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These eleven masterful stories - the first collection from acclaimed author Jennifer Egan - deal with loneliness and longing, regret and desire. Egan's characters, models and housewives, bankers and schoolgirls, are united by their search for something outside their own realm of experience. They set out from locations as exotic as China and Bora Bora, as cosmopolitan as downtown Manhattan, or as familiar as suburban Illinois to seek their own transformations. Elegant and poignant, the stories in Emerald City are seamless evocations of self-discovery.

The highly acclaimed debut novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Good Squad follows two sisters in the 1970s—one lost, one seeking—on "a trip that takes the reader through stunning emotional terrain" (The New Yorker). The political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O’Connor, age eighteen, in 1978. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith’s life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith’s lost generation. This spellbinding novel introduced Egan’s remarkable ability to tie suspense with deeply insightful characters and the nuances of emotion.

Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family.Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women hold jobs that were once the preserve of men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father's life and the reasons he might have vanished.

Explores the contradictory position of Arabic being both the official language and marginalized in Israel

A literary sensation when it was published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1905, The House of Mirth quickly established Edith Wharton as the most important American woman of letters in the twentieth century. The first American novel to provide a devastatingly accurate portrait of New York's aristocracy, it is the story of the beautiful and beguiling Lily Bart and her ill-fated attempt to rise to the heights of a heartless society in which, ultimately, she has no part. From the staid conventionality of Old New York to the forced conviviality of the French Riviera, from the drawing room of Gus Trenor's Bellomont to the dreary resort of a downtown boardinghouse, Wharton created her "first full-scale survey," as her biographer R.W.B. Lewis put it, "of the comédie humaine, American style." A brilliantly satiric yet sensitive exploration of manners and morality, The House of Mirth marked Wharton's transformation from an amateur into a professional writer on par with her contemporary and friend Henry James. It figures among her most important works.

Welcome to Nvengaria, where magic is real, shapeshifters walk the earth, and fairy tales come true. In Penelope and Prince Charming, Damien, Prince of Nvengaria, comes to England to fulfill a prophecy that he will take the descendent of another Nvengarian to wife. When wallflower Penelope Trask realizes she is the prophesized princess, her life turns upside down. She finds herself embroiled in the complicated intrigues that surround Nvengaria, as well as falling for the very charming, handsome, lonely Prince Damien. The Mad, Bad Duke begins with Grand Duke Alexander in London, on assignment for Prince Damien. It is not long before Nvengarian magic catches up to him and entwines him inextricably with Penelope’s best friend, Meagan. Highlander Ever After tells the tale of Egan MacDonald, the Mad Highlander, when he is asked to protect Prince Damien’s cousin Zarabeth from danger in his Highland castle. In The Longest Night Valentin, is a logosh who shape-shifts into the form of a wolf, again meets Egan’s widowed, very proper sister, Mary, when she is in London chaperoning the daughter of a friend. Valentin has been sent to uncover a Nvengarian spy, and Mary finds herself not only caught up in his quest but losing herself to the dangerous Valentin.

Welcome to Nvengaria, a land where magic happens, shape-shifters are real, and fairy tales come true, in this historical fantasy, paranormal romance from NY Time bestselling author Jennifer Ashley. Scotland 1820 When a lady is in danger, where better to hide than in a castle full of Highlanders? Zarabeth of Nvengaria flees to Scotland when her life is endangered by treachery in her homeland, revealed by her ability to read thoughts. Her cousin Prince Damien knows there's no safer place to send her than to his old friend Egan MacDonald and his castle in the remote Scottish Highlands. Egan has loved Zarabeth since the day she kissed him in her father’s house five years ago, and now he vows he’ll protect her from all danger—including his own spiking need for her. Zarabeth finds her interest in life renewed in the castle which is supposedly under a curse, where Egan’s cousins, sister, nephews, and neighbors swarm at will, returning joy and laughter to Zarabeth’s world. Zarabeth falls in love with Castle MacDonald and its inhabitants and never wants to leave—curse or no curse. But there is one person whose thoughts she’s never been able to read—Egan MacDonald, the Mad Highlander. The man she’d give her heart to, and her entire life if he wished it …

Welcome to Nvengaria, a land where magic happens, shape-shifters are real, and fairy tales come true, in this historical fantasy, paranormal romance from NY Time bestselling author Jennifer Ashley. London, 1820 Miss Meagan Tavistock doesn’t believe the talisman her friend purchases from a so-called witch is truly a love spell—that is, until the love spell backfires, catching her in it with the handsome, ruthless Grand Duke Alexander, ambassador to England from the far-off kingdom of Nvengaria. The last thing Alexander needs is to be swept into a wild love-spelled frenzy with an innocent miss. He has problems of his own—memory losses, strange and terrible dreams, and a shape-shifting logosh called Myn following him around. Alexander is honorable enough to ensure Meagan is not ruined by their love-spell induced encounter. He thinks to marry her, conquer his seeming madness, and carry on with his task of intimidating King George of England for the good of his beloved Nvengaria. What he doesn’t figure into the equation is Meagan—a very determined and lovely young woman who seeps into his every thought. Meagan is resolved to have a real marriage and a real family, and to see that Alexander does too. She will ensure Alexander will take up his duties as her husband and father to his nine-year-old son, even if she has to resort to some very Nvengarian intrigue to accomplish it. Alexander admires her resilience, but the secret he harbors about himself and his past is sure to endanger her and his son, two people he swears to protect and love even at the cost of his own happiness and quite probably his life. Welcome back to Nvengaria, a land of intense beauty and wild magic, where shape-shifters are real and fairy tales might just come true.

A reduction in the energy demand of buildings can make a major contribution to achieving national and international carbon reduction goals, in addition to addressing the interlinked issues of sustainable development, fuel poverty and fuel security. Despite improvements in thermal efficiency, the energy demand of buildings stubbornly remains unchanged, or is only declining slowly, due to the challenges posed by growing populations, the expectations of larger, more comfortable and better equipped living spaces, and an expanding commercial sector. Building Futures offers an interdisciplinary approach to explore this lack of progress, combining technical and social insights into the challenges of designing, constructing and operating new low energy buildings, as well as improving the existing, inefficient, building stock. The twin roles of energy efficiency, which is predominantly concerned with technological solutions, and energy conservation which involves changing peoples’ behaviour, are both explored. The book includes a broad geographical range and scale of case studies from the UK, Europe and further afield, including Passivhaus in Germany and the UK, Dongtan Eco City in China and retrofit houses in Denmark. This book is a valuable resource for students and academics of environmental science and energy-based subjects as well as construction and building management professionals.