Added by: arcadius | Karma: 2802.10 | Fiction literature | 24 February 2011
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A Changed Man and Other Tales by Thomas Hardy
A dozen minor novels that have been published in the periodical press collected together. They had pursued their rounds for many years without meeting with any incident of an unusual kind, but to-night, according to the assertions of several, there prevailed, to begin with, an exceptionally solemn and thoughtful mood among two or three of the oldest in the band, as if they were thinking they might be joined by the phantoms of dead friends who had been of their number in earlier years, and now were mute in the churchyard under flattening mounds.
Last Christmas Marcie Sullivan said a final goodbye to her husband, Bobby. This Christmas she's come to Virgin River to find the man who saved his life and gave her three more years to love him. Fellow marine Ian Buchanan dragged Bobby's shattered body onto a medical transport in Fallujah four years ago, then disappeared as soon as their unit arrived stateside. Since then, Marcie's letters to Ian have gone unanswered.
At twenty-five, after five years as her mother's caregiver, it's time for Shelby to experience freedom and adventure. Time for travel, college and romance. But when she visits Virgin River, she runs into Luke Riordan, decidedly not whom she has in mind. A handsome Blackhawk pilot, Luke exited the army after twenty years, four wars and having been shot out of the sky three times. At thirty-eight he's tough and jaded. His major was in one-night stands, with a minor in commitment avoidance. Technically, these two are all wrong for one another. But sometimes what you want and what you need are two different things.two very good things.
The Modern World, Volume 4: Civilizations of the Middle East and Southwest AsiaThe history of the modern Middle East and Southwest Asia goes back thousands of years. Indeed, the region was a center of civilization in prehistory and one of the areas in which agriculture originated and the world’s first cities were built. Yet the region faces a host of contentious issues—political, social, religious, and economic.
This region has been a center of human settlement for thousands of years. It was the site of the earliest urban centers, the invention and first use of the wheel, and the development of the first alphabet, number systems, lunar and solar calendars, and many more innovations.
When in 1154 A.D. Henry II of England married Eleanor of Aquitaine of France, he became at once the reigning sovereign over a vast stretch of land extending across all of England and half of France, and yet, according to the feudal hierarchy of the times, a vassal to the King of France. This situation, which placed French and English borders in such a tenuous position, solidified the precarious ground on which the Hundred Years War was to be fought 183 years later.
