Tychon Damiano was minding his own business when disaster struck. Of course, since his business was buying and selling stolen goods, disaster was not entirely unexpected. What was unexpected for him was waking up in a palace full of servants and high tech gadgets, including a virtual girlfriend. It's all very pleasant except for one little problem: Ty can't leave. Just about the time he discovers that a real woman is vastly superior to the virtual kind, some truly alarming nightmares start to haunt his sleep. Ty learns to play chess from a master, but he begins to suspect he's part of a much bigger game.

This book is an innovative collection of original research which analyzes the many varieties of post-conflict masculinity. Exploring topics such as physical disability and psychological trauma, and masculinity and sexuality in relation to the "feminizing" contexts of wounding and desertion, this volume draws together leading academics in the fields of gender, history, literature, and disability studies, in an inter- and multi-disciplinary exploration of the conditions and circumstances that men face in the aftermath of war.

After a thousand years one man's fell magic has returned the Demonic Presence to the land. A young farmer, Aleksei, chosen by a magical Wood, and a prince, Jonas, gifted in the magical meridians of the Archanium, must find a way to defeat the Presence to save themselves and all they love. But what happens when the monsters and figures of prophecy become horrifyingly real? How will Aleksei cope? When the stakes are at their highest, will Jonas falter? Or will both rise to the occasion, reforging themselves into the saviors Prophecy demands they become? In a world of magic and Magi, of Angels and Demons alike, how will they survive their own contorted destiny? This is the story of a seemingly-simple world gone mad, and the reality that every action, no matter how apparently benign, can serve to unravel terrifying truths. This is the story of Aleksei Drago, farmer and Hunter, and Jonas Belgi, prince and Archanium Mage.

“What if the world we’re on is only one thread out of millions of threads in the rope of time?” The question the Outsider woman posed to him left Bardolph as confused as ever. He knew the Outsiders had appeared as if by magic many years before, during his great-grandfather’s reign, but he had never understood where they came from. He only knew they had changed Albion forever. Melissa York might have been grateful to her rescuer, who called himself King of Albion, but she saw no reason to let her gratitude influence her opinion of antiquated notions like monarchy and pagan religions. Let the Druids go back to their forests. She and her people were the best defense Albion had against the invaders. Bardolph knew better. All the people of Albion would need to work together or they would find themselves conquered again. Only this time instead of a Roman emperor, their tribute would be paid to one in faraway China. He only hoped the Outsiders were as clever and as powerful as rumor said they were, because Albion needed all the help it could get.

The sequel to The Sixth Discipline: Ran-Del Jahanpur still doesn’t know what his clan shaman foresaw in his vision of the future. Whatever the old man saw made him force Ran-Del to leave the forest and marry Baron Hayden's daughter. In spite of minor jealousies, Ran-Del and Francesca have forged a strong marriage. Ran-Del is still a warrior, but he's comfortable in the city partly because few people know of the psy abilities that make him so useful to the House of Hayden. Francesca is happy Ran-Del can see her thoughts well enough to know her feelings for her old flame Freddie Leong have cooled. Fortunately, psy talents are rare in the city, and no one knows the true circumstances of her marriage, not even Freddie. As heir to House Leong, Freddie has his own problems; he spends his days trying to escape his mother's iron control and ensure she never kills his father. But not all the dangers of Haven lie in the cities. In the mountains to the north, the fiercely independent people known as the Horde have changed their ways. Instead of fighting among themselves and raiding in force, they now use cunning to get what they need. When the Horde strikes, Ran-Del and Francesca face a threat far worse than either of them ever imagined. And then finally, Ran-Del confronts his destiny.

It's not a super power if you can't control it! Jason Miller's biggest worries were keeping up with his homework, paying for his classic jazz habit,and hiding the fact that he carried a flip phone. But then one day he finds himself teleporting from place to place, a talent he can't control. It gets worse when he lands in an alternate world, one that has many, many more women than men. It sounds great until Jason learns the downside to being a precious commodity: Having a harem is no fun if you're the one who's locked up.

This unusual book explores the historical assumptions at work in the style of literary criticism that came to dominate English studies in the twentieth century. Stefan Collini shows how the work of critics renowned for their close attention to 'the words on the page' was in practice bound up with claims about the nature and direction of historical change, the interpretation of the national past, and the scholarship of earlier historians. Among the major figures examined in detail are T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, William Empson, and Raymond Williams, while there are also original discussions of such figures as Basil Willey, L.C. Knights, Q.D. Leavis, and Richard Hoggart. The Nostalgic Imagination argues that in the period between Eliot's The Sacred Wood and Williams's The Long Revolution, the writings of such critics came to occupy the cultural space left by academic history's retreat into specialized, archive-bound monographs. Their work challenged the assumptions of the Whig interpretation of English history, and entailed a revision of the traditional relations between "literary history" and "general history". Combining close textual analysis with wide-ranging intellectual history, this volume both revises the standard story of the history of literary criticism and illuminates a central feature of the cultural history of twentieth-century Britain.