Torn between her loyalty to her neo-nazi conspirators and her husband, Jane Polansky becomes riddled with guilt. Although she married Robert Polansky, head of Diamond Tech, to get at military secrets, she grows to love her husband, a man who espouses fine human qualities, unlike the hatred and misery which encompassed Jane's life. Stored in the same location as the secrets is the world famous Polansky diamond collection, sought after by organized criminals who will stop at nothing to get at those diamonds. Waiting in the background is a psychopath planning to strike out against the outsiders invading his tranquil community recently transformed into a high tech Mecca. Industrial espionage contributes to the plot by Breitling from Electropulse AG, a major world class weapons manufacture who also wants those diamond lens secrets. Amidst it all is the discovery in Siberia of the world's largest diamond and Robert Polansky's attempt to acquire it. At Breitling's refuge on Great Albacore Cay in the Bahamas, submarine deployed Navy SEALs plan a strike. Who will be victorious? Does Jane find the love and security she craves. Who eventually ends up with all the wealth? How will it all end? Readers are kept on edge. Love, hate, adultery, revenge, international intrigue, robbery, and murder all contribute to the suspense.

By tracing changing responses to insanity in Massachusetts, the author provides new insights into the evolution of early American culture.

“A MASTERPIECE OF THRILLER AND MYSTERY. Blake Pierce did a magnificent job developing characters with a psychological side so well described that we feel inside their minds, follow their fears and cheer for their success. Full of twists, this book will keep you awake until the turn of the last page.” --Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Once Gone) FACE OF MADNESS is book #4 in a new FBI thriller series by USA Today bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose #1 bestseller Once Gone (Book #1) (a free download) has received over 1,000 five star reviews. FBI Special Agent Zoe Prime suffers from a rare condition which also gives her a unique talent—she views the world through a lens of numbers. The numbers torment her, make her unable to relate to people, and give her a failed romantic life—yet they also allow her to see patterns that no other FBI agent can see. Zoe keeps her condition a secret, ashamed, in fear her colleagues may find out. In FACE OF MADNESS, a truly awful serial killer is targeting women in FBI Special Agent Zoe Prime’s home state of Nebraska, using methods reminiscent of Ted Bundy. Zoe sees all the numbers—but for the first time in her life, it doesn’t help. This killer may be driven by human and social reasons—something that Zoe struggles to understand. Is this the case that proves her limits? Or is there a pattern to everything? Even social interactions? And as Zoe battles her own demons, will her decision to visit her family—a disastrous one—finally lead to her breaking point? An action-packed psychological suspense thriller with heart-pounding suspense, FACE OF MADNESS is book #4 in a riveting new series that will leave you turning pages late into the night.

These essays on Arthurian prose romances, published as a tribute to Cedric E. Pickford, reflect their development and the reshaping of the romances in response to changing taste and fashion from the death of Chrétien de Troyes to the end of the medieval period in England. Topics include the question of religious influences; the transition of Arthurian material to foreign contexts; and the fortunes of the prose romance in England, focusing on the Prose 'Merlin' and Malory. The contributors are: ELSPETH KENNEDY, RENÉE L. CURTIS, FANNI BOGDANOW, JANE H.M. TAYLOR, DAVID BLAMIRES, CERIDWEN LLOYD-MORGAN, CAROL M. MEALE, KAREN STERN, DEREK BREWER, FAITH LYONS, ROGER MIDDLETON

The Strange Death of Europe is the internationally bestselling account of a continent and a culture caught in the act of suicide, now updated with new material taking in developments since it was first published to huge acclaim. These include rapid changes in the dynamics of global politics, world leadership and terror attacks across Europe. Douglas Murray travels across Europe to examine first-hand how mass immigration, cultivated self-distrust and delusion have contributed to a continent in the grips of its own demise. From the shores of Lampedusa to migrant camps in Greece, from Cologne to London, he looks critically at the factors that have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their alteration as a society. Murray's "tremendous and shattering" book (The Times) addresses the disappointing failures of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel's U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation and the Western fixation on guilt, uncovering the malaise at the very heart of the European culture. His conclusion is bleak, but the predictions not irrevocable. As Murray argues, this may be our last chance to change the outcome, before it's too late.

One of the most influential experts on military history and strategy has now written his magnum opus, an original and provocative account of the past hundred years of global conflict. The Changing Face of War is the book that reveals the path that led to the impasse in Iraq, why powerful standing armies are now helpless against ill-equipped insurgents, and how the security of sovereign nations may be maintained in the future. While paying close attention to the unpredictable human element, Martin van Creveld takes us on a journey from the last century’s clashes of massive armies to today’s short, high-tech, lopsided skirmishes and frustrating quagmires. Here is the world as it was in 1900, controlled by a handful of “great powers,” mostly European, with the memories of eighteenth-century wars still fresh. Armies were still led by officers riding on horses, messages conveyed by hand, drum, and bugle. As the telegraph, telephone, and radio revolutionized communications, big-gun battleships like the British Dreadnought, the tank, and the airplane altered warfare. Van Creveld paints a powerful portrait of World War I, in which armies would be counted in the millions, casualties–such as those in the cataclysmic battle of the Marne–would become staggering, and deadly new weapons, such as poison gas, would be introduced. Ultimately, Germany’s plans to outmaneuver her enemies to victory came to naught as the battle lines ossified and the winners proved to be those who could produce the most weapons and provide the most soldiers. The Changing Face of War then propels us to the even greater global carnage of World War II. Innovations in armored warfare and airpower, along with technological breakthroughs from radar to the atom bomb, transformed war from simple slaughter to a complex event requiring new expertise–all in the service of savagery, from Pearl Harbor to Dachau to Hiroshima. The further development of nuclear weapons during the Cold War shifts nations from fighting wars to deterring them: The number of active troops shrinks and the influence of the military declines as civilian think tanks set policy and volunteer forces “decouple” the idea of defense from the world of everyday people. War today, van Crevald tells us, is a mix of the ancient and the advanced, as state-of-the-art armies fail to defeat small groups of crudely outfitted guerrilla and terrorists, a pattern that began with Britain’s exit from India and culminating in American misadventures in Vietnam and Iraq, examples of what the author calls a “long, almost unbroken record of failure.” How to learn from the recent past to reshape the military for this new challenge–how to still save, in a sense, the free world–is the ultimate lesson of this big, bold, and cautionary work. The Changing Face of War is sure to become the standard source on this essential subject.

This unusual study raises anew the controversy over the function of art in the interpretation of human existence. Striking a surprisingly modern note, which should be especially interesting to readers in this country, Mrs. Markovic finds suitably "engaged" characters in the works of Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Waugh, Greene, Lehman, Bowen, and Cary, through which she pursues her inquiry.