Rachael Farrington is sitting on a riverbank when young Jason Beauvale wanders into her life. The two become inseparable, but Rachael’s mother is suspicious of the boy; he’s wealthy and, for reasons of her own, she has no trust for him and his kind. As the couple become closer, Jason shares a secret: Many years earlier he witnessed his father escape, badly injured, under a hail of bullets. He doesn’t know why it happened, or if his father survived, or why his mother then chose a life in hiding, refusing to speak much of him or their past lives again. These are mysteries that haunt the boy and which he aches to resolve. In an ironic twist, as the young couple battle against those determined to end their passionate relationship, they are confronted by the very forces that lurked in Jason’s past. In the turmoil that follows, loved ones soon face abduction, imprisonment and death, as an unscrupulous organization, known as The Syndicate, seeks to fulfill a long-outstanding resolution to which Jason unwittingly becomes the key. The fight for justice falls to Rachael, but with high-ranking police corruption working to defeat her, how can she alone bring The Syndicate down?

White Ashes is a fictional novel on the bustling city life of Boston. Charles Wilkinson is a young man struggling to find his place in life, much to the chagrin of his uncle, the successful businessman John Hurd. But an interesting conversation one evening puts an idea in his mind. He will try to convince his tight-fisted uncle to insure his company the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company. An uphill task awaits him but he is determined in his quest. Even if it means blackmailing the old man...

White Ashes is a fictional novel on the bustling city life of Boston. Charles Wilkinson is a young man struggling to find his place in life, much to the chagrin of his uncle, the successful businessman John Hurd. But an interesting conversation one evening puts an idea in his mind. He will try to convince his tight-fisted uncle to insure his company the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company. An uphill task awaits him but he is determined in his quest. Even if it means blackmailing the old man...

"At last, she arrives at the fatal end of the plank . . . and, with her hands crossed over her chest, falls straight downward, suspended for a moment in the air before being devoured by the burning pit that awaits her. . . ." This grisly 1829 account by Pierre Dubois demonstrates the usual European response to the Hindu custom of satis sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands—horror and revulsion. Yet to those of the Hindu faith, not least the satis themselves, this act signals the sati's sacredness and spiritual power. Ashes of Immortality attempts to see the satis through Hindu eyes, providing an extensive experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in northern India, where the state-banned practice of sati reemerged in the 1970s, as well as extensive textual analysis, Weinberger-Thomas constructs a radically new interpretation of satis. She shows that their self-immolation transcends gender, caste and class, region and history, representing for the Hindus a path to immortality.

Includes a foreword by Mark Unno and Taitetsu Unno. Jeff Wilson started his walk on the Buddha's Path as a Zen practitioner-taking up a tradition of vigorous self-effort, intensive meditation, and meticulous attention to rectitude in every action. But in Jeff's case, rather than freeing him from his suffering, he found those Zen practices made him nothing short of insufferable. And so he turned to Shin Buddhism-a path that is easily the most popular in Zen's native land of Japan but is largely unknown in the West. Shin emphasizes an ''entrusting heart,'' a heart that is able to receive with gratitude every moment of our mistake-filled and busy lives. Moreover, through walking the Shin path, Jeff comes see that each of us (himself especially included) are truly ''foolish beings,'' people so filled with endlessly arising ''blind passions'' and ingrained habits that we so easily cause harm even with our best intentions. And even so, Shin holds out the tantalizing possibility that, by truly entrusting our foolish selves to the compassionate universe, we can learn to see how this foolish life, just as it is, is nonetheless also a life of grace. Buddhism of the Heart is a wide-ranging book of essays and open-hearted stories, reflections that run the gamut from intensely personal to broadly philosophical, introducing the reader to a remarkable religious tradition of compassionate acceptance.

Out of the Ashes is the definitive history of the Provisional Irish Republican movement, from its formation at the outset of the modern Troubles up to and after its official disarmament in 2005. Robert White, a prolific observer of IRA and Sinn Féin activities, has amassed an incomparable body of interview material from leading members over a thirty-year period. In this defining study, the interviewees provide extraordinary insights into the complex motivations that provoked their support for armed struggle, their eventual reform, and the mind-set of today’s ‘dissidents’ who refuse to lay down their arms. Those interviewed stem from every stage of the Provisionals’ history, from founding figures such as Seán Mac Stiofáin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Joe Cahill to the new generation that replaced them: Martin McGuinness, Danny Morrison, and Brendan Hughes among others. Out of the Ashes is a pioneering history that breaks new ground in defining how the Provisionals operated, caused worldwide condemnation, and were transformed by constitutional politics.

The survival, growth, and stem form of 45 white ash (Fraxinus americana L.) families nested within 22 provenances were evaluated 1 5 years after establishment in North Central West Virginia. Geographic family origins encompassed a wide area in the eastern and central United States, including locations from Maine in the North to Mississippi in the South to Nebraska in the West. Significant differences were identified among provenances for survival, stem form, total height, and stem diameter and among families within provenances for stem form and total height. Latitude was a significant indicator of provenance performance with performance declining north and south of the plantation latitude. Performance gains may be realized by using proper provenances then identifying superior families within these provenances for white ash artificial regeneration activities.