When the border between Earth and Vanadis was created, so were three men—guardians meant to mend the border when it began to fail. That time is now, and those three guardians must prepare. Varros Hawk is the first. He was born a member of an infamous assassin’s guild but left when he discovered the damning truth about its leader. Now that the leader has taken his revenge by corrupting Hawk’s best friend, Hawk will have to risk a dangerous battle if he wants to get him back. The second guardian is Therrian Shalis, once a dark angel the underworld council saw fit to execute. Reincarnated to do the bidding of the guild’s leader, his only desire is to get revenge on the council. In his attempt to do so, Therrian’s path crosses Hawk’s, and he gets a lot more than he bargained for. The identity of the third guardian is yet unknown, but he is the most powerful of the three. There are rumors, however, of another with abilities that neither world has ever witnessed before. All of these men must overcome their demons before facing the greatest challenge of all: sealing the border and saving both worlds from extinction.

Sounding 1: BEFORE 1840 The notes, journals and characters of Aboriginal Protectors William Thomas and his Chief George Robinson form the backbone of this compilation. With this ethnographic material we learn something of the Kulin worldview into this mostly white-fella history. Sounding 1: Before 1840 describes the initial British and European experiences, events, observations, intentions, self-serving judgements, ignorance, naivete, treachery and so on when they found Oz and proclaimed the continent theirs by the now obvious fiction of terra nullius – Latin legalese for ‘land belonging to no people’. The reader may enjoy separating the grains of truth from the chaff propaganda of Empire capitalism or racist / sectarian Christian bible dogma that was the self-serving mindset of the white land-takers. Batman and Fawkner’s land-hunting deals with local koori’s along with the re-emergence of the remarkable wild white castaway Buckley made their mark on the first settlement at Melbourne. The focus widens in 1836 with Surveyor-General Major Mitchell’s and his Wuradjuri guides ‘conquering the interior’ from the Murray near Mildura to the Western District at Portland and then back north-east across the state to the Murray upstream at Albury. His wheel tracks opened up Victoria from the north. First contact race interactions at Port Phillip and the notion of cultural-coexistence during the first five years leads to the role of ‘successful battler’ and publican Fawkner in the colonial invasion process from Kulin country to sheep-run to city. Sounding 1 then winds up with Melbourne’s first executions and descriptions of Port Phillip as the money melting pot forming the Melbourne hub of world capitalism. Twentieth century academic studies now identify native religion, language zones, tribal locations and clan heads at the time of dispossession by pirate capitalism. In describing the Australian land-rush the chapter echoes oscillate between history, sociology, race theory, trade and class wars, whaling and sealing, imperialism and the monopoly East India Company army mates all pitted against the ‘vanishing race’ of hunter-gathering ‘savages’. The dispossession was virtually complete in Victoria before the 1850’s gold rushes transformed the sheep-runs into banker’s dividend wealth for the ‘winners’. Sounding 2: DISPOSSESSION AT MELBOURNE: Sounding 2 unfolds gently with a wistful early Melbourne memoir involving Batman’s lost lawyer Gellibrand in 1836 but then we confront the frontier ‘kill or be killed’ point of necessity. The violent life, times and fate of mass murderer Fred Taylor who was first employed as overseer for banker Swanston’s Bellarine peninsula land-grab sets the local dispossession tone. Taylor’s repeated atrocities today exposes a credibility gap in Oz – between civilized progress and slaughter, that now looms over all else in Victoria’s birth as an independent state in 1851. The winter of 1837 saw the first violent death of a white squatter and his servant by ‘savage natives’ north-west of Williamstown at Mt Cotterell. Town leaders such as Fawkner and ‘police chief’ Henry Batman formed a posse that also included clan heads from both the Melbourne and Geelong tribal areas. Buckley refused to take part in the vigilante party and its punitive actions belied the humanitarian standards expressed in Batman’s treaty deed. This revenge slaughter and destruction of ‘villages’ by the white invaders forced the Sydney government to investigate and so began administering ‘law and order’ at Port Phillip. By 1838 Sydney trumped Batman’s land-grab and the penal government of NSW on the one hand executing eight ‘whites’ for killing what the newspapers called ‘savages’, while on the other hand providing sufficient speedy cavalry to tackle black resistance in Victoria at places such as west of Colac and near Benalla after the Faithfull massacre. The arrival in 1839 of first governor La Trobe and the Aboriginal Protectorate plan then unfolds the development of town civic structures while tribal life disintegrates. Government and private measures to ‘tame the naked Melbourne natives’ culminated with the dawn Merri Creek round-up in October 1840 of hundreds of Kulins by Major Lettsom’s redcoats and townsmen. This appears as the death blow to tribal life, and with the first shiploads of migrating British colonists arriving in 1841, near genocide for the Kulin, Mara, Kurnai and Murray River first-peoples.

The Worlds of George RR Martin is a showcase of the huge variety of influences behind the legendary fantasy writer.

Recounts the lifelong struggle of the 19th-century pioneer environmental conservationist.

As Alastair Campbell said in the introduction to The Blair Years, it was always his intention to publish the full version, covering his time as spokesman and chief strategist to Tony Blair. Prelude to Power is the first of four volumes, and covers the early days of New Labour, culminating in their victory at the polls in 1997. Volume 1 details the extraordinary tensions between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as they resolved the question as to which one should stand to become Labour leader. It shows that right from the start, relations at the top were prone to enormous strain, suspicions and accusations of betrayal. Yet it also shows the political and personal bonds that tied them together, and which made them one of the most feared and respected electoral machines anywhere in the world. A story of politics in the raw, Prelude to Power is above all an intimate, detailed portrait of the people who have done so much to shape modern history.

Enter New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh’s darkly beautiful world of archangels and immortal power, as a pact is sealed between two souls bound by blood, stirred by desire, and driven by vengeance… With wings of midnight and an affinity for shadows, Jason courts darkness. But now, with the Archangel Neha’s consort lying murdered in the jewel-studded palace that was his prison and her rage threatening cataclysmic devastation, Jason steps into the light, knowing he must unearth the murderer before it is too late. Earning Neha’s trust comes at a price—Jason must tie himself to her bloodline through the Princess Mahiya, a woman with secrets so dangerous, she trusts no one. Least of all an enemy spymaster. With only their relentless hunt for a violent, intelligent killer to unite them, Jason and Mahiya embark on a quest that leads to a centuries-old nightmare… and to the dark storm of an unexpected passion that threatens to drench them both in blood.