Educators have long been pursuing and applying ways that play can be a context and even a medium for teaching and learning. Volume 15 of Play & Culture Studies focuses on the special topic on Play and Curriculum, a long waited topic to many educators and researchers in the field of play and education. This volume includes chapters reporting recent studies and practical ideas examining the relations between the play and curriculum from early education to higher education. The volume has 3 s...

Celebrate the joys of the holiday season with a trio of exquisitely crafted, richly romantic tales by three of the brightest stars in contemporary fiction.Filled with passion, drama, and a touch of magic, this festive gathering of classic Christmas stories—available for the first time in ten years—tells about the lives and loves of one unforgettable family and the enchanted heirloom that links one generation to the next.Christmas Past by Ir...

C.J. Adams had been teased enough about her seeming lack of interest in the opposite sex. On a ski trip with her five best friends, she impulsively embraced a handsome stranger, pretending they were secret lovers—and the delighted lawyer who joined in her impetuous charade seized the moment to deepen the kiss. Astonished at his reaction, C.J. tried to nip their romance in the bud, but she found herself nipping at his neck instead. She had met her match in a man who could answer her witty r...

After asking the wrong people the wrong questions, Shannon Brown barely escapes with her life - and crosses paths with a handsome outlaw who cannot resist a lady in distress. Moved by the troubled stranger, Derek Ross agrees to help Shannon elude her pursuers. But the ferocity of his desire for Shannon stuns him, and mystifies her. She's known so much hurt in matters of the heart - how can Derek be any different? Drawn into a shadowy world of danger and deception, Shannon is reborn in the ...

"Don't look for me. I'll come back when I'm ready."Pandora Madchen wrote those words when she ran off six years ago. In that time she'd become a sensation with the rock group Nemesis, toured the world, and grown up, but she never forgot the promise she made herself. Now Pandora was ready to return to the desert state of Sedikhan and the man she'd loved too soon and too much.Sheik Philip El Kabbar was a businessman whose power and influence extended throughout the world—but ...

What she was doing was immoral, illegal, and could easily get her killed—but Troy Bennett wasn't apologizing to anyone. She'd been caught red-handed in the middle of a felony and she couldn't have picked a more dangerous man to be holding her fate in his hands. Not that straight-laced businessman Dallas Cameron intended to turn her over to the law. He had far more devious intentions for the sexy cat burglar. He planned to uncover the secrets of this complex and mysterious woman who broke i...

Marry me! Josh Long insisted, but elusive woman of mystery Raven Anderson denied the electrifying attraction she felt when he pulled her into his embrace. Seductive but never truly seduced, Raven knew how to ignite a fire, but had never been burned herself—until Josh's fierce hunger brought her ecstatic surrender in his arms. Were his money, power, and passion enough to protect his mercurial lover from shadows that threatened her life?

She was stranded in a deadly sandstorm when he rode to her rescue like a desert prince on his black stallion. On a lark Billie Callahan had come to the Middle East to play a minor film role in a desert epic. Suddenly she found herself starring in a real-life romantic adventure. Cowboy, hero, friend of sheikhs and princes, David Bradford spoke like a poet in the drawl of his native Texas. What was this mysterious, eccentric, and irresistibly seductive man doing in Sedikhan, and what did he ...

Kira Rubinoff and Zack Damon have never met—but when their paths finally cross, the Tamrovian princess and the powerful industrialist sense they are not strangers. Desperate to enlist Zack's help in freeing a beloved friend from imprisonment, Kira is prepared to follow his masterful lead and do whatever the mysterious and sensual man asks of her—even become his mistress.Stirred by the heat of her blushes and the longing in her eyes, Zack accepts her offer, but he's been seared to t...

Gorgeous Hollywood stunt double Kendra Michaels is vying for the job of her life—a high-paying, high-risk jump that will clear the debt on her brother's medical bills. Casey Michaels was a stuntman himself until a job went tragically wrong. Now Kendra is prepared to take the same chance. There's just one man standing in her way, a man whose irresistible magnetism seduced her in ways she'd never experienced—and never before surrendered to...Director Joel Damon gets what he wants. An...

He appeared in her life with the unexpected force of a desert sandstorm, sweeping her from terrifying danger into the sweet haven of his arms. Daniel Seifert was a fierce man, used to taking whatever he wanted, but Zilah, the spirited woman he’d risked his life to rescue, filled him instead with a passion to protect. Yet when they hid from their pursuers in the shelter of a narrow cave, their closeness ignited an overwhelming need, an intimate sharing that melded terror and desire. But onc...

Beautiful actress Mallory Thane endured the harsh, unforgiving glare of publicity during the trial in which she stood accused of murdering her husband. But even the acquittal that set her free couldn't ease the heartache of her ordeal. Desperate to get back her life, her career, and her sanity, she accepts a new movie deal on an island paradise—only to realize that she has walked into a trap. Her captor is power player Sabin Wyatt, a dark, enigmatic man who still holds Mallory responsible ...