Humanity's last hope for survival is a grizzled mercenary, and to save us all Samandahl Rey must face the mighty Suarian Weapon master. But what will Sam be forced to unleash to achieve his victory?

Profiles seventy-five authors, writing teams, and illustrators of graphic novels, and features an introduction to the genre, discussion of manga, brief accounts of graphic novel publishers, a glossary, and photographs.

A graphic novel in which Boon Sai Hong, a scoundrel with nothing more on his mind than thievery, learns he is destined to be the hero of his world.

At the heart of the on-going armed conflict in southern Thailand is a fundamental disagreement about the history of relations between the Patani Malays and the Thai kingdom. While the Thai royalist-nationalist version of history regards Patani as part of that kingdom "since time immemorial," Patani Malay nationalists look back to a golden age when the Sultanate of Patani was an independent, prosperous trading state and a renowned center for Islamic education and scholarship in Southeast Asia — a time before it was defeated, broken up, and brought under the control of the Thai state. While still influential, in recent years these diametrically opposed views of the past have begun to make way for more nuanced and varied interpretations. Patani scholars, intellectuals and students now explore their history more freely and confidently than in the past, while the once-rigid Thai nationalist narrative is open to more pluralistic interpretations. There is growing interaction and dialogue between historians writing in Thai, Malay and English, and engagement with sources and scholarship in other languages, including Chinese and Arabic. In The Ghosts of the Past in Southern Thailand, 13 scholars who have worked on this sensitive region evaluate the current state of current historical writing about the Patani Malays of southern Thailand. The essays in this book demonstrate that an understanding of the conflict must take into account the historical dimensions of relations between Patani and the Thai kingdom, and the ongoing influence of these perceptions on Thai state officials, militants, and the local population.

They are a covert Marine SpecOps unit -- a lethal weapon so secret only a handful of powerful men know of their existence. To get this far, they had to be the very best of the best. To get home, they'll have to be even better. Force 5 Recon: Deployment: Pakistan The hunt is on for the world's most feared terrorist, hidden somewhere in the labyrinthine mountains of northern Pakistan, after his "sleepers" unleash a nightmare of fire and death across the length of the U.S. But the cold-blooded mass murderer Mohammed al-Zumar holds a wild card: a hostage American television news crew. An elite team of Special Operatives led by Sergeant Mac Rainey is already in al-Zumar's backyard. Stranded in a Pakistani no-man's-land with their cover blown and their extraction copter shot out of the sky, Force 5 Recon sets off to find and free the captives on their own and exact a righteous revenge -- five U.S. Marines against a merciless criminal and his terrorist army in one of the world's most inhospitable regions. But these are exactly the odds Rainey and his men were trained to confront ... and to conquer.