Hated as a foreigner, despised as a woman, I became First Lady of AthensAspasia falls passionately in love with Pericles, the leading statesman of Fifth Century Athens. Artists, writers and thinkers frequent her salon. She hides her past as a sex-worker, trafficked to the city, and becomes Pericles’ lover. Her writings attract the attention of Socrates, and she becomes the only woman to join his circle. She is known throughout the city for her beauty and wit and strives to...

Auctioning babies makes sense, at least that’s what Market World thinks. After all the baby goes to someone who can give them a good start in life, and the parents get a return for their pain and trouble. For Ed and Matt, the Baby Auction sums up everything that’s wrong with a society based on profit. Then one day Matt rescues a drowning child and they face the question: can love and compassion overcome the harsh laws of Market World?

Throughout the world, governments are restructuring social and welfare provision to give a stronger role to opportunity, aspiration and individual responsibility, and to competition, markets and consumer choice. This approach centres on a logic of individual rational action: people are the best judges of what serves their own interests and government should give them as much freedom of choice as possible. The UK has gone further than any other major European country in reform and provides ...

Public Opinion, Ideology and State Welfare (1985) provides a comprehensive explanation of the patterns of ideas about the welfare state held by both academics and by the general public. It argues that the crisis in the welfare state in the 1980s was misunderstood by most writers in the UK – both on the left and on the right. It presents an alternative account of current developments both in the welfare state and in popular and academic thinking. The author reviews the state of pop...

European welfare states are undergoing profound change, driven by globalization, technical changes, and population ageing. More immediately, the aftermath of the Great Recession and unprecedented levels of immigration have imposed additional pressures. This book examines welfare state transformations across a representative range of European countries and at the EU level, and considers likely new directions in social policy. It reviews the dominant neo-liberal austerity response and discus...

What place for love in a city ruled by greed?Sarah, spirited and caring, is on her first trip outside her village. But the city is dominated by the grim law of the market – the only relations permitted are between buyer and seller. Her gift of a wagonload of food to those who need it is a crime. David, a serious-minded police cadet who naively trusts in the law, arrests her and finds himself falling in love.Franklin, the richest man in Market World, puts a price on everythi...

Could you hate someone enough to kill them? And what if they deserve it?Ade is a tax-inspector. She hates the City of London. She hates the endless corruption, the bland assumption that tax is for the little people. She hates the casual sexism, the smug self-assurance, the inviolability of the men she deals with, and the cold certainty that nothing you can do will ever touch them. Then Webster tries to rape her, and she hates him enough to try to kill him. She finds herself in the ...

Ritchie’s life is shadowed by the death of his wife, Cat, in a car accident twenty-two years previously. He was the driver. He loves his children – Nic, who is bi-polar and often impulsive, and Jack. Both are active in the campaign to welcome asylum-seekers and refugees to Britain. His life comes to a crisis as he realises how much his children despise his trade in advertising and how much the loss of Cat still means to them all.Ritchie abandons his career but achieves new success ...

Throughout the world, politicians from all the main parties are cutting back on state welfare provision, encouraging people to use the private sector instead and developing increasingly stringent techniques for the surveillance of the poor. Almost all experts agree that we are likely to see further constraints on state welfare in the 21st Century.Gathering together the findings from up-to-date attitude surveys in Europe East and West, the US and Australasia, this revealing book sho...

Sometimes the fall is only the beginning.In the year 2048, the crumbling remnants of western North America are suddenly buried in ash, weakening the grip of the brutal dictatorship. A factional landscape springs from the ashes, con man Luke Stokes artfully navigating the clash.But he can't remain above the fray for long, as each faction seeks the truth from Luke regarding his murdered brother's final project. A neural-interface technology that will forever ...

Colonizing Cyan may be overcrowded Earth’s last hope for survivalIt took Earth’s last, dying effort, led by Keir Delacroix of the originalexplorers, to plant a colony on Cyan. Now the new colonists are uneasyin their seasonless paradise. Will destruction come upon them from arenegade explorer and her DNA modified creatures of the torrid zone, orfrom Saloman Curran, the man whose heartless manipulations broughtthem here? Or will it...

"A TREASURE!" --Hugo and Nebula winner Mary Robinette KowalOld Mr. Heldrick is every bit as dangerous as the kids imagine--not because he's a demented killer but because his house hides a portal to another world, and he's the guardian. When Bess is caught in his basement, she's forced to flee through that doorway, not knowing where it leads.She finds herself in a nightmare world controlled by black-cloaked, knife-wielding horsemen. Within minutes she's on th...