China has traditionally viewed her frontier regions--Zxinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Yunnan--as buffer zones. Yet their importance as commercial and cosmopolitan hubs, intimately involved in the transmission of goods, peoples and ideas between China and it west and southwest has meant they are crucial for China's ongoing development. The resurgence of China under Deng Xiaoping's policy of 'reform and opening' has therefore led to a focus on integrating these regions into the PRC (People's Republic of China). This has important implications not only for the frontier regions themselves but also for the neighbouring states, with which they have strong cultural, religious, linguistic and economic ties. China's Frontier Regions explores the challenges presented by this integrationist policy, both for domestic relations and for diplomatic and foreign policy relations with the countries abutting their frontier regions.

Will is taken captive by a big rancher Major McKinney that wants his land in Colorado. He escapes with the help of the Major's daughter Elizabeth. They are pursued by Major McKinney and his hands to Arizona through Colorado. Liz and Will are married in Meeker, Colorado but later Elizabeth is captured by the Ute Indians while Will is away from camp. Still being chased by McKinney. He has many encounters with the Major and his hands, captured again but escapes and returns to Steamboat, Colorado where he has friends. He searches for Elizabeth but hears she's dead so he returns to Steamboat and goes to California with Bess, a rival of Elizabeth. McKinney hands follow him and catch up with him where there is a gunfight. He returns to Colorado with Bess. Elizabeth is rescued by the US Cavalry after being captive for a year and returned to her father who also thought she was dead. She has a confrontation with Will and Bess. Liz has been gone a year and returns with Will's son and is pregnant with an Indian baby.

Driven with a burning desire to make something of himself, Doug Smith calls upon his only marketable skills-those honed as an amateur boxer-and despite not learning to skate until the age of 19, punches his way into the world of professional hockey. Join Doug "The Thug" Smith during his unlikely journey as a minor-league hockey enforcer, the most unique and peculiar job in all of sport, as he takes on all comers to protect his teammates from opposing tough guys, wins a championship ring, and climbs to the second-best hockey league in the world. Smith, the directionless, wayward wanderer, desperately searching, defeats impossible odds to succeed in the riotous world minor-league hockey, which lends a measure of purpose and meaning to his life. And while the enforcer role is currently being removed from the game of hockey, underdog stories never go out of style, and the best ones get made into Hollywood movies. Literally fighting to become more than a common street ruffian, Smith transforms himself into a respected and productive member of his community, and the subject of a cult-classic motion picture.

Will is taken captive by a big rancher Major McKinney that wants his land in Colorado. He escapes with the help of the Major's daughter Elizabeth. They are pursued by Major McKinney and his hands to Arizona through Colorado. Liz and Will are married in Meeker, Colorado but later Elizabeth is captured by the Ute Indians while Will is away from camp. Still being chased by McKinney. He has many encounters with the Major and his hands, captured again but escapes and returns to Steamboat, Colorado where he has friends. He searches for Elizabeth but hears she's dead so he returns to Steamboat and goes to California with Bess, a rival of Elizabeth. McKinney hands follow him and catch up with him where there is a gunfight. He returns to Colorado with Bess. Elizabeth is rescued by the US Cavalry after being captive for a year and returned to her father who also thought she was dead. She has a confrontation with Will and Bess. Liz has been gone a year and returns with Will's son and is pregnant with an Indian baby.

In 1998, Manitoba's Conservative government was oozing confidence and appeared certain to cruise to reelection. But the party had a skeleton in its closet. In the 1995 provincial election, Manitoba Conservatives had financed a supposedly independent Aboriginal candidate in an attempt to divert votes away from the New Democratic Party. The vote splitting scheme was equal parts detective story and comedy of errors, tragedy and farce. Because it had occurred in the hardscrabble Interlake region, carried out by a wildly eccentric cast of characters, some media commentators dismissed the story as a low-rent scandal conducted by political hillbillies. But in fact the caper was masterminded by the permier's principal secretary and supported by two of the province's most distinguished entrepreneurs. This lively, readable book tells the story of the lies and fall of Manitoba's Conservative government, and serves as a reminder that politics is about power and the principles by which a society's wealth is to be distributed.