Showing results by author "Gerard" in All Categories

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, it invaded Georgia. Both states are part of Russia's "near abroad"—newly independent states that were once part of the Soviet Union. While the Russia-Georgia war of 2008 faded from the headlines in the wake of the global recession, the geopolitical contest that created it did not. Six years later, the specter of a revanchist Russia returned when Putin's forces invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula. Eminent political geographer Gerard Toal moves beyond the polemical rhetoric to study the underlying territorial conflicts and geopolitical struggles.

Fully updated, and including three new chapters, this new edition of Gerard Whateley's acclaimed best seller documents the career of the racehorse who has transcended the track to become an Australian icon. It begins with the entrancing story of champion trainer Peter Moody, who came to select and guide the fastest horse the world had ever seen. Under Moody's patient and masterful guidance, the hulking injury-prone filly matured into a champion, idolised by a devoted following more akin to a rock band than a racehorse.

Hercule Poirot semble enfin avoir trouvé des adversaires à sa mesure : un quatuor criminel, dont le but n’est rien de moins que de s’assurer la domination du monde. Rude bataille en perspective !

Undeterred by the handful of hiccups she's had with her bed and breakfast in the small tourist town of Cymbeline, Georgia, Nina Fleet has her pedal to the medal to make her inn the best it can be with her trusty Australian Shepherd, Matilda. Nina takes a booth at the annual Veils and Vanities Bridal Expo, put on by the town's two wedding pros: Virgie Hamilton, retirement-aged dress shop owner, and Roxanna Query, a Gen-X event planner and Nina's new friend. But everything goes wrong when Roxanna comes tumbling out of an oversized prop wedding cake, strangled to death by a scarf.

Twenty-three-year-old Frits - office worker, daydreamer, teller of inappropriate jokes - finds life absurd and inexplicable. He lives with his parents, who drive him mad. He has terrible, disturbing dreams of death and destruction. Sometimes he talks to a toy rabbit. Darkly funny and mesmerising, The Evenings takes the tiny, quotidian triumphs and heartbreaks of our everyday lives and turns them into a work of brilliant wit and profound beauty.

At a benefit dinner in Monaco, Austrian playboy and CIA freelancer Malko Linge meets an intriguing woman, Zhanna Khrenkov, who has an unusual proposal. She will disclose everything she knows about her husband Alexei's business, provided Malko kills Alexei's beautiful young British mistress. Appalled, he refuses, but then Zhanna reveals that her husband runs a ring of sleeper Russian spies operating undercover inside the US. Naturally Malko's CIA handlers would love to have this information, but he feels uncomfortable killing anyone in cold blood - especially a beautiful woman.

REISSUE: A classic emotional romance by Cindy Gerard. If you missed it the first time - make sure you get it now! LEAP OF FAITH (formerly titled: A Bride for Abel Greene) SHE RAN AWAY FROM FEAR MacKenzie Kincaid was desperate to save her younger brother from gang violence in L.A. So desperate, she answered an ad from a stranger living in the deep woods of Northern Minnesota. All she wanted was a chance to live without fear – what she got was a man who wanted nothing to do with her – and a love she'd never imagined. HE REFUSED TO TRUST Abel Greene had cursed his friend, J.D. Hazzard, ...

Character is something intrinsic to us all; it forms and reveals who we are. Unbeknownst to many, character is foundational to our judgment, behavior, and leadership. As we tackle the grand challenges of our time, strength of character guides us to make better decisions, creates greater well-being, and contributes to human flourishing. For those who lead—whether in the public, private, not for profit, or education sectors—a greater understanding of character will challenge your thinking, inspire new ideas, and elevate your personal and professional performance.

If the vivid expression of human passion is a hallmark of Romanticism in music, then Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was perhaps the most Romantic of all composers. A sensitive, introspective, and extremely emotional man, Tchaikovsky poured his joys, sorrows, and drams into compositions that have touched listeners for over a century.

Fans of Cindy Gerard’s New York Times and USA Today’s best-selling Black Ops, Inc. series are going to LOVE revisiting Johnny Duane Reed and Crystal “Tinkerbelle” Debrowski (book 3: Whisper No Lies) in this super fast, super suspenseful, super sexy short story. Tink and Johnny D explode onto the pages of Dying To Score like dynamite. Pinned down and fighting for their lives in a tango infested Guatemalan jungle with no back-up, they are completely surrounded by the enemy. Johnny’s been hit and he’s fading fast –Tink knows it’s on her slim shoulders to get the man she loves ...

During his lifetime, Hopkins, who was ordained as a Jesuit priest, was best known as a scholar and a teacher of languages. In his youth, he composed poetry prolifically, but destroyed all his juvenile work in 1867. In 1874, he commenced writing poetry again, but little of his verse was published in his lifetime. His work was rescued from obscurity by his friend and supporter, Robert Bridges, who later became poet laureate.

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Essex, England, in 1844. During his lifetime, his work, at his own insistence, remained unpublished. Hopkins died in 1889, aged just 45, but it was not until 1918 that his work was first published and until 1930 that he first received acclaim. Here, Margaret Rawlings reads a selection of his finest work, including "Starlight Night", "Spring", "Pied Piper", and "Inversnaid".

One of the great composers of the 19th century, Schumann wrote piano solos, chamber music, choral pieces and opera, dozens of superb songs, and some of the finest works in the orchestral reperotry. Much of this music conveys contented and even joyful sentiments; there is surprisingly little darkness in Schumann's compositions. Yet from the beginning of his career, Schumann was plagued by irrational fears and melancholy. In the end, his personal demons overwhelmed him.

The work of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) has been called the culmination of the Classical era or the wellspring of the Romantic era in European music. Historians today see him as the heir of Haydn and Mozart, carrying their musical discoveries to a new level of complexity and integration. But the generations of composers that followed Beethoven saw him more as the headstrong radical, breaking the shackles of classicism and showing new possibilities for music.

Gerard Schwarz examines the life of this impolitic composer who lived in the political world of revolutionary Russia. Prokofiev's failure to interest himself in political realities, together with his tremendous confidence in his own genius, led him to ignore the darkening climate for artists in the Soviet Union. When the Soviets arrested his first wife on charges of spying, Prokofiev issued a public apology for his failure to write in an appropriate socialist style.

Gerard Schwarz shares his enthusiasm for the music of Aaron Copland, the quintessential American composer. Born in 1900 into a family of immigrants in Brooklyn, Copland didn't come from a musical family and had to find his own way, even trying to learn harmony from a mail order course. Today, Copland has become a permanent part of our cultural landscape, as important to our national consciousness as Whitman, Whistler, or Melville.

As the 20th century winds to its close, Igor Stravinsky stands securely as its most important and influential composer. For more than six decades his works defined modernism in music, just as Picasso's canvases showed the essence of modernism in painting. Like that great Spanish artist, who was almost his exact contemporary, Stravinsky attained a dominating stature in his field. Only a handful of composers rivaled him in significance during his lifetime. None surpassed him.

The more adventurous composers of the 19th century, such as Liszt, Chopin, and Berlioz, made use of the Classical forms and procedures, though often modifying them for their own purposes. And certain composers remained dedicated to the Classical heritage. None was more devoted to this than Johannes Brahms.

Penseur étonnamment riche et complexe, René Girard apporte avec les outils qui sont les siens (l'anthropologie, la psychosociologie, la sémiologie, l'étude des mythes) une réponse originale aux questions disputées de l'origine du mal, de la religion et de la culture. La réponse de René Girard peut se représenter sous la forme d'une fusée à trois étages. Le premier étage, de facture anthropologique et psychologique, est une théorie du désir humain.

John Bingham was the architect of the rebirth of the United States following the Civil War. A leading antislavery lawyer and congressman from Ohio, Bingham wrote the most important part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights and equality to all Americans. He was also at the center of two of the greatest trials in history, giving the closing argument in the military prosecution of John Wilkes Booth’s coconspirators for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.