Into his life she came—wanting…willing…wanton.It’s no ordinary morning when Toni arrives at Zach’s garage. Flat broke, with a past she won’t share, Toni is instantly taken by such a potently virile man. Direct and unashamed, she tells him she’s a motorcycle performance artist who needs work and knows motors.Zach knows women, and Toni is unlike any he’s met. Lushly sensuous, exceedingly assured, she’d easily be his match in business and bed. A provocative challenge that stirs him as nothing has since losing his wife. A chance he’s reluctant to take. He offers no more than a month’s employment then she’ll have to be on her way.The hours tick by. Each word and glance intensifies their escalating desire, forcing them to surrender to passion and Toni’s need for Zach’s dominance. Driven by carnal hunger, conquered by yearning, they face the unforeseen truth of Toni’s past and a future neither of them expected. Views: 63
As Haykon’s refugees converge on Calandra, Zadok’s army prepares for their final assault while Jack and Ranse struggle to convince the incompetent king that the annihilation of Calandra’s people is imminent. Thane, Dor, and Tam return to their homeland seeking a talisman that might be their only hope in defeating the evil horde that is bent on their destruction but old jealousies and hatred could be the stumbling blocks that doom all good races to ultimate extinction. Jne seeks to regain her honor knowing that very likely it will end with her death. Time is running out for all as fate races to meet them in this explosive conclusion of the Master of the Tane series. Views: 63
Between 1896 and 1899, thousands of people lured by gold braved a grueling journey into the remote wilderness of North America. Within two years, Dawson City, in the Canadian Yukon, grew from a mining camp of four hundred to a raucous town of over thirty thousand people. The stampede to the Klondike was the last great gold rush in history.
Scurvy, dysentery, frostbite, and starvation stalked all who dared to be in Dawson. And yet the possibilities attracted people from all walks of life—not only prospectors but also newspapermen, bankers, prostitutes, priests, and lawmen. Gold Diggers follows six stampeders—Bill Haskell, a farm boy who hungered for striking gold; Father Judge, a Jesuit priest who aimed to save souls and lives; Belinda Mulrooney, a twenty-four-year-old who became the richest businesswoman in town; Flora Shaw, a journalist who transformed the town’s governance; Sam Steele, the officer who finally established order in the lawless town; and most famously Jack London, who left without gold, but with the stories that would make him a legend.
Drawing on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and stories, Charlotte Gray delivers an enthralling tale of the gold madness that swept through a continent and changed a landscape and its people forever. Views: 63
SUMMARY:Writer, musicologist, archivist, singer, DJ, filmmaker, record, radio and TV producer, Alan Lomax was a man of many parts. Without him the history of popular music would have been very different. Armed with a tape-recorder and his own near-flawless good taste, Lomax spent years travelling the US, particularly the south, recording its heritage of music and song for posterity, bringing to light the talents of performers ranging from Jelly Roll Morton to Leadbelly and Muddy Waters, and crucially influencing generations of musicians from Pete Seeger to the Stones, from Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan. Exiled from the US for seven years in the McCarthy era, his influence on British folk and rock was virtually as profound as on American music. The Stones owed both their existence and their name to Lomax's discovery Muddy Waters, and without Leadbelly there would have been no skiffle and no Beatles as we know them. His influence continues: recordings made by Lomax are the core of the sound-tracks of Oh, Brother, Where art Thou? and The Gangs of New York, and even featured, remixed, on Moby's Play. John Szwed's biography is the first ever of this remarkable and contradictory man (whom he both knew and worked with for ten years); through it Szwed will tell the story of a musical and political era, as he did so successfully in his previous book on Miles Davis and Sun Ra. Views: 63
Franny K. Stein didn't think the time would ever come when someone would realize what the K in her name stood for. And she REALLY didn't think that same someone would say her middle name in front of the whole school! But that's what happened at the Science Fair award ceremony, and all the kids and teachers burst out laughing. So Franny does what any respectable mad scientist would do--she goes back in time to change her name.However, things don't turn out quite as she calculated, and Franny ends up having to face her teenage self in a warped, fourth-dimensional, kid-versus-teen, good-versus-evil, Franny-versus-Franny battle of the minds! Views: 63
SUMMARY: For many years now China's economy has seemed unstoppable. A slow appreciation of the renminbi in 2007 brought wave upon wave of liquidity into China and allowed its companies and banks to raise hundreds of billions in dollars via stock market listings. State banks that had started the new century as bankrupt relics of a communist past became the darlings of international investors. Even the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the ensuing global financial crisis seemed to have little impact on China as the government quickly responded with a huge stimulus package. But the Lehman collapse was a dramatic wake up call to the Chinese leadership. This model of bank and capital market reform had been studiously emulated for more than a decade and had brought great benefits to China. But now, although they believed it to be bankrupt, the Chinese government were bereft of new ideas. In the face of the global financial crisis the government returned to what it knows best, massive state intervention via the banking system. Ten years of banking and capital market reforms were dead.In Red Capitalism, Carl Walter and Fraser Howie detail how the Chinese government reformed and modeled its financial system in the 30 years since it began its policy of engagement with the west. Instead of a stable series of policies producing steady growth, China's financial sector has boomed and gone bust with regularity in each decade. The latest decade is little different. Chinese banks have become objects of political struggle while they totter under balance sheets bloated by the excessive state-directed lending and bond issuance of 2009.Looking forward, the government's response to the global financial crisis has created a banking system the stability of which can be maintained only behind the walls of a non-convertible currency, a myriad of off-balance sheet arrangements with non-public state entities and the strong support of its best borrowers--the politically potent National Champions--who are the greatest beneficiaries of the financial status quo.China's financial system is not a model for the west and, indeed, is not a sustainable arrangement for China itself as it seeks increasingly to assert its influence internationally. This is not a story of impending collapse, but of frustrated reforms that suggests that any full opening and meaningful reform of the financial sector is not, indeed cannot be, on the government's agenda anytime soon. Views: 63
Secret HeiressWith his handsome good looks and rakish reputation, Lord Daniel Seaton is a draw for any eligible young misses. But much to the disgust of every other woman, Eliza Bancroft is the lucky lady's companion who has caught his eye.Eliza would dearly love to succumb to Daniel's flirtations, but propriety stops her. She is illegitimate - hardly an ideal wife for Daniel! But the temptation is too much to bear...Bartered BrideHer hand in marriage traded in a game of cards, innocent Lottie is completely out of her depth engaged to Lord Rothsay. Not only is he a womaniser, he also knows that Lottie isn't the woman he'd agreed to marry!Rothsay should have no qualms about ending this folly of a betrothal - especially when he learns he has been deceived. But sweet-natured Lottie has got under his skin and suddenly he wants to turn his fiancee into a wife for real! Views: 63
