Résultats de "V.V.A.A." dans Toutes les catégories

Rigel is a thousand lightyears farther from the Core Worlds than Earth, so they suffer the first attacks. The mood at Central is jubilant. Our greatest rival is falling—now is the time to strike while they’re weak! Legion Varus is deployed to Jungle World, a vital planet deep in Rigellian territory. Our foes, fighting on two fronts, are driven back with ease. But one man questions the wisdom of this move. Should Earth expand with greed, aiding new monsters from the Galactic Rim? That lone voice of reason comes from James McGill.

Earth is locked in a dangerous arms race with Rigel. McGill’s efforts at diplomacy are disastrous. Events spin out of control and interstellar warfare consumes the outer provinces of the Empire. Great fleets are gathered, and troops are hurried aboard transports. Legion Varus is launched toward a secret target world. McGill leads an early strike against Rigel’s defenses, but his efforts are foiled at every turn. Who could be behind these betrayals? Could his own government be plotting his demise?

Earth’s entire fleet and all her legions are conscripted by the Galactics. Centurion McGill of Legion Varus is among countless troops pressed into service as cannon fodder for the Empire. Not everyone on Earth is happy with the demands of the Galactics. Earth has built up her military for decades, and now she might lose everything in a foreign war no one understands. As the man who has killed more Mogwa than any other human in history, McGill is approached and given a mission. He has a fateful decision to make.

Over the past 70 years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies promote.

Long before Earth began conquering her neighboring stars, Legion Varus was deployed on Tau Ceti. Valuable and highly illegal treasures were stolen during the campaign, but McGill never gave it a second thought. The Tau haven’t forgotten him, however. For decades, they’ve hunted and plotted, and at last they’ve found the pirate who robbed them. Tau agents invade Earth seeking revenge and profit. Caught up in violence and intrigue, McGill is given the task of finding out where the loot has gone and who was responsible for the theft in the first place.

Mindy's best friend Molly was a maintenance technician on the Bradbury 12. When Molly went missing, Mindy started looking for answers but all she found were more questions. They were supposed to meet up at Geniuscon, a science fiction convention that attracts people from every walk of life, and she knows Molly's son Aidan is going to be there. Determined to get in touch with her friend, Mindy tracks down Aidan and meets some of his new friends, the guys cosplaying as big, blue aliens.

Vibrant, believable characters help drive a fictional story. Along with a clever plot, well-drawn characters make us want to continue reading a novel or finish watching a movie. In Creating Characters, Dwight V. Swain shows how writers can invent interesting characters and improve them so that they move a story along.

Blackmailed by his sister into giving a Christmas house party to celebrate her recent marriage, Edward Greyston, Marquess of Winterbourne, is quite certain the next few days will be an utter nightmare. Nightmares, however, are something Edward is all too familiar with. After the bloody battle of Waterloo, he has returned from the war a changed man, full of rage and guilt. Suspecting one of his house guests, the bluestocking Belinda Holbrook is about to trap unsuspecting and gullible Lord Nibley into marriage, he goes to warn him, only to get caught himself.

"A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say 'Slum!' because he could see no more." But to its residents, this derelict corner of Trinidad's capital is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S. Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighbors construct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion.

Der letzte Krieg zwischen Menschen und Dämonen steht unmittelbar bevor, und die einzige Hoffnung der Menschheit ruht nun auf Arlen, seiner Frau Renna und seinem Rivalen Jardir. Denn nur, wenn es ihnen gelingt, den Willen eines der mächtigen Dämonenprinzen zu brechen und ihn zu zwingen, sie in den Abgrund zu führen, werden sie die dort herangezüchtete Dämonenarmee aufhalten können. Aber noch ist der Sieg gegen die Dämonen nur ein Traum.

Commodore Straker faces new enemies as neighboring interstellar empires decide his New Republic is a growing threat. A two-front war develops, and the Liberator must face both the Mutuality and the Hundred Worlds. Even as the fighting rages, the mysterious Opters are on the move. They make a diplomatic effort to reach out to Straker - but can he trust the Hive Masters? Will they help or stab him in the back?

On a road trip through Africa, two English people - Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys; and Linda, a supercilious "compound wife" - are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin's Uganda. And the farther Naipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims.

Ever since Fern could remember, she and her mother have lived as servants in Wyndemere House, the old Gothic mansion of the Davenport family. She may have been a servant, but Fern developed a sweet friendship with Dr. Davenport's son, Ryder, and she was even allowed free range of the estate. But Dr. Davenport has remarried, and his new wife has very different ideas about a servant's place. Yet, for all her wrath, the cruel woman cannot break the mysterious bond between Ryder and Fern.

Das Rote London steht im Bann des großen Spiels der Elemente, in dem Magier aus aller Welt ihre Kräfte messen. Dass der Antari Kell antritt, ist Ehrensache. Aber auch andere illustre Gäste geben sich die Ehre, etwa der berüchtigte Pirat Alucard Emery - und natürlich die Diebin Lila Bard. Zu dumm, dass in all dem Trubel niemand merkt, dass im schwarzen London etwas Urböses aus tiefem Schlaf erwacht.

As identical twins, Haylee and Kaylee Fitzgerald have always done things in exactly the same way. Under their mother's guidance, their every outfit, every meal, and every thought was identical. But now things are different. With Kaylee back at home after her sister's betrayal, her life has been turned inside out. Both her mother and Haylee are away, and Kaylee's alone and more lost than ever.

Audrina remembers a better time, when her husband, Arden, was a young man with a heart filled with devotion for her. He didn't used to be this ambitious, this expansive...this cruel. But then, the death of Aurdina's father changed a great many things. When the reading of her father's will reveals that Audrina herself will control 51 percent of the family brokerage, the halls of Whitefern again don't feel safe. Arden's protestations become frantic, nearly violent.

Deng Xiaoping joined the Chinese Communist movement as a youth and rose in its ranks to become an important lieutenant of Mao's from the 1930s onward. Two years after Mao's death in 1976, Deng became the de facto leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the prime architect of China's post-Mao reforms. Abandoning the Maoist socioeconomic policies he had long fervently supported, he set in motion changes that would dramatically transform China's economy, society, and position in the world. Three decades later we are living with the results.

Initially, the Thirty Years War was precipitated in 1618 by religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire. But the conflict soon spread beyond religion to encompass the internal politics and balance of power within the Empire, and then later to the other European powers. By the end, it became simply a dynastic struggle between Bourbon France and Habsburg Spain. And almost all of it was fought out in Germany. Entire regions were depopulated and destroyed.

For the past 17 years, Dr. Stuart Eisendrath has piloted research into the therapeutic effects of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) on people experiencing clinical depression. Since then, by helping people recognize that they don't have to change the content of their thoughts but can find relief simply by changing how they relate to their thoughts, Eisendrath has seen dramatic improvements in people's symptoms and quality of life nearly every day.

After escaping the trauma of the Umbrella Lady’s home, 13-year-old Saffron Faith Anders is determined to find the father who abandoned her all those years ago. But when she finds him in a nearby town, Saffron is shocked to discover that he has married a woman he clearly had been involved with before her mother’s death. Worse, her father insists Saffron pretend to be his niece so he can continue to con his new wife’s family. Desperate for her father’s love, she goes along with the farce, but it soon becomes clear that perhaps it is better to face the world alone....