What impact does 40 years of war, violence, and military intervention have on a country and its people? As the "global war on terror" now stretches into the 21st century with no clear end in sight, Identity and Politics in Modern Afghanistan collects the work of interdisciplinary scholars, aid workers, and citizens to assess the impact of this prolonged conflict on Afghanistan. Nearly all of the people in Afghan society have been affected by persistent violent conflict. Identi...

Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, researchers, policymakers, and the media have failed to consider the long-term implications of the country's post-conflict elections. Based on fieldwork in provinces across the country and interviews with more than seven hundred candidates, officials, community leaders, and voters, this book builds an in-depth portrait of Afghanistan's recent elections as experienced by individuals and communities, while revealing how the elections have in fact ac...

Will hearts soar when pigs fly?Alex's job working for his family-owned radio station once took him all over the city reporting on major events—until the accident. His scars, both physical and emotional, cause him to withdraw into a self-imposed, semi-reclusive lifestyle. When his dad requests that he go to the world's largest hot air balloon festival, he has to find the courage to break his isolation. Now he needs to find the courage to trust and love again.Jeff had already...

It was supposed to be their big night! The opening of their movie premier. Robert Owens boyfriend abandoned him, and brought another date. Humiliated, Rob left Los Angeles, and moved to a quiet ranch in rural New Mexico only to face his high school bully Dane Johnson.Rob never expected his high school tormentor to show up at his new home, but there the man was ordering him to evacuate from an oncoming wildfire. After Rob returned to his ranch, Dane offered an apology, and an explan...

Weston Abbott dreads his future as a genetic condition slowly robs him of his sight. Withdrawing from society, he makes his peace with living a dark and solitary life, spending his time riding his stallion, Darkness. He never expected to find hope and happiness in his future until his mother hired Christopher Finnegan to work at the family stable.Chris has heard barn gossip that accuses Wes Abbott of being useless as a rider and wasting the potential of his well-bred stallion. Watc...

100 years after Karel Capek coined the word, “robots” are an everyday idea, and the inspiration for countless stories in books, film, TV and games.They are often among the least privileged, most unfairly used of us, and the more robots are like humans, the more interesting they become. This collection of stories is where robots stand in for us, where both we and they are disadvantaged, and where hope and optimism shines through.Including stories by:...

12 award-winning science fiction authors from around the world offer original tales of relationships in a future world of evolving technology.For fans of anthologies like Soonish and Netflix's Black MirrorIn a future world dominated by the technological, people will still be entangled in relationships—in romances, friendships, and families. This volume in the Twelve Tomorrows series considers the effects t...

As a result of a 20-year international military campaign, Afghanistan has been at the centre of global academic and policy debates on intervention and statebuilding. Yet these debates have often been piecemeal, ahistorical and centred in western logics, interests and concerns. This volume provides a new, critical compilation of scholarly contributions from emerging and established Afghan and international scholars that defy these trends.The volume targets a new generation of studen...

Elly wanted to go on an adventure.But she couldn't, at least not until she got mixed up with a magical cat who would teleport her, along with Timothy, an arrogant astronaut in training, Alice, an eccentric marketing student, and Benson, a mysterious yet dependable farmhand, to another world: Meerland.Their mission? To save Maria, a brilliant inventor and Timothy's mother, from the Lor King, a man who plans to use her teleportation machine to save himself and his people from...

Named a Pick of the Week for the week of February 29th by Publishers Weekly"Grouped under three headings, the 13 stories in this outstanding entry in Akashic's noir series capture the gloomy underside of Sweden's capital, portraying the hopelessness of those trapped in what Larson and Edenborg in their introduction call the city that devours your soul."--Publishers Weekly, Starred review"Coedited by local a...

Elly wanted to go on an adventure.But she couldn't, at least not until she got mixed up with a magical cat who would teleport her, along with Timothy, an arrogant astronaut in training, Alice, an eccentric marketing student, and Benson, a mysterious yet dependable farmhand, to another world: Meerland.Their mission? To save Maria, a brilliant inventor and Timothy's mother, from the Lor King, a man who plans to use her teleportation machine to save himself and his people from...

The end of the Pleistocene era brought dramatic environmental changes to small bands of humans living in North America: changes that affected subsistence, mobility, demography, technology, and social relations. The transition they made from Paleoindian (Pleistocene) to Archaic (Early Holocene) societies represents the first major cultural shift that took place solely in the Americas. This event—which manifested in ways and at times much more varied than often supposed—set the stage for the...