New Releases by Paul Collins

An accessible guide to the history of the Assyrian empire from the perspective of its powerful elites. At the height of its power near 660 BC, the Assyrian empire, centered in northern Iraq, wielded dominance from Egypt to Iran. This vast region was ruled by a series of kings who demonstrated their power with magnificent palaces adorned by sculptures depicting rituals, battles, and hunts. Established by military might, the empire thrived under the guidance of scholars who interpreted divine will and administrators who relocated tens of thousands of people to serve the state. This book relates the history of Assyria through the lens of its royal family and the officials who commissioned its buildings, art, and literature—each a critical part of the foundation for the later Babylonian and Persian empires.

The citizens of the world as we know it currently feel more lost, confused, hopeless, helpless, and angry than they have ever felt in remembrance of time past. Many have no idea what is going on with the occurrence of catastrophe after a catastrophe that is plaguing the nations of the earth, from wars, droughts, food shortages, and newly emerging diseases, and most have an expectation that things are only going to get worse from this point moving forward, both in the short-term and long-term. Consequently, an undertone of apprehension, uncertainty, and a healthy fear of what may be coming next upon the earth have all left the populations of our world rightly on edge. In A Prisoner''s Cry: Look Up, Your Redemption Draws Near!, Minister Johnny Paul Collins provides us with a biblically sound and evidence-based explanation for the seven sorrows that are currently distressing mankind, and he warns of the additional sufferings for many that are on the way. Through the biblical--time-specific--promise of our Lord, hope is provided for the saved, and forewarning is given for those unbelieving and wicked inhabitants of the earth who continue to resist and oppose God.

Ming Lee - The Chinese Dragon - is the unbeaten, undisputed queen of virtual martial arts. Until she meets James Gong, fresh from his starring role in Ham Solo: Revenge of the Fist. Can their combined skill, grace and teamwork defeat everything the virtso world throws at them? Do they take down the mobsters? The bully? And just where does ''the gymnast'' fit into all of this?

The Sumerians are widely believed to have created the world’s earliest civilization on the fertile floodplains of southern Iraq from about 3500 to 2000 BCE. They have been credited with the invention of nothing less than cities, writing, and the wheel, and therefore hold an ancient mirror to our own urban, literate world. But is this picture correct? Paul Collins reveals how the idea of a Sumerian people was assembled from the archaeological and textual evidence uncovered in Iraq and Syria over the last one hundred fifty years. Reconstructed through the biases of those who unearthed them, the Sumerians were never simply lost and found, but reinvented a number of times, both in antiquity and in the more recent past.

What if you could eat lots of bread, cookies, buns and muffins without consuming so much carbohydrate? This cookbook is for those finding the eating of bread, cookies, buns muffins and sandwich so irresistible, but still want to eat healthy. A combination of sweet and Savory recipes you can make on any occasion, from your nutrition expert Tamara Collins. The recipes in this book are Ideal food for high fat, low-calorie Ketogenic, and Paleo diets, also a good substitute for sugary treats. With recipes you will find in this book, you can end your carb craving, food obsession and the restriction from other diets. You will be able to eat delicious and healthy bread and other lovely treats and get that weight and health you desire without starving yourself. It''s such a relief to know you can still eat sweet treats and stay healthy.

Clara lives in her balanced world where everything is perfect. Her glasshouse is free of bugs, her prized pumpkins free blemishes. But then one day a boy walks into her life and slowly Clara realises that her world is not perfect at all. paranoia spreads and she loses all her customers. Finally, she must face up to the realisation that her world is not perfect, and she must make allowances and compromise if she is to survive.

James Gong is training for his black belt in taekwondo. One night a camera crew turns up at training for an episode of My Life. James is sparring a white belt who gets carried away and hammers James'' foot. Sparks fly in James'' brain and he gasps – all caught on national TV. James responds with a jumping spinning sidekick which obliterates his opponent. This is the beginning of James'' woes at the club, for he has disgraced Mr Cho, the head instructor. Hollywood Productions just loves James'' jumping , spinning sidekick. They decide to star him in their small budget flick, Big Action in Little Town. Unbeknown to James, Hollywood Productions is a scam company that basically produces B grade ‘loser’ movies to offset huge tax bills. Meanwhile James, who lusts after his sister Caitlin’s best friend, Amber, thinks his sudden film career will curry favour. Not so. If anything, Amber shuns him even more. Determined to win the love of his life, James tries to learn how to skate, because he knows that Amber fancies a local skater named Spiros. He only succeeds in showing himself up, but James is pathetically immune to the irony and subtleties of life. He figures that all is well with the world and that he’s making vast progress. To Hollywood Productions’ great horror the flick is so bad that it’s good. People have queued at the premiere and national TV stations have got wind of the huge success of this little budget movie. Big Action in Little Town is going to be a blockbuster!

Tehran was well known to American businessman Jack Devlin until the day everything changed. When radical Islamic students stormed the US embassy on November 4, 1979, Jack narrowly escaped the revolutionary chaos, leaving behind 80 percent of his business and 100 percent of his heart. To get his beautiful girlfriend, Farideh, out of Iran, Jack accepts a devil’s bargain with the CIA and MI6. He must slip back into Tehran, where the militant students are holding dozens of Americans hostage in their own embassy. His part of the bargain is to steal the coveted client ledger of the world’s most powerful arms dealer, Mustafa Khaki, Farideh’s father. Surprised by an additional assignment, Jack is also ordered to strip a KGB defector of details on Russian collusion with Iran and their plan to eliminate the American hostages while infiltrating the highest levels of Ayatollah Khomeini’s government. From the damp cellars of KGB headquarters to the cold chill of British espionage to the blistering heat of the Kuwaiti desert, readers will learn, in an erroneous twist, that not all the turncoats are Russians.

In a galaxy of cutthroat companies, shadowy clans and a million agendas, spy agency RIM barely wields enough control to keep order. Maximus Black is RIM''s star cadet. But he has a problem. One of RIM''s best agents, Anneke Longshadow, knows there''s a mole in the organisation. And Maximus has a lot to hide.

“Well-researched and beautifully written.…Collins knows how to build suspense.” —San Francisco Chronicle On November 23rd of 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city’s richest men simply vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston’s West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor, and leads put the elusive Dr. Parkman at sea or hiding in Manhattan. But one Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never left the Medical School building alive. His shocking discoveries in a chemistry professor’s laboratory engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster. A baffling case of red herrings, grave robbery, and dismemberment, it became a landmark case in the use of medical forensics and the meaning of reasonable doubt. Paul Collins brings nineteenth-century Boston back to life in vivid detail, weaving together newspaper accounts, letters, journals, court transcripts, and memoirs from this groundbreaking case. Rich in characters and evocative in atmosphere, Blood & Ivy explores the fatal entanglement of new science and old money in one of America’s greatest murder mysteries.

The sensational story of the last two centuries of the papacy, its most influential pontiffs, troubling doctrines, and rise in global authority In 1799, the papacy was at rock bottom: The Papal States had been swept away and Rome seized by the revolutionary French armies. With cardinals scattered across Europe and the next papal election uncertain, even if Catholicism survived, it seemed the papacy was finished. In this gripping narrative of religious and political history, Paul Collins tells the improbable success story of the last 220 years of the papacy, from the unexalted death of Pope Pius VI in 1799 to the celebrity of Pope Francis today. In a strange contradiction, as the papacy has lost its physical power--its armies and states--and remained stubbornly opposed to the currents of social and scientific consensus, it has only increased its influence and political authority in the world.

The concept of stylus phantasticus (orfantastic style ) as it was expressed in free keyboard music of the north German Baroque forms the focus of this book. Exploring both the theoretical background to the style and its application by composers and performers, Paul Collins surveys the development of Athanasius Kircher‘s original concept and its influence on music theorists such as Brossard, Janovka, Mattheson, and Walther. Turning specifically to fantasist composers of keyboard works, the book examines the keyboard toccatas of Merulo, Fresobaldi, Rossi and Froberger and their influence on north German organists Tunder, Weckmann, Reincken, Buxtehude, Bruhns, Lubeck, Bohm, and Leyding. The free keyboard music of this distinguished group highlights the intriguing relationship at this time between composition and performance, the concept of fantasy, and the understanding of originality and individuality in seventeenth-century culture.

A haunted house, trouble at the zoo, a girl who gets zapped into a computer game, homework-stealing aliens, a pirate war, the loudest kid alive, a princess under a magic spell, racing snails, a family of monsters and much, much more in this collection of seven-minute stories.

An ice-cream-eating dinosaur, a big, bad smell, a lifesaving dog, zombies playing soccer, a ghost in the garden, pets who get lost and found again, trouble with losing a tooth, seven helpful robots, a knight-slaying dragon, and much, much more in this collection of six-minute stories.

Calbaras has knowledge that the dragons of Dracondas desperately want. As payment, they are willing to grant him his wish to become the greatest warlock of all time. But can Calbaras handle this power? Or will it ultimately destroy him?

It''s hard to save the world when you are in jail. Dantar and Velza, children of the warlock Calbaras, need to escape from jails six hundred miles apart to stop their father unleashing a catastrophically dangerous spell. Both will soon learn that they are not just special, they are also very dangerous.

Not since Garth Nix and Sean Williams joined forces has there been such a great collaboration! The warlock Calbaras wants to revive the ancient, forbidden magic of dragons, and his son Dantar is vital to his plans. Dantar is on the run in an enemy kingdom, unaware that he is so important. Worse, his sister Velza is now working for the enemy king.

When two of Australia’s most popular fantasy authors collaborate, The Warlock’s Child weaves a new and exciting brand of magic. The Invincible has been attacked, and all seems lost. Dantar’s only escape from his enemies is through the foul-smelling sewers of Savaria. Velza’s plans to save him are soon thwarted by three enormous dragons threatening to set fire to the city. Can Dantar and Velza deliver the city from danger?

There is no lower rank than cabin boy on the warship Invincible. But Dantar knows he is important, because anyone who threatens his life gets turned into a pile of ashes. His older sister Velza is a shapecasting warrior, in a world where only men fight. Until now. Together they must solve the mystery of broken magic and escape the dragon.

The historical record crowns success. Those enshrined in its annals are men and women whose ideas, accomplishments, or personalities have dominated, endured, and most important of all, found champions. John F. Kennedy''s Profiles in Courage, Giorgio Vasari''s Lives of the Artists, and Samuel Johnson''s Lives of the Poets are classic celebrations of the greatest, the brightest, the eternally constellated. Paul Collins'' Banvard''s Folly is a different kind of book. Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck--or perhaps some combination of them all--leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity. Among their number are scientists, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers, from across the centuries and around the world. They hold in common the silenced aftermath of failure, the name that rings no bells. Collins brings them back to glorious life. John Banvard was an artist whose colossal panoramic canvasses (one behemoth depiction of the entire eastern shore of the Mississippi River was simply known as "The Three Mile Painting") made him the richest and most famous artist of his day. . . before he decided to go head to head with P. T. Barnum. René Blondot was a distinguished French physicist whose celebrated discovery of a new form of radiation, called the N-Ray, went terribly awry. At the tender age of seventeen, William Henry Ireland signed "William Shakespeare" to a book and launched a short but meteoric career as a forger of undiscovered works by the Bard -- until he pushed his luck too far. John Symmes, a hero of the War of 1812, nearly succeeded in convincing Congress to fund an expedition to the North Pole, where he intended to prove his theory that the earth was hollow and ripe for exploitation; his quixotic quest counted Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe among its greatest admirers. Collins'' love for what he calls the "forgotten ephemera of genius" give his portraits of these figures and the other nine men and women in Banvard''s Folly sympathetic depth and poignant relevance. Their effect is not to make us sneer or p0revel in schadenfreude; here are no cautionary tales. Rather, here are brief introductions-acts of excavation and reclamation-to people whom history may have forgotten, but whom now we cannot.

Earth Mysteries Calendar 2015 Dedicated to all citizens of the planet and their great interest in Earth''s mysteries.

Continue, and individual motives arise: revenge, greed, overblown pride ...

The remarkable true story of a turn-of-the-19th century murder and the trial that ensued—a showdown in which iconic political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr joined forces to make sure justice was served—from bestselling author of the Edgar finalist, Murder of the Century. In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic. Waging a fierce battle for its uncertain future were two political parties: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached, their animosity reached a crescendo. But everything changed when a young Quaker woman, Elma Sands, was found dead in Burr''s newly constructed Manhattan Well. The horrific crime quickly gripped the nation, and before long accusations settled on one of Elma’s suitors: a handsome young carpenter named Levi Weeks. As the enraged city demanded a noose be draped around his neck, Week''s only hope was to hire a legal dream team. And thus it was that New York’s most bitter political rivals and greatest attorneys did the unthinkable—they teamed up. Our nation’s longest running cold case, Duel with the Devil delivers the first substantial break in the case in over 200 years. At once an absorbing legal thriller and an expertly crafted portrait of the United States in the time of the Founding Fathers, Duel with the Devil is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.

A view into the tumultuous and creative life of Edgar Allan Poe.

In a galaxy of cutthroat companies, shadowy clans and a million agendas, spy agency RIM barely wields enough control to keep order. Maximus Black is RIM’s star cadet. But he has a problem. One of RIM’s best agents, Anneke Longshadow, knows there’s a mole in the organisation. And Maximus has a lot to hide.

A narrative history of the origins of Western civilization argues that Europe was transformed in the tenth century from a continent rife with violence and ignorance to a continent on the rise.

Quentaris is at war with Tolrush, draining the city of every able bodied fighter. Famous Quentaran rift guide, Rad de La?rel, is shocked to discover that his beloved city has been left wide open to attack by vampires. Other cities have already fallen to the scourge and Quentaris is next in line. Rad prepares Quentaris for its greatest onslaught yet. But how can a ragtag army stop vampires who suck the souls from their victims, leaving zombie-like remains? Quentaris is fast filling up with the walking dead ...

The “enormously entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) account of a shocking 1897 murder mystery that “artfully re-create[s] the era, the crime, and the newspaper wars it touched off” (The New York Times) AN EDGAR NOMINEE FOR BEST FACT CRIME • “Fascinating . . . won’t disappoint readers in search of a book like Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City.”—The Washington Post On Long Island, a farmer finds a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. The police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects. The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era’s most perplexing murder mystery. Seized upon by battling media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the case became a publicity circus, as their rival newspapers the World and the Journal raced to solve the crime. What emerged was a sensational love triangle and an even more sensational trial. The Murder of the Century is a rollicking tale—a rich evocation of America during the Gilded Age and a colorful re-creation of the tabloid wars that forever changed newspaper journalism.

When Jack Sligo runs away from his loving Boston-Irish family, he hopes to get a summer job on a cruise ship. His dream becomes a nightmare when he meets two strangers who give him mysterious drinks in a waterfront saloon. Jack wakes up, far at sea, shanghaied aboard the African freighter, SS Iron Prince. The ship’s first call is a remote jungle port in Venezuela where there’s plenty of rum, women, and thieves, but no opportunity for escape.