy series get their own stories—including the baddies of New York Times bestselling authors Jim Butcher, Kevin Hearne, Kelley Armstrong, Seanan McGuire, and Jonathan Maberry. For every hero trying to save the world, there’s a villain trying to tear it all down. In this can’t-miss anthology edited by Joseph Nassise (The Templar Chronicles), you get to plot world domination with the best of the evildoers we love to hate! This outstanding collection brings you stories told from the villains' point of view, imparting a fresh and unique take on the evil masterminds, wicked witches, and infernal personalities that skulk in the pages of today’s most popular series. The full anthology features stories by Jim Butcher (the Dresden Files), Kelley Armstrong (Cainsville), Seanan McGuire (October Daye), Kevin Hearne (The Iron Druid Chronicles), Jonathan Maberry (Joe Ledger), Lilith Saintcrow (Jill Kismet), Carrie Vaughn (Kitty Norville), Joseph Nassise (Templar Chronicles), Domino Finn (Black Magic Outlaw), Steven Savile (Glasstown), Caitlin Kittredge (Hellhound Chronicles), Jeffrey Somers (The Ustari Cycle), Sam Witt (Pitchfork County), Craig Schaefer (Daniel Faust), Jon F. Merz (Lawson Vampire), Faith Hunter (Jane Yellowrock), and Diana Pharaoh Francis (Horngate Witches).

Villains have all the fun—everyone knows that—and this anthology takes you on a wild ride through the dark side! The top villains from seventeen urban fantasy series get their own stories—including the baddies of New York Times bestselling authors Jim Butcher, Kevin Hearne, Kelley Armstrong, Seanan McGuire, and Jonathan Maberry. For every hero trying to save the world, there’s a villain trying to tear it all down. In this can’t-miss anthology edited by Joseph Nassise (The Templar Chronicles), you get to plot world domination with the best of the evildoers we love to hate! This outstanding collection brings you stories told from the villains' point of view, imparting a fresh and unique take on the evil masterminds, wicked witches, and infernal personalities that skulk in the pages of today’s most popular series. The full anthology features stories by Jim Butcher (the Dresden Files), Kelley Armstrong (Cainsville), Seanan McGuire (October Daye), Kevin Hearne (The Iron Druid Chronicles), Jonathan Maberry (Joe Ledger), Lilith Saintcrow (Jill Kismet), Carrie Vaughn (Kitty Norville), Joseph Nassise (Templar Chronicles), Domino Finn (Black Magic Outlaw), Steven Savile (Glasstown), Caitlin Kittredge (Hellhound Chronicles), Jeffrey Somers (The Ustari Cycle), Sam Witt (Pitchfork County), Craig Schaefer (Daniel Faust), Jon F. Merz (Lawson Vampire), Faith Hunter (Jane Yellowrock), and Diana Pharaoh Francis (Horngate Witches).

Featuring a smart, funny heroine and a banter-fueled vampire romance, this wickedly addictive urban fantasy series starter will keep you reading way past bedtime. She’s just a demon, standing in front of a vampire, trying not to punch him. Aviva Fleischer hides a dangerous secret. She’s carefully concealing her infernal heritage, a.k.a. Cherry Bomb. Maybe it’s weird naming her demon side and referring to her in the third person, but guys do the same with their junk, and unlike most of them, Avi isn’t deluded about Cherry’s prowess. Avi’s been working her ass off, climbing the ranks of a supernatural policing organization to enact change and empower those like her forced to hide their true nature. Sure, she’s had a few complaints about use of excessive force, but her arrest record speaks for itself. Her promotion is in the bag. Instead, the director strikes a deal with Avi: spy on the operative sent in to work a rash of bizarre murders and prove she can be a team player, or kiss that new rank goodbye. No problem. Okay, maybe just one. Her co-leader, Ezra Cardoso, is a charming, ruthless vampire with his own agenda, whom she fantasizes about: mostly staking him then vacuuming up his remains. But when the killer sets Aviva’s team firmly in their sights, she’ll have to decide whether to keep playing by the rules or show everyone exactly what she—and Cherry Bomb—are capable of… If you like KF Breene, Annabel Chase, and Heather G Harris, you’ll burn through this laugh-out-loud, wickedly addictive series! Dive in now for a fiendishly good time.

How can two states with enemy relations transform their relationship? Nicholas Wheeler argues that the discipline of International Relations has not done a good job of answering this question because its focus has been on the state and the individual levels of analysis. In this ground-breaking book, he argues for the importance of a new level of analysis in trust research the interpersonal relationships between state leaders. In doing so, he makes two key contributions. Firstly, developing a new theory of interpersonal trust that can be applied to the international level, and secondly, showing how this theory contributes to the literature on signalling in IR. The theory of interpersonal trust developed in the book provides a novel response to the central problem identified by signalling theory in IR: whether the receivers of signals interpret them in the way intended by their senders. The author argues that, in fact, trust between two leaders is causally prior to the accurate interpretation of the signals they send with the aim of communicating peaceful intent. Trust, therefore, does away with the problem of the ambiguity of signal interpretation. He goes on to examine exactly how a new relationship of trust emerges between two leaders who represent states with enemy relations: through face-to-face interaction and the crucial process of bonding between them that this makes possible. This powerful new theory of interpersonal trust is applied to three cases: the personal interactions between US and Soviet leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in ending the Cold War; the face-to-face interactions between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in reducing conflict between India and Pakistan in 1998-1999; and the interactions in 2009-10 between Barack Obama and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that failed to achieve a breakthrough in US-Iran nuclear relations.

In the earliest drama the clash between the old world of ritual and the new world of money is revealed.

This polemical book examines the concept of sustainability and presents a critical exploration of its all-pervasive influence on society, arguing that sustainability, manifested in several guises, represents a pernicious and corrosive doctrine that has survived primarily because there seems to be no alternative to its canon: in effect, its bi-partisan appeal has depressed critical engagement and neutered politics. It is a malign philosophy of misanthropy, low aspirations and restraint. This book argues for a destruction of the mantra of sustainability, removing its unthinking status as orthodoxy, and for the reinstatement of the notions of development, progress, experimentation and ambition in its place. Al Gore insists that the ‘debate is over', while musician K.T. Tunstall, spokesperson for ‘Global Cool', a campaign to get stars to minimize their carbon footprint, says ‘so many people are getting involved that it is becoming really quite uncool not to be involved’. This book will say that it might not be cool, but it is imperative to argue against the moralizing of politics so that we can start to unpick the contemporary world of restrictive, sustainable practices.

An important new ethnographic study of São Paulo’s favelas revealing the widespread use of race-based police repression in Brazil While Black Lives Matter still resonates in the United States, the movement has also become a potent rallying call worldwide, with harsh police tactics and repressive state policies often breaking racial lines. In The Anti-Black City, Jaime Amparo Alves delves into the dynamics of racial violence in Brazil, where poverty, unemployment, residential segregation, and a biased criminal justice system create urban conditions of racial precarity. The Anti-Black City provocatively offers race as a vital new lens through which to view violence and marginalization in the supposedly “raceless” São Paulo. Ironically, in a context in which racial ambiguity makes it difficult to identify who is black and who is white, racialized access to opportunities and violent police tactics establish hard racial boundaries through subjugation and death. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in prisons and neighborhoods on the periphery of this mega-city, Alves documents the brutality of police tactics and the complexity of responses deployed by black residents, including self-help initiatives, public campaigns against police violence, ruthless gangs, and self-policing of communities. The Anti-Black City reveals the violent and racist ideologies that underlie state fantasies of order and urban peace in modern Brazil. Illustrating how “governing through death” has become the dominant means for managing and controlling ethnic populations in the neoliberal state, Alves shows that these tactics only lead to more marginalization, criminality, and violence. Ultimately, Alves’s work points to a need for a new approach to an intractable problem: how to govern populations and territories historically seen as “ungovernable.”