An ambitious young woman who dreams of leaving her small town to follow her dreams learns the heartbreak of reckless love. As a young woman trapped in the confines of her small Newfoundland fishing village, sixteen-year-old Julie dreams of someday making her way out into the world and becoming a journalist. The daughter she gave up at birth must learn the same lesson, but will she follow in her mother's footsteps and give up her dreams? What happens when a daughter, given up at birth, makes the same tragic mistake as the mother she never knew? In 1950 Julie was deceived in love and had to give up not only the child of that union, but her dreams of escaping her small fishing village to become a journalist. Twenty years later, Marina, too, is deceived in love and has to forfeit her child, but dreams are not to be thwarted the second time around. The only refuge for young teen girls at that time was an old plantation pavilion called The Fold located in Nova Scotia. Hidden away on acres of lush green grass and surrounded by the wonder of the sea, The Fold holds the mystery and secrets of those who suffered emotions of forfeiting their infant and the suffering that remains within their veil of secrecy.

Piercing the Veil of Secrecy brings together and exposes, for the first time in one publication, the magnitude of adverse actions U.S. intelligence agencies take to control and thwart the legal process and the range of concrete remedies available to confront such tactics. Brookner begins the book with a description of actual CIA employee cases, followed by a discussion of unique problems litigants and lawyers face when suing intelligence agencies, including the misuse of secrecy and national security, intimidation, and the denial of access to relevant evidence and witnesses, notwithstanding a lawyer's and plaintiff's security clearances. Recently, the CIA has invoked the seldom-used state secrets privilege to impede discovery, prevail upon the courts to dismiss cases, and, in effect, grant itself immunity from suits. These problems, as well as sovereign immunity and the various statutes from which the CIA is exempted, are carefully examined. After dealing with what cannot be done, the book devotes itself to what can be done, including legal remedies, which maximize prospects for a favorable outcome. This discussion includes employment discrimination, torts, constitutional violations, employment-related civil conspiracies, and the innovative possibility of suing the government under civil RICO. The final chapter suggests administrative and procedural solutions to the serious inequities with which a litigant is confronted when bringing an action against U.S. intelligence. The book is intended for lawyers and plaintiffs suing or contemplating suing the U.S. government, particularly those agencies that handle classified information. The target audience includes judges, senators, and members of congress who need to be aware when deciding cases or making laws of just how unlevel and unfair the playing field actually is. Government attorneys, law students and professors, and national security, civil rights, and employment rights law groups are among the potential readership as well. "[Brookner] has created a practical resource that draws on her own experiences to help others navigate their way through a system that appears stacked against them... The book contains a good table of authorities for caselaw, statutes, and regulations... Anyone considering a career in U.S. intelligence would be well-advised to read this book; it is a chilling account of the rights that such employees give up, and what they are up against if things go wrong." -- Legal Information ALERT "[B]eneath the legal prose is a passionate indictment of an agency that, Brookner contends, shields its misdeeds with the cloak of national security." -- The Washington Post, March 10, 2004

How much concealment, camouflage, artifice and deceit has been employed in religion? This book critically examines the role of secrecy in the history of religions, each essay presenting an aspect from a specific cultural context. Some of the common features of esotericism as a cross-cultural phenomenon emerge.

“…you cannot kill an unquiet spirit, and I know that my impending death will not mean the end of Rulloff. In the dead of the night, walking along Cayuga Street, you will sense my presence. When you wake to a sudden chill, I will be in the room. And when you find yourself alone at the lake shore, gazing away at gray Cayuga, know that I was cut short and your ancestors killed me.” These were words of Edward H. Rulloff as he faced the gallows in May of 1871, following some twenty-five years at war with society. He was unrepentant murderer, thief and bona fide evil genius who committed robberies to fund his grandiose research into the lost origin of all languages. His trial created a sensation in post-Civil War America, inspiring a wry editorial by no less a personage than Mark Twain. Journalist E. H. Freeman was Rulloff's jailhouse confidant and confessor. In Edward H. Rulloff: The Veil of Secrecy Removed, we learn of his early years as a child prodigy, the murder of his wife, his history as a prisoner and fugitive, his public trials and jailbreaks, and of his research into “the great secret in philology.” A long-scarce, out-of-print text, Freeman's biography of the villain-scholar is the essential primary source upon which all later works on Rulloff have depended.

Long-past atrocities against the rule of nature wait to be avenged... An uneventful move to Montana left Rachel Brackett caught off guard for all the Rockies would offer: adventures, new friends, beautiful scenery … and nightmares. A mysterious family legacy leads Rachel into the forests of the Bitterroot Mountains, only to find that some things are best left alone. Rachel wanted a calm life to allow deep wounds time to repair, instead she stumbled on a riddle contained in her big house, science used for all the wrong reasons, and creatures only special effects experts could make up. As she dives deeper into her heritage, Rachel must decide: is she a shrinking violet when faced with hardship or is she able to stand on her own two feet and fight?

Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago the Greek thinker Heraclitus supposedly uttered the cryptic words "Phusis kruptesthai philei." How the aphorism, usually translated as "Nature loves to hide," has haunted Western culture ever since is the subject of this engaging study by Pierre Hadot. Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both the ancients and later thinkers such as Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, Hadot traces successive interpretations of Heraclitus' words. Over time, Hadot finds, "Nature loves to hide" has meant that all that lives tends to die; that Nature wraps herself in myths; and (for Heidegger) that Being unveils as it veils itself. Meanwhile the pronouncement has been used to explain everything from the opacity of the natural world to our modern angst. From these kaleidoscopic exegeses and usages emerge two contradictory approaches to nature: the Promethean, or experimental-questing, approach, which embraces technology as a means of tearing the veil from Nature and revealing her secrets; and the Orphic, or contemplative-poetic, approach, according to which such a denuding of Nature is a grave trespass. In place of these two attitudes Hadot proposes one suggested by the Romantic vision of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schelling, who saw in the veiled Isis an allegorical expression of the sublime. "Nature is art and art is nature," Hadot writes, inviting us to embrace Isis and all she represents: art makes us intensely aware of how completely we ourselves are not merely surrounded by nature but also part of nature.