25 Days to Aden is the story of how in a week in 2015 the Gulf States pulled together a ten-nation coalition and the biggest military operation they ever launched unilaterally. It is an amazing account of Arab militaries doing what America would not, preventing Iran from taking a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula. The risks for global security were huge: Iran already overshadowed one of the world's greatest maritime straits, at Hormuz, and now it sought to dominate the southern approaches to the Suez Canal as well. Aden had to hold out against the Houthis. The Gulf States were used to America stepping up at such moments, but the White House was partway through negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran. No help would come from Washington. Instead, for the first time, the Gulf States acted alone. Told by an expert communicator on the region, it is a unique story. If the US is truly a global empire in decline, then the story may hold important pointers for a future of warfare driven by emergent powers in the gap left by the withdrawal of American influence.

The U.S.-led effort to fight the Islamic State in northeastern Syria since 2014 has been as controversial and poorly understood as it has been significant. Advocates of fighting "by, with and through" the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) view the campaign as a near-ideal case study of a cost-effective U.S. military intervention that should be duplicated in the future. Critics of the campaign say that the U.S. allied itself with a terrorist group and endangered its ties with Turkey, a long-stranding NATO partner; losing sight of strategic priorities in order to win tactical victories at low cost. This book combines general research with 50 interviews gathered in Syria with Kurdish, Arab and Christian SDF officers, and 50 interviews with U.S. and French officials and military officers with on-the-ground involvement in the war. It provides an unprecedented window into how the war was really prosecuted, in the eyes of the participants at all levels, uniquely looking not only at how U.S. soldiers view their partner forces, but how the local partners view them in return. This is a unique and essential insight into US strategy in Syria and beyond.

A BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED AND INCLUSIVE TAROT CARD DECK THAT SPEAKS TO US ALL Inside the luxurious flip-top presentation box you'll find 81 perfectly weighted and intricately designed cards along with a booklet of interpretations so that you can get started with your first reading straight away. Tarot uses a symbolic language that tugs at our unconscious, dragging to the surface both treasure and truths. Your cards will provide you with guidance right when you need it. Use the cards to connect with your deepest wisdom and uncover mysteries within and without. They will open the door to your higher intuition and reveal astonishing truths about yourself and your life. The answers you've been looking for are right here. REMEMBER TO SEARCH FOR THE ACCOMPANYING BOOK: The Knight-Waite Tarot Guidebook Meanings and Readings

"Ten stories cut like gems from American family life . . . [with] a gracious patina and a drawl of violence." --"Los Angeles Times"
"A writer of the first rank. . . . [Knight] writes gently and with great gobs of empathy."--"Esquire"
"Wonderfully humane." --"Playboy"
A"Los Angeles Times"Notable Book, Michael Knight's stunning debut delivers ten tales of ordinary people seized by extraordinary circumstances as their attempts at human connection result in frustrating false starts and ruinous misunderstandings. Knight expertly unveils fragile family ties, secret compulsions, and the nagging doggedness of love as he taps into our collective human experience to remind us, with unerring, piercing insight, of what it means to be alive. By turns unpredictable and wise, sorrowful and triumphant, "Dogfight and Other Stories"reveals the transformative power of life's small struggles.

A BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED AND INCLUSIVE TAROT GUIDE THAT SPEAKS TO US ALL Some people can pick up a Tarot deck and instantly read like a pro. Others take longer to develop an affinity with the cards. The truth is, there's no right or wrong way to read them. And although none of the cards have set meanings, there are plenty of ways to peel back the layers and decide how each relates to your life. The Knight-Waite Tarot Guidebook features all the beautiful illustrations and artwork from the Knight-Waite Tarot Deck and includes 'traditional' interpretations of every card in the deck, sample spreads showing different ways to conduct a reading, and write-in sections for recording your interpretations. Tarot uses a symbolic language that tugs at your unconscious, dragging to the surface both treasure and truths. Using this guide alongside your Tarot will help you tune in to the story the cards are telling you, enjoying guidance, wisdom and answers, right when you need it. It will open the door to your higher intuition and reveal astonishing truths about yourself and your life. The answers you've been looking for are right here. REMEMBER TO SEARCH FOR THE ACCOMPANYING CARD DECK: The Knight-Waite Tarot Deck Cards and Quick Start Guide

Anders Cullhed's study The Shadow of Creusa explores the early Christian confrontation with pagan culture as a remote anticipation of many later clashes between religious orthodoxy and literary fictionality. After a careful survey of Saint Augustine's critical attitudes to ancient myth and poetry, summarized as a long drawn-out farewell, Cullhed examines other Late Antique dismissals as well as appropriations of the classical heritage. Macrobius, Martianus Capella and Boethius figure among the Late Antique intellectuals who attempted to save or even restore the old mythology by means of allegorical representation. On the other hand, pious poets such as Paulinus of Nola and Bible epic writers such as Iuvencus or Avitus of Vienne turned against pagan lies, and the mighty arch-bishop of Milan, Saint Ambrose, played off unconditional Christian truth against the last Roman strongholds of cultural pluralism. Thus, The Shadow of Creusa elucidates a cultural conflict which was to leave traces all through the Middle Ages and reach down to our present day.

Anders Cullhed's study The Shadow of Creusa explores the early Christian confrontation with pagan culture as a remote anticipation of many later clashes between religious orthodoxy and literary fictionality. After a careful survey of Saint Augustine's critical attitudes to ancient myth and poetry, summarized as a long drawn-out farewell, Cullhed examines other Late Antique dismissals as well as appropriations of the classical heritage. Macrobius, Martianus Capella and Boethius figure among the Late Antique intellectuals who attempted to save or even restore the old mythology by means of allegorical representation. On the other hand, pious poets such as Paulinus of Nola and Bible epic writers such as Iuvencus or Avitus of Vienne turned against pagan lies, and the mighty arch-bishop of Milan, Saint Ambrose, played off unconditional Christian truth against the last Roman strongholds of cultural pluralism. Thus, The Shadow of Creusa elucidates a cultural conflict which was to leave traces all through the Middle Ages and reach down to our present day.

Michelle was a young single mother when she was kidnapped by a local school bus driver named Ariel Castro. For more than a decade afterward, she endured unimaginable torture at the hand of her abductor. In 2003 Amanda Berry joined her in captivity, followed by Gina DeJesus in 2004. Their escape on May 6, 2013, made headlines around the world. Barely out of her own tumultuous childhood, Michelle was estranged from her family and fighting for custody of her young son when she disappeared. Local police believed she had run away, so they removed her from the missing persons lists fifteen months after she vanished. Castro tormented her with these facts, reminding her that no one was looking for her, that the outside world had forgotten her. But Michelle would not be broken. In Finding Me, Michelle will reveal the heartbreaking details of her story, including the thoughts and prayers that helped her find courage to endure her unimaginable circumstances and now build a life worth living. By sharing both her past and her efforts to create a future, Michelle becomes a voice for the voiceless and a powerful symbol of hope for the thousands of children and young adults who go missing every year.

Simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, "The Holiday Season"and its companion piece, "Love at the End of the Year"are tender ruminations on the nature of family, the power of love, and a particularly complicated time of year. In"The Holiday Season," Jeff, Ted, and Frank Posey are still trying to figure out how to be a family three years after the death of the wife and mother who bound them together. As the year winds to a close and the holidays threaten to unearth the usual myriad of emotions and memories, hairline fractures in the Poseys' relationships finally splinter and crack over what should be, but never are, simple dilemmas: where to spend the holidays and when it is finally time to break with old traditions. The second novella, "Love at the End of the Year," is an intoxicating tale that weighs up love in all its many forms over the course of a single, magical Alabama New Year's Eve.

From the award-winning writer of Eveningland and The Typist, Michael Knight, At Briarwood School for Girls is an incisive, witty, beautifully-written novel set at a boarding school in the Virginia countryside It's 1994 and Lenore Littlefield is a junior at Briarwood School for Girls. She plays basketball. She hates her roommate. History is her favorite subject. She has told no one that she's pregnant. Everything, in other words, is under control. Meanwhile, Disney has announced plans to build a new theme park just up the road, a "Technicolor simulacrum of American History" right in the middle of one of the most history-rich regions of the country. If successful, the development will forever alter the character of Prince William County, VA, and have unforeseeable consequences for the school. When the threat of the theme park begins to intrude on the lives of the faculty and students at Briarwood, secrets will be revealed and unexpected alliances will form. Lenore must decide whom she can trust-will it be a middle-aged history teacher struggling to find purpose in his humdrum life? A lonely basketball coach tasked with directing the school play? A reclusive playwright still grappling with her own Briarwood legacy? Or a teenage ghost equally adept at communicating with the living via telephone or Ouija board? Following a cast of memorable characters as they reckon with questions about fate, history, and the possibility of happiness, At Briarwood School for Girls is a stunning and inventive new work from a master storyteller.

A New York Times Editors’ Choice “The spirit of Eudora Welty broods over these adroitly crafted stories set in and around coastal Alabama, evoking a world coiled tight as a conch shell.� —O Magazine “Impressive...Knight pays careful, writerly attention to the details of desperation.�—New York Times Book Review An instant regional bestseller, Eveningland is Alabama-born Michael Knight’s powerful short story cycle whose seven stellar tales illuminate the everyday beauty and heartache of life along the shores of serene, history-haunted Mobile Bay, in the years preceding a devastating hurricane. "A thought-provoking and deeply satisfying reading experience, Eveningland evokes the Old South without sentimentalizing its loss." —Washington Independent Review of Books   

“Michael Knight is more than a master of the short story. He knows the true pace of life and does not cheat it, all the while offering whopping entertainment.â€�—Barry Hannah Long considered a master of the form and an essential voice in American fiction, Michael Knight’s stories have been lauded by writers such Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Gilbert, Barry Hannah, and Richard Bausch. Now, with Eveningland he returns to the form that launched his career, delivering an arresting collection of interlinked stories set among the “right kind of Mobile familyâ€� in the years preceding a devastating hurricane. Grappling with dramas both epic and personal, from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the “unspeakable misgivings of contentment,â€� Eveningland captures with crystalline poeticism and perfect authenticity of place the ways in which ordinary life astounds us with its complexity. A teenaged girl with a taste for violence holds a burglar hostage in her house on New Year’s Eve; a middle aged couple examines the intricacies of their marriage as they prepare to throw a party; and a real estate mogul in the throes of grief buys up all the property on an island only to be accused of madness by his daughters. These stories, told with economy and precision, infused with humor and pathos, excavate brilliantly the latent desires and motivations that drive life forward. Eveningland is a luminous collection from “a writer of the first rank.â€�(Esquire)

Back in print, Michael Knight's debut novel, which won the Fellowship of Southern Writers New Writing Award and the Dictionary of Literary Biography's Best First Novel Award. After the deaths of his parents, Simon Bell returns to his hometown of Sherwood, Alabama, hoping for a simple, quiet existence. But when he meets Delia Holladay one hot, unmoving summer day, latent needs and desires are suddenly awakened. Delia is young, beautiful, and married. As their emotions deepen, the affair soon slips beyond their control, building to a final reckoning that will leave no one untouched. Evoking a medley of distinct voices, Divining Rod tells a richly layered tale of adultery, love, and murder, as it follows the arc of one fateful romance to its inevitable and heartbreaking conclusion.

The U.S.-led effort to fight the Islamic State in northeastern Syria since 2014 has been as controversial and poorly understood as it has been significant. Advocates of fighting “by, with and through� the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) view the campaign as a near-ideal case study of a cost-effective U.S. military intervention that should be duplicated in the future. Critics of the campaign say that the U.S. allied itself with a terrorist group and endangered its ties with Turkey, a long-stranding NATO partner; losing sight of strategic priorities in order to win tactical victories at low cost. This book combines general research with 50 interviews gathered in Syria with Kurdish, Arab and Christian SDF officers, and 50 interviews with U.S. and French officials and military officers with on-the-ground involvement in the war. It provides an unprecedented window into how the war was really prosecuted, in the eyes of the participants at all levels, uniquely looking not only at how U.S. soldiers view their partner forces, but how the local partners view them in return. This is a unique and essential insight into US strategy in Syria and beyond.

Welcoming and user-friendly, Oxford's BTEC Tech Award in Sport, Activity and Fitness offers a student-focused approach to this brand new qualification. Written by experienced BTEC teachers, it has been carefully designed to support teachers in delivering a new course, and to help learners achieve their full potential. The book features a vibrant, clean layout, and is packed with stunning photographs to ensure the content is accessible and engaging. It offers comprehensive coverage of the specification, exploring the knowledge and understanding of relevant key skills and issues. These include body systems, sporting injuries, and the impact of technological developments on sport and activity; training, nutrition, and the impact of motivation, self-confidence and anxiety on sport and activity; and the fundamentals of sports leadership, and planning, leading and reviewing a sports activity session. Practical activities are designed to encourage learners to fully grasp the content and to successfully apply it in their assignments and assessment. We will be seeking endorsement from BTEC.