Encounters in End City


Book Description

It’s graduation week at Minecrafters Academy, but a battle is brewing between the top five students at the school. With the school’s top five students wrapped up in an endless prank war as they compete over the coveted position of class speaker, one of their classmates finds a solution: the students will travel to an End city and hunt for treasure; the student who not only survives, but returns with the most treasures, will be chosen. The students set off on their journey, but they quickly learn that the End is no joke. Face-to-face with shulkers, the deadly Void, and the mighty Ender Dragon, the school’s top students learn there’s more to success than making the grade. They must learn to fight together—or no one will make it back alive. In this final installment of the Unofficial Minecrafters Academy series, the risks—and the potential rewards—are greater than ever.




Hidden in the Chest


Book Description

Steve has joined the staff of Minecrafters Academy as a guest teacher—but luck and then disaster strike in his first farming class, when he digs a hole that unexpectedly reveals a hidden chest full of treasure. At first the students are thrilled, but strange occurrences seem to follow those who discovered the chest, and an unending storm plagues the school. With a steady rain soaking the campus, Minecrafters Academy is vulnerable to nonstop attacks from zombies and skeletons. With the help of Cayla, a new student who claims to know more about the legendary chest, Steve and the students of the Academy look for a way to stop the storm and save their campus. Their journey will take them far from the school, to peaceful Mushroom Island. But what they find there will put them all in even greater danger . . . Nothing is what it appears and no one can truly be trusted in this mysterious fifth installment in the Unofficial Minecrafters Academy series.




Skeleton Battle


Book Description

After a scourge of griefer attacks and a change in headmasters, Minecrafters Academy is once again at peace, and Lucy is working hard to keep up in all her classes. Meanwhile, the school is gearing up for an end-of-the-year talent show, where everyone will showcase their greatest skills, from master building and clever potion-making to strategic fighting. But when a hoard of skeletons and hostile mobs attacks the campus one night, an all-too-familiar struggle begins. Is Isaac, the school’s evil former headmaster, behind the attacks? Lucy and her friends are determined to get to the bottom of the mystery and keep their school safe. As the attacks continue and their search for clues turns up more enemies than friends, Lucy, Jane, and Phoebe must rely on each other to survive—and find a way to save the school. Fans of Minecraft and magic academies won’t want to miss the latest adventure in the Unofficial Minecrafters Academy series. Sky Pony Press, with our Good Books, Racehorse and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of books for young readers—picture books for small children, chapter books, books for middle grade readers, and novels for young adults. Our list includes bestsellers for children who love to play Minecraft; stories told with LEGO bricks; books that teach lessons about tolerance, patience, and the environment, and much more. In particular, this adventure series is created especially for readers who love the fight of good vs. evil, magical academies like Hogwarts in the Harry Potter saga, and games like Minecraft, Terraria, and Pokemon GO. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.




Zombie Invasion


Book Description




Encounters


Book Description

Within this book the reader will discover a diverse selection of stories, each complete unto itself. Some are humorous, others macabre, all irreverent and well worth reading. From the true jaw dropping account of creative medical procedures in a top ranked California hospital, to an impromptu dog fi ght in Londons east end. Turn the pages and meet a talking spider, a delusional artist, a demented teacher and many more memorable participants in this unique and unquestionably entertaining volume of stories.




The Politics of the Encounter


Book Description

The Politics of the Encounter is a spirited interrogation of the city as a site of both theoretical inquiry and global social struggle. The city, writes Andy Merrifield, remains "important, virtually and materially, for progressive politics." And yet, he notes, more than forty years have passed since Henri Lefebvre advanced the powerful ideas that still undergird much of our thinking about urbanization and urban society. Merrifield rethinks the city in light of the vast changes to our planet since 1970, when Lefebvre's seminal Urban Revolution was first published. At the same time, he expands on Lefebvre's notion of "the right to the city," which was first conceived in the wake of the 1968 student uprising in Paris. We need to think less of cities as "entities with borders and clear demarcations between what's inside and what's outside" and emphasize instead the effects of "planetary urbanization," a concept of Lefebvre's that Merrifield makes relevant for the ways we now experience the urban. The city—from Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street—seems to be the critical zone in which a new social protest is unfolding, yet dissenters' aspirations are transcending the scale of the city physically and philosophically. Consequently, we must shift our perspective from "the right to the city" to "the politics of the encounter," says Merrifield. We must ask how revolutionary crowds form, where they draw their energies from, what kind of spaces they occur in—and what kind of new spaces they produce.




The Diaspora Encounter


Book Description

As a historian of a different making, Francisco seeks to capture the heart of his past and that of spirituality through lifetime memories from boyhood days in Shanghai and Macau to day dreams as a young man in Hong Kong, from new family life in San Francisco as a naturalized citizen to rebirth of mind through a number of pilgrimages to Fatima, Medjugorje and Moscow with his extended family. Together with his spiritual partner and second wife of 30 years Terry, he witnessed the crowning of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Red Square in Moscow for the 75th Anniversary of the ‘Fatima Apparition’ in Portugal. As just two amongst one thousand plus of God’s children from bishops to priests, theologians, brothers, sisters, youths and other laypersons that were there that day, they joined together at the 1992 World Youth Congress in Moscow to share a very special message with the world about the need for change. It was a message of ‘WARNING’ as prophesized by the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God, on Sunday the 13th of May in the year 1917. But more importantly, it was also a call for love and spiritual renewal. There has been no phenomenon like it ever before recorded, but the miracle of the sun in Fatima continues to shine bright even at the darkest of times and is the hope behind this book. Many of history’s greatest thinkers have wrestled with the question of belief and non-belief in God through their literary circles and often simply by the way they have lived their lives: 1) “Is there a God?” and 2) “Why would He care about me?” Those are profound and universal questions considered in the first two books of this family story and re-visited here in this third encounter in trilogy. Though it might seem unlikely that any new arguments can be raised from either side between Science and Theology on Christendom, ultimately, each reader needs to ask through his or her own voice of Faith this question of GOD and His existence. It is at that spiritual juncture of question and answer that mankind may decide which path to follow. As seminarian students, Terry and Francis took three years of theology at St. Patrick Seminary & University in Menlo Park under the Diaconate Formation Program with the hopes of Francisco becoming a deacon with the Class of 2006. Though God had other plans for Francisco, both husband and wife humbly served at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco and at St. Bruno Church of the San Francisco Archdiocese for three decades. This soulful dialogue is for anyone seeking out answers about Judeo-Christian ethics and the belief that GOD reveals all in time.




Beneath the Blocks


Book Description

After solving the mystery of the stolen treasure, Edison is all set to return to his alchemy, when his friend Omar shows up at his door pleading for help. There is something or someone living beneath the blocks of Omar’s town, and things have started to take a treacherous turn. What started out as the theft of livestock and wheat has escalated, and now villagers have started to go missing as well. Edison tries to convince Omar that he’s not a good fit for the job—as he only solved a local robbery—and sends his friend on his way. But a few days later, Amira arrives with bad news—Omar is the latest villager to disappear. Consumed by guilt, Edison recruits Billy and they set off to rescue Omar and face the mysterious villain lurking beneath the blocks! Join Edison and Billy as they race to save the lost villagers in the second installment of the Unofficial Minecraft Mystery series!




Mysteries of the Overworld


Book Description

Stevie and Alex are still looking for answers about the mysterious Ender crystal Stevie discovered, and the sinister voice that seems to emanate from it. Their search leads them to a strange book filled with writing in a strange language, and pictures that seem to show two adventurers trapping the evil Ender Dragon in the End. As the writing in the book slowly reveals itself, the friends realize that the Overworld is in danger! The Ender crystal Stevie stumbled upon in the Overworld is one piece of an enchanted crystal that, if fully assembled, could either destroy the dragon—or set it free to destroy the world! Now Stevie and his friends must race to find the pieces of the broken Ender crystal. Can they find them all before the Ender Dragon discovers a way to stop them? Fans of Minecraft will be at the edge of their seats all the way through this second book in the Unofficial Overworld Heroes Adventure series by Danica Davidson!




Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West


Book Description

Few figures from history evoke such vivid Orientalist associations as Marco Polo, the Venetian merchant, explorer, and writer whose accounts of the "Far East" sparked literary and cultural imaginations. The essays in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West challenge what many scholars perceived to be an opposition of "East" and "West" in Polo's writings. These writers argue that Marco Polo's experiences along the Silk Road should instead be considered a fertile interaction of cultural exchange. The volume begins with detailed studies of Marco Polo's narrative in its many medieval forms (including French, Italian, and Latin versions). They place the text in its material and generic contexts, and situate Marco Polo's account within the conventions of travel literature and manuscript illumination. Other essays consider the appropriation of Marco Polo's narrative in adaptations, translation, and cinematic art. The concluding section presents historiographic and poetic accounts of the place of Marco Polo in the context of a global world literature. By considering the production and reception of The Travels, this collection lays the groundwork for new histories of world literature written from the perspective of cultural, economic, and linguistic exchange, rather than conquest and conflict.