Showing results by narrator "Ulf Bjorklund" in All Categories

An international group of experts confronts challenges to peace and conflict diplomacy—defined as the effort to manage others' conflicts, cope with great power competition, and deal with threats to the state system itself. They consider three potential scenarios for world order where key states decide to go it alone, return to a liberal order, or collaborate on a case-by-case basis to address common problems. These three scenarios are then evaluated through the prism of regional perspectives from around the world and for their potential ramifications for major security threats.

In The Viking Code: The Art and Science of Norwegian Success, economic philosopher, entrepreneur, investor, and former competitive athlete Anders Indset reveals how Norwegian performance athletes and other successful figures use ingrained cultural values to achieve outsized influence on the world stage, as well as how we all can learn from and apply this cultural wisdom to create a better world in the future.

The 19th century was an age that witnessed great progress in many areas of exploration and learning. However, according to J. C. Ryle, it was an age of great ignorance too. What particularly distressed Ryle was the scant knowledge of the English Reformation evident amongst his contemporaries. In this lay a grave danger: one of the reasons so many congregations drift from their evangelical foundations is their sheer ignorance of Christian history, and their lack of understanding of the major doctrinal controversies and why they matter.

A mystic warrior monk of Ordu flees a doomed mountaintop monastery with his wounded master in a desperate attempt to escape wicked creatures of nightmare. A chance encounter with a wood witch possessing untapped Elemenati magic, and the forbidden attraction that follows, propel two unlikely loners into events that will change the face of the Three Kingdoms of Hanna forever. Meanwhile, a sorcerer's war is brewing in the North, and a mad duke plans his vengeance against the king's throne of Baroqia.

In Healing Lyme Disease Naturally, anthropologist Wolf D. Storl shares his own success in overcoming a difficult, sometimes deadly disease that is reaching epidemic proportions. When he was diagnosed, Dr. Storl refused standard treatments because of antibiotic intolerance. Instead, he researched healing systems of various cultures including traditional Chinese medicine, American Indian healing practices, homeopathy, and traditional Western herbal lore and discovered the teasel root.

When a witch’s curse comes alive, a mishap turns young Finn into a vardoger, haunted by his own forerunner ghost. Suddenly thrust into a new realm beyond Midgard, Finn struggles to be a boy by day and a ghost at night. His own clan fears him, he overhears murder plots, he learns the truth of giants and the hidden folk, and the witch still hunts for revenge...

"Nothing more strangely indicates an enormous and silent evil of modern society than the extraordinary use which is made nowadays of the word orthodox. In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic. It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was orthodox. He had no pride in having rebelled against them; they had rebelled against him. The armies with their cruel security, the kings with their cold faces, the decorous processes of State, the reasonable processes of law - all these like sheep had gone astray...."

Alrion doesn't know the power inside him. He's more surprised than anyone when he discovers he's a wizard. Why is his power unique? Learning the ways of a wizard is not enough. Alrion is charged with a quest to cleanse the Blight. He's the world's last chance to be free of that malevolent force, and the twisted creatures that it creates. Three trials await the young wizard. He must conquer each of the pillars of magic: knowledge, will, and spark. Only then will he be ready to face his destiny.

The Hunter's Gambit is the first novel in the Archanium Codex, an epic fantasy series in which two protagonists, Aleksei Drago and Jonas Belgi, struggle to keep their home nation of Ilyar from being plunged into a bloody civil war even as a 1,000-year-old evil called the Demonic Presence threatens to break free of its prison and consume the entire world.

In 1954, the Swedish government ordered the construction of the world’s largest particle accelerator. The facility was complete in 1969, located deep below the pastoral countryside of Mälaröarna. The local population called this marvel of technology The Loop. These are its strange tales.

Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories is a collection of shorter works on the strange and the macabre, first published in 1914, two years after Stoker's death. The title story "Dracula's Guest" is believed to be the deleted first chapter of Stoker's masterpiece, Dracula. The other nine stories like "The Squaw", "The Judge's House", and "The Burial of the Rats" rank very high among classic tales of horror.

Life innovates constantly, producing perfectly adapted species—but there's a catch. Many animals and plants eke out seemingly unremarkable lives. Passive, constrained, modest, threatened. Then, in a blink of evolutionary time, they flourish spectacularly. Once we start to look, these 'sleeping beauties' crop up everywhere. But why? Looking at the book of life, from apex predators to keystone crops, and informed by his own cutting-edge experiments, renowned scientist Andreas Wagner demonstrates that innovations can come frequently and cheaply to nature, well before they are needed.

In late summer of 2012, millionaire landowner Göran Lundblad went missing from his farm in Sweden. When a search yielded nothing, and all physical evidence had seemingly disappeared, authorities had little to go on - except a disturbing phone call five weeks later from Göran’s daughter Maria. She was sure that her sister, Sara, was somehow involved. At the heart of the alleged crime: Sara’s greed, her father’s land holdings, and his bitter feud with Sara’s idler boyfriend. With no body, there was no crime - and the case went as cold and dark as the forests of southern Sweden.

Even gods can bleed. Odin’s people are the new gods of Midgard. Odin’s son has become a champion of mankind. But fame has a price.Odin lost his beloved Freyja. How far will he go to reclaim his lost love? The latest instrument of his will is Sigmund - a werewolf obsessed with vengeance on a despotic king. Can Odin’s machinations bring him back to Freyja without destroying all around him? You’ll love this grim fantasy because it retells classic Norse myths in a whole new way. Get it now.

Only a fool would venture into the freezing mists that steal the souls of men. And that’s exactly where Odin is going. When a frost giant murders his father, Odin swears blood vengeance. Guided by his blood-brother Loki, Odin battles rival tribes and perilous ghosts. His quest leads him to a chance at immortality...but the price will be more than he can imagine.

After centuries bound in Alfheim, Odin escapes, only to find himself trapped in the fathomless darkness of Svartalfheim. What will he do when his only ally is a woman who no longer trusts him? Svartalfheim is home to the strange and corrupt dark elf courts. Eager for Odin’s oracular sight, they pull him into their unending power struggles. And while the king is missing, the world hurtles toward Ragnarok. If Hermod cannot find and retrieve Odin, Midgard faces annihilation on all sides.

Detective H. Grímsson is intelligent, hard as nails, and very resourceful. But he's also his own worst enemy. After an unfortunate shooting incident in Iceland's largest shopping mall on Christmas Eve, he's demoted to a police deputy in a small rural village in eastern Iceland. Grímsson's plan is to kick back, drink some beer, and enjoy this time away from home. When two young female hitchhikers disappear, Grímsson fears that the girls are lost in the highlands or have drowned in the glacial river. But then one of the girls wanders naked into the village and dies in Grimsson's arms.

Alternate history, 1119 AD. The bright banner of the Crusade flies over the ruins of Uppsala. The Norse army is shattered, the survivors scattered to the winds, and the sword that was fated to save them is lost to the enemy. A small band of refugees flees before the relentless foe, searching for a new place to call home. Gjaldir goes with them, choosing to fight for his erstwhile captors and the woman and child he loves, rather than seek shelter with his Christian kin, the men who have brought death and destruction to the lands he once hated.

Discover Ancient Greece and Rome like never before with this compendium that begins with creation myth of Uranus and Gaea and includes descriptions and tales of gods both major and minor, as well as mythical creatures and other divinities. Author and scholar E.M. Berens also details how the people of ancient Greece and Rome worshiped, covering sacred sites and customs, as well as their significance. Berens's seminal work offers something for anyone interested in Greek and Roman mythology, whether they are just beginning to learn or are looking to add to already established knowledge.

Captured by the archdevil Sekka, Kasai must defeat her archnemesis, the devil Zizphander, and his legion of fire fiends at her gate in the hopes she will honor her promise and let his companions live. Meanwhile back in the Mortal Realm, the fate of the Three Kingdoms is at stake, and without the power of the Ever Hero, all seems lost. Kasai must finally accept his role as Aetenos’s next Ever Hero and save the land he loves from the diabolical Frost Legion, rampaging across the continent. But to do this, he must rely on the help from his closest companions.