Sarah Holz – författare

Forgotten princess. Rebel general. Rival queen.How does a teenaged princess who rallies her country into a revolution against her famously brilliant sister and one of history's greatest military geniuses get lost to the shadows of time? Only one whose sister is named Cleopatra...In 51 BC, the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty has ruled Egypt for nearly three hundred years despite generations of betrayal amongst the clever and cruel Ptolemies. The old pharaoh has died, leaving his throne to his joint heirs: Ptolemy XIII and the young king's older sister, the indomitable Cleopatra. As a clash of personalities and ambitions hurdles the ancient kingdom towards crisis, the warring factions of the court are blinded to the fact that there are more than two royal children in this dangerous family...Princess Arsinoë has spent her childhood roaming the kaleidoscope world of cosmopolitan Alexandria, content to avoid the endless wars of the palace by living more in her head than in the often unsettling real world. But when the mysterious gods of her beloved homeland enter her dreams, calling on her to defend Egypt from the fury of the dynasty and the arrival of an even greater threat in the form of Julius Caesar, Arsinoë finds herself increasingly drawn into an escalating maelstrom of intrigue and violence that she must learn to navigate to save all that she holds dear…

"e;The air is different than it was, imi-ib... I sometimes wonder if we can go back to what was far less than even we imagine…"e;             Eight years have passed since Octavius Caesar – now Augustus – discovered the fate of Arsinoë and her daughter, Aetia. He has built Rome an empire on the bones of the fallen Ptolemies and his great-uncle, Julius Caesar, now worshipped as a god. But the peace of his world is threatened from within by a conspiracy that echoes the murderous past he is so desperate to forget, and the only one who can save him from it may be the girl he fears the most…             Free-spirited Aetia is perfectly satisfied to leave Rome to Octavius and his contentious inner circle. But when the gods of Egypt choose her to avert a disaster that could destroy everything her beloved mother fought to defend, she and her father's suspicious heir will have to put aside their differences if they are to prevent their enemies from altering the very course of history…

Modern states increasingly seek to regulate religious expression, practice and discourse. This is profoundly evident at many levels of Islamic policy interaction: from debates about the banning of the Muslim face-veil in Europe to civic re-education programmes for Muslim citizens in China. Governance of Islam in Pakistan provides a systematic account of how interactions between multiple public and private bodies direct the regulation and standardisation of Islam in one of the largest Muslim-majority states in the world. Analysis centres on the institutional development of the Council of Islamic Ideology, a constitutional body tasked with issuing advice to the executive and legislature about the compatibility of laws with Islamic principles. Based on archival material that has been subject to little scholarly attention, and interviews with Council members and staff of other state bodies, Sarah Holz proposes governance as an analytical framework to study the negotiation of religious expression, practice and discourse. In contrast to the established Islamisation narrative which generally labels such religious institutions as mere rubberstamps in the process of policy-making, the study of governance offers an alternative approach that enables examination of the dynamic competition and cooperation among multiple actors. Through collective interaction the Council and other relevant bodies are active players in the governance of Islam. Insights gained from analysis of the ideational, structural and functional evolution of the Council offers a Global South perspective on liberal democratic ideas about the functionality of the modern state and its institutional structure. Issues of economic, cultural and local/international political influence bear strongly in governance analysis. Engagement with the governance policy tool has applicability across the social sciences, but is particularly relevant for South Asian/Near and Middle East Studies.

Pakistan at Seventy-Five investigates the countrys multi-layered issues in the context of a post-colonial polity marked by diversity, heterogeneity, stratification and volatility. This wide-ranging discourse engages with diverse formal and informal actors as markers of identity, historical events and social conditions, as well as global geo-political and neo-colonial centreperiphery relations that shape narratives about the nation and the constructions of a sense of belonging. The editors and contributors utilise multi-faceted and multi-layered approaches, focusing on (1) identities, and questions of diversity and pluralism; (2) horizontal and vertical technologies and geographies of power related to questions of trust, legitimacy, participation, and governance; and (3) the distribution, deprivation and vulnerability of sociocultural, political, and human resources. Studying Pakistan has been subject to different approaches, including decolonial, indigenous, and feminist perspectives. This volume draws out alternative epistemological and methodological viewpoints: the insideroutsider conundrum, centreperiphery asymmetries, hegemonic discourses, and practices within Pakistans national/international academy. The chapter contributions are the outcome of a unique interdisciplinary research cooperation at Quaid-i-Azam University, focussing on early career researchers. Presenting a multiplicity of voices and trajectories, Pakistan at Seventy-Five provides new input to existing debates and directions for future scholarly endeavour. Contributors: Aftab Nasir, Andrea Fleschenberg, Arslan Waheed, Salman Rafi Sheikh, Sanaa Alimia, Sarah Holz, Sohaib Bodla, Wajeeha Tahir.

A crownless prince born to herald the future. An exiled princess raised to survive the past. And the daughter of the gods who must save them all. Gaius has lived his entire life within the protective world of Rome and his beloved grandfather, the shrewd, aging Augustus. However, when the empire's treasured heir is sent to bring peace to the eastern frontier, he'll learn the treacherous shadow cast by Augustus' desires will follow him to the very edge of the world he knows. And quite possibly beyond… Drusilla has grown up in the amicable security of Augustus' world, despite being the granddaughter of his great enemy, the notorious Cleopatra. But the unrest that finds Gaius in the east will find its way to her African homeland as well and young Dru will have to summon all her Ptolemaic strength to overcome the same snares that brought down her brilliant family before her... Aetia has spent the long, wandering years of her life protecting the fragile peace of her brother-cousin Augustus' empire as his most indomitable agent and serving the gods of the Egyptian underworld as their most powerful link to the lands of the living. But the daughter of Julius Caesar has always had a will of her own that neither the princeps of Rome nor the denizens of the Duat can fully control, and lucky for them too. For the infamous Umbra Augusti will need all her cunning to defend the heirs of the Caesars and the Ptolemies. Including herself...

In the spring of 1794, the French Revolution is building to its bloody climax, but half a world away, two of America's Founding Fathers are plotting to change the fates of some of its intended victims. Thomas Jefferson is hatching a plan with his sometimes-rival Aaron Burr to rescue his old friend, the marquis de Lafayette, captured by the Holy Roman emperor, and the marquis' family, prisoners of France's Reign of Terror. Neither can make this perilous journey themselves, so instead they come up with the idea to send their most trusted confederates in their place. For Burr, this is his adolescent daughter, Theodosia—a prodigy who is both his chief confidante and his greatest creation. For Jefferson, this is twenty-year-old Sally Hemings—the young woman who is both his slave and his dead wife's half-sister. Posing as Theo's governess, Sally must race against the infernal intentions of both the New World and the Old to save the Lafayettes, but she'll soon find that her precocious charge has no intention of staying out of the action. Level-headed Sally may not want a partner, and Theo might be too smart for her own good, but neither will end up having much choice in the matter. For both American girls are about to be swept up in the chaos unleashed on France by the bloodthirsty National Convention and its dreaded Committee of Public Safety, and they'll need to work together to save the Lafayettes' heads—as well as their own. But as these reluctant allies are aided and thwarted by a rogues' gallery of revolutionaries, pirates, and radical feminists, will their separate secrets tear them apart before the Revolution does?

"e;Thou wert born, not a demon, but a light so bright that the darkness cannot touch thee."e; So the physician monk Jehan d'Auterives tells his adopted daughter Zénaïde, a foundling once discarded out of superstition and fear. Taught medicine by him despite her sex as much as her disabilities, Zénaïde's unconventional destiny will take her from her childhood in a Norman monastery to medieval Paris and the royal court of Louis VII. But in this new world of chivalry and courtly love, pious Louis receives a dramatic prophecy that will send his young physician to Jerusalem and the chaotic eastern kingdom known as Outremer—"e;beyond the sea."e; Although dispatched merely as a healer for Baudouin, Jerusalem's leprosy-struck king, Zénaïde soon finds herself drawn into the century-long conflict between the crusader kingdom and its Muslim adversaries, led by the charismatic Salah al-Din. To protect everything that she has come to love in this land of divisions, Zénaïde will need all her ingenuity and empathy to navigate the treacherous factions within Outremer's borders and without. But can she do so without losing her soul? Or her life?

"e;An extravagant debt requires an extravagant penance."e;Twenty years after she was saved from the vengeful justice of her great-grandfather,Augustus, beautiful Zosime has been carefully sheltered from the schemes of both herJulii family and those of her father, the crafty Sejanus. Raised in secret with her cousinsby her aunt and uncle in Ombos, she has no ambitions beyond protecting themalongside her beloved teacher, Aetia.But when Aetia is summoned by the aging Emperor Tiberius to save him and the empirefrom the ever more powerful Sejanus, Zosime—disguised as her cousin—must leave thesafety of her life in Egypt for the glamorous danger of her father's Rome. And whencatastrophe sends her into his web of deceit alone, she'll have to rely on the mostunlikely god of all to save the Egypt that she loves and the Rome that might be herdestiny.But can she forgive the newly-divine Augustus before she falls under Sejanus'sdeadly spell?