When Song Yu saw the customer, he had sneaked out. He hadn't thought that he would run into a classmate that was deliberately making things difficult for her. A man as calm as the wind and as beautiful as the moon, this was the impression she had of him. However, she didn't know that she was never simple in his heart.

From the stories of wives and their lovers to those of kings and their conquests, to the overarching story of Shahrazad and Shahryar, the tales of the Arabian Nights have offered countless audiences entertainment and enjoyment as well as serving as cautionary stories. An outstanding piece of world literature, the Arabian Nights provide a lively and interesting way of exploring aspects of sexuality, romance, gender, culture, wealth, and politics. Looking at a wide range of the tales, David Ghanim offers a rigorous exploration of their profound sexuality: looking at both the context in which they were written and organised, as well as their legacy. By including accounts of heterosexuality, homosexuality, cuckoldry, insatiable lust, promiscuity, rape, incest, bestiality, demonic sexuality, and erotica, Ghanim highlights the complexity and dynamism of medieval sexuality, the active role of women in sexual activities, and the prevailing positive outlook on sexual liaison and gender mixing.

The idea of this women's magazine originated with Samuel Williams, a Cincinnati Methodist, who thought that Christian women needed a magazine less worldly than Godey's Lady's Book and Snowden's Lady's Companion. Written largely by ministers, this exceptionally well-printed little magazine contained well-written essays of a moral character, plenty of poetry, articles on historical and scientific matters, and book reviews. Among western writers were Alice Cary, who contributed over a hundred sketches and poems, her sister Phoebe Cary, Otway Curry, Moncure D. Conway, and Joshua R. Giddings; and New England contributors included Mrs. Lydia Sigourney, Hannah F. Gould, and Julia C.R Dorr. By 1851, each issue published a peice of music and two steel plates, usually landscapes or portraits. When Davis E. Clark took over the editorship in 1853, the magazine became brighter and attained a circulation of 40,000. Unlike his predecessors, Clark included fictional pieces and made the Repository a magazine for the whole family. After the war it began to decline and in 1876 was replaced by the National Repository. The Ladies' Repository was an excellent representative of the Methodist mind and heart. Its essays, sketches, and poems, its good steel engravings, and its moral tone gave it a charm all its own. -- Cf. American periodicals, 1741-1900.

In 1994 when South Africans were finally seeing the light of freedom and independence, three well-respected businesswomen – Talullah Ntuli, Edna Whithead and Nkosazana Dlamini – formed the Black Widow Society, a secret organisation aimed at liberating women trapped in emotionally and physically abusive relationships by assisting in ‘eliminating’ their errant husbands. For fifteen years the Black Widow Society operated undetected, impeccably run by The Triumvirate with the help of their suave and mysterious hired gun, Mzwakhe Khuzwayo, a slick ex-convict meticulous in his responsibilities. But as the secret organisation recruits more members, the wheels of this well-oiled machine threaten to fall off. Will Talullah’s controlling streak or Nkosazana’s unfettered material aspirations jeopardise the future of the Black Widow Society? Or perhaps one of the new recruits, unsettled by the reality of the elimination of her former husband, will lose her nerve and expose the workings of the group after all this time? As the tension mounts, Black Widow Society builds to a chilling and bloody climax that will keep you guessing and riveted until the very last page.

Welcome back to Hawk Island and the village of Two Brooks. After three men disappeared, Monsignor Inocente, is suspicious of the semblance of peace and quiet in his village, and with good reason. He knows his villagers, especially a group of strong-willed women called the Sacristy—defiant and mercurial, delivering their own brand of alternative justice against errant, abusive men. He tries to curb their vigilante means of attaining justice and the general willful behavior of his people, while at the same time protecting them from the implacable heavy hand of justice coming from the mainland. When a police inspector from the mainland, with wild hair and a hooded smile, arrives in Two Brooks to investigate the disappearance of the three men, the residents wonder if he will bring them more sorrow or maybe even hope. As the inspector digs deeper into the lives of the villagers, he becomes one of them. Is it a ruse to learn their secrets or did he fall prey to their ways? In the second book of the Hawk Island series, Angela, one of the Sacristy women, continues to challenge the violent subordination and unrepentant oppression of women in her village. One of her virtues is the depth of her love for people and causes; she does it completely and unabashedly, but this becomes her undoing when she faces the painful truth of loving more than one man.