Dragons are creatures of legend. Of magic. Of wisdom, nature, and the power of creation. They have been in every culture and mythology since the beginning of time. Writers are creatures of legend. With magic, wisdom, and the power of creation at their fingertips. They, too, are in every culture and have been creating their own mythologies since the beginning of time. Within each writer is the power of a dragon. . . . The power of creation. Gathered together are twenty-six stories from writers who dared to tame this power, including New York Times best-selling authors Brandon Sanderson, Jody Lynn Nye, Todd McCaffrey, and David Farland. Through fantasy, sci-fi, romance, and poetry, this anthology celebrates the magic and majesty of dragons, writers, and creativity. Within these pages, you’ll find dragons who fly through space, who raise hatchlings, who carry the power of life and death. Some dragons are even featured as swords, planes, and origami creatures. Dragon Writers is a special collection where magic and myth combine to create something legendary. All profits benefit the Don Hodge Memorial Scholarship fund for the Superstars Writing Seminar.

TARGETS ARE LOCKED! Five short novels by five masters of military SF capture the excitement, and hell, of fantastic future war—on and off the battlefield. Stories of terrifying monsters, dangerous aliens and staggering cosmic dreadnaughts march alongside far-flung courtroom dramas and cautionary tales involving man and his devices. Michael A. Stackpole—The Star Tigers are commandeered by a powerful alien overseer on a covert mission to a world long abandoned by an ancient species. There, the ruins of a forgotten war will tip the balance of their war, unless the Star Tigers can prevent it. Sarah A. Hoyt—Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva is a well-respected leader of the Usaian Revolution, but treason in the ranks can cost him everything that makes life worth living—unless he takes justice into his own hands and breaks every military regulation in its pursuit. Doug Dandridge—Faced with an enemy more than two hundred times her own size, Cinda Klerk has two options: hide, and let it destroy the planet she is supposed to protect, or find a way to even the odds and kill the enemy, even at the cost of her ship and crew. Eytan Kollin and Dani Kollin—As the Unincorporated War envelops the entire solar system, a father must come to the rescue of a daughter he never raised. But he'll have to convince her to save herself first. Kevin J. Anderson—In the war against an alien menace, Earth’s greatest military commanders risk themselves on the front lines, but with an escape hatch: If the situation goes terribly wrong, they can switch places with a safe soldier far from the battlefield. But the cannon-fodder volunteers don’t consider that such a good deal. Set your cross-hairs on the Target Zone.

A never-before-published novel by Frank Herbert, author of the international bestseller DUNE. EMASI—Each Man A Separate Individual! That is the rallying cry of the Seps, the Separatists engaged in a class war against the upper tiers of a society driven entirely by opinion polls. Those who score high in the polls, the High-Opps, live in plush apartments, with comfortable jobs, every possible convenience. But those who happen to be low-opped, find themselves crowded in Warrens, with harsh lives and brutal conditions. Daniel Movius, Ex-Senior Liaitor, rides high in the opinion polls until he becomes a casualty, brushed aside by a very powerful man. Low-opped and abandoned, Movius finds himself fighting for survival in the city’s underworld. There, the opinion of the masses is clear: It is time for a revolution against the corrupt super-privileged. And every revolution needs a leader.

You've self-published a book and you'd like to see it in your local library or bookstore or the review pages of your favourite newspaper. You'd like to speak or read at a literary festival or event. You'd like to enter it for a book award or prize. This Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) guide will tell you how to recognise opportunities, work with publishing partners and open doors, and keep them open, for your own benefit -- and that of all indie authors. This guide is also aimed at those who work in the literary, publishing and books industries: award bodies, book fairs and conferences, libraries, literary festival and event organisers, retailers, reviewers and anyone who acts as a bridge between writer and reader. It gives detailed advice on how to find good self-published books and how they might -- and should -- be included, wherever readers are found. Packed with useful information, and real-life examples from members of The Alliance of Independent Authors, this guidebook is part of a wider campaign that includes a petition, and lobbying within the publishing industry, encouraging it to open up to the self-publishing phenomenon. You can sign the petition at Change.org. change.org/petitions/open-up-to-indie-authors More information at: allianceindependentauthors.org

Twenty years ago Jo Devereux fled Mucknamore, the small Irish village where she grew up, driven away by buried secrets and hatreds, swearing never to return? Now she is back and wants to uncover the truth about what really went on between her family and their friends, the O’Donovans, during Ireland’s bitter Civil War. The consequences of that division in the 1920s carried down into Jo’s own life, shattering her relationship with Rory O’Donovan, the only man she ever loved and driving her to leave Ireland. Now, Jo’s estranged mother has died, leaving her a suitcase full of letters and diaries that may answer questions about the past.? Was her great-uncle really murdered by Dan O’Donovan, his best friend?? What would drive somebody to do that?? And what part did her beloved grandmother play in this conflict? Jo's happy life in San Francisco has been unraveling since her friend Richard died last year. So now, much to her own surprise, she decides to stay on in Mucknamore and see if the letters and diaries bequeathed by her mother might provide the key to unlock the truth. Over the course of a long hot summer, Jo draws close again to Rory, who still lives in Mucknamore and is mired in an unhappy marriage. As she tells him about their shared family past, they realize their love affair was doomed long before they were born. Now that they know, can there be a second chance at happiness? Rory is urging her to rebel, to forget the past and start over again.? But reading their shared history has made Jo cautious. The strength of her feelings frightens her. Is there any way she can be true to Rory and herself, but also to the family she rejected when she was young and headstrong? After The Rising is a sweeping, multigenerational tale set in the 1920s and 1990s Ireland and 1980s San Francisco. It is the first book in The Irish Trilogy, followed by Before the Fall.? This is perfect for fans of Barbara Erskine, MJ Lee or Anne Griffin.

Ramona Dorokhova is twenty-eight, not an actual bartender, and plans to tell her boss the truth. How hard can it be to tell a man you haven’t seen since childhood that?you’ve come across an ocean to marry him? Owen Chandler wants for nothing, fulfills women’s fantasies, and desires his newest employee. When a snow storm plus no electricity leads to sharing a bed, why not use the situation to his advantage? Except her history intertwines with his, what both believe isn’t true, and their one night of passion may have deadly consequences.

Teroristkinja!“ Teroristkinja!“ Svi su vikali kad sam ula unutra. Osvrnula sam se po prostoriji i videla mnogo pritvorenih ljudi. Jedan runi ovek zastraujueg izgleda mi se uneo u lice i rekao: Terorista je dobar samo kad je mrtav!“ Te rei su me toliko prestravile da sam se sruila na pod. Ovo je pria o gospoici Minami Jamagui, japanskoj teroristkinji.

Dodo Collections brings you another classic from H. Rider Haggard, ‘Regeneration’ ? In Regeneration, Haggard talks of the work of the Salvation Army in Great Britain. Haggard sums up the Salvation Army by saying, "the religious Organization founded by this man and his wife is now established and, in most instances, firmly rooted in 56 Countries and Colonies, where it preaches the Gospel in 33 separate languages: that it has over 16,000 Officers wholly employed in its service, and publishes 74 periodicals in 20 tongues, with a total circulation of nearly 1,000,000 copies per issue: that it accommodates over 28,000 poor people nightly in its Institutions, maintaining 229 Food Depots and Shelters for men, women, and children, and 157 Labour Factories where destitute or characterless people are employed: that it has 17 Homes for ex-criminals, 37 Homes for children, 116 Industrial Homes for the rescue of women, 16 Land Colonies, 149 Slum Stations for the visitation and assistance of the poor, 60 Labour Bureaux for helping the unemployed, and 521 Day Schools for children: that, in addition to all these, it has Criminal and General Investigation Departments, Inebriate Homes for men and women, Inquiry Offices for tracing lost and missing people, Maternity Hospitals, 37 Homes for training Officers, Prison-visitation Staffs, and so on almost ad infinitum.” ? Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and the creator of the Lost World literary genre. His stories, situated at the lighter end of the scale of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential. He was also involved in agricultural reform and improvement in the British Empire. ? His breakout novel was King Solomon's Mines (1885), which was to be the first in a series telling of the multitudinous adventures of its protagonist, Allan Quatermain. ? Haggard was made a Knight Bachelor in 1912 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1919. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Conservative candidate for the Eastern division of Norfolk in 1895. The locality of Rider, British Columbia, was named in his memory.

Classic chess guide, first published in 1915. According to Wikipedia: "Edward Lasker (December 3, 1885 – March 25, 1981) was a leading German-American chess and Go player. He was awarded the title of International Master of chess by FIDE. Lasker was an engineer by profession, and an author."

Dodo Collections brings you another classic from Sherwood Anderson, ‘"Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories".’ ? This collection of short stories solidified the author's reputation as a major American writer. Despite their narrative simplicity (similar in style to the work of Hemingway, who was highly influenced by Anderson's technique), these stories explore intriguing psychological depths, redolent with personal epiphanies, erotic undercurrents, and sudden eruptions of passion among seemingly repressed, inarticulate Midwesterners. ? Anderson was born on Sept. 13, 1876, in Camden, Ohio. He never finished high school because he had to work to support his family. By 1912, he was the successful manager of a paint factory in Elyria, Ohio, and the father of three children by the first of his four wives. In 1912, Anderson deserted his family and job. In early 1913, he moved to Chicago, where he devoted more time to his imaginative writing. He became a heroic model for younger writers because he broke with what they considered to be American materialism and convention to commit himself to art.

Dodo Collections brings you another classic from Bramah Ernest, ‘Kai Lung's Golden Hours.’ ? As with other Kai Lung novels, the main plot serves primarily as a vehicle for the presentation of the gem-like, aphorism-laden stories told by the protagonist Kai Lung, an itinerant story-teller of ancient China. In?Kai Lung's Golden Hours?he is brought before the court of the Mandarin Shan Tien on charges of treason by the Mandarin's confidential agent Ming-shu. In a unique defense, Kai Lung recites his beguiling tales to the Mandarin, successfully postponing his conviction time after time until he is finally set free. In the process he attains the love and hand of the maiden Hwa-Mei. ? Bramah was a reclusive soul, who shared few details of his private life with his reading public. His full name was Ernest Bramah Smith. It is known that he dropped out of Manchester Grammar School at the age of 16, after displaying poor aptitude as a student and thereafter went into farming, and began writing vignettes for the local newspaper. Bramah's father was a wealthy man who rose from factory hand to a very wealthy man in a short time, and who supported his son in his various career attempts.? Bramah went to Fleet Street after the farming failure and became a secretary to Jerome K. Jerome, rising to a position as editor of one of Jerome's magazines. At some point, he appears to have married Mattie.

Klassischer Roman, erstmals im Original 1922 ver?ffentlicht. Nach Wikipedia: "Siddhartha ist ein Roman von Hermann Hesse, der sich mit der spirituellen Reise eines Jungen namens Siddhartha vom indischen Subkontinent zur Zeit des Buddha besch?ftigt. Das Buch , Hesses neunter Roman, wurde auf eine einfache, aber dennoch kraftvolle und lyrische Art geschrieben, die 1951 in den USA ver?ffentlicht wurde und in den 1960er Jahren einflussreich wurde: Hesse widmete Siddhartha Ninon Hesse, seiner Frau, das Wort Siddhartha von zwei W?rtern in der Sanskrit-Sprache, siddha (erreicht) + artha (Bedeutung oder Reichtum). Die beiden W?rter zusammen bedeuten "derjenige, der Bedeutung (der Existenz) gefunden hat" oder "Er, der seine Ziele erreicht hat". Der Name des Buddha, vor seiner Entsagung war Prinz Siddhartha Gautama. In diesem Buch wird der Buddha als "Gotama" bezeichnet. "Hermann Hesse (2. Juli 1877 - 9. August 1962) war ein in Deutschland geborener Schweizer Dichter, Romancier und Maler. Im Jahr 1946 erhielt er den Nobelpreis für Literatur. Zu seinen bekanntesten Werken z?hlen Steppenwolf, Siddhartha und The Glass Bead Game (auch bekannt als Magister Ludi), die alle die Suche nach Authentizit?t, Selbsterkenntnis und Spiritualit?t untersuchen. "

Gaskell's best-known novel, the subject of a recent movie starring Dame Judi Dench and Simon Woods. According to Wikipedia: "Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell ( 1810 – 1865), often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. She is perhaps best known for her biography of Charlotte Bront?. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and as such are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature."

Greek myths retold as stories for children. According to Wikipedia: "Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 –1864) was an American novelist and short story writer... Much of Hawthorne's writing centers around New England and many feature moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his friend Franklin Pierce."

Over 100 effective recipes to help you design, implement, and troubleshoot manage the software-defined and massively scalable Ceph storage system. About This Book Implement a Ceph cluster successfully and learn to manage it. Recipe based approach in learning the most efficient software defined storage system Implement best practices on improving efficiency and security of your storage cluster Learn to troubleshoot common issues experienced in a Ceph cluster Who This Book Is For This book is targeted at storage and cloud engineers, system administrators, or anyone who is interested in building software defined storage, to power your cloud or virtual infrastructure. If you have basic knowledge of GNU/Linux and storage systems, with no experience of software defined storage solutions and Ceph, but eager to learn then this book is for you What You Will Learn Understand, install, configure, and manage the Ceph storage system Get to grips with performance tuning and benchmarking, and learn practical tips to help run Ceph in production Integrate Ceph with OpenStack Cinder, Glance, and Nova components Deep dive into Ceph object storage, including S3, Swift, and Keystone integration Configure a disaster recovery solution with a Ceph Multi-Site V2 gateway setup and RADOS Block Device mirroring Gain hands-on experience with Ceph Metrics and VSM for cluster monitoring Familiarize yourself with Ceph operations such as maintenance, monitoring, and troubleshooting Understand advanced topics including erasure-coding, CRUSH map, cache pool, and general Ceph cluster maintenance In Detail Ceph is a unified distributed storage system designed for reliability and scalability. This technology has been transforming the software-defined storage industry and is evolving rapidly as a leader with its wide range of support for popular cloud platforms such as OpenStack, and CloudStack, and also for virtualized platforms. Ceph is backed by Red Hat and has been developed by community of developers which has gained immense traction in recent years. This book will guide you right from the basics of Ceph , such as creating blocks, object storage, and filesystem access, to advanced concepts such as cloud integration solutions. The book will also cover practical and easy to implement recipes on CephFS, RGW, and RBD with respect to the major stable release of Ceph Jewel. Towards the end of the book, recipes based on troubleshooting and best practices will help you get to grips with managing Ceph storage in a production environment. By the end of this book, you will have practical, hands-on experience of using Ceph efficiently for your storage requirements. Style and approach This step-by-step guide is filled with practical tutorials, making complex scenarios easy to understand.

Dodo Collections brings you another classic from Max Brand, ‘The Untamed.’ The mysterious Whistlin' Dan Barry rides a black stallion named Satan, followed by a wolf dog named Black Bart. Dan has his own problems, but they multiply when he encounters Jim Silent and his outlaw gang. Frederick Schiller Faust (1892-1944) was an American fiction author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns. Faust wrote mostly under pen names, and today he is primarily known by one, Max Brand. Others include George Owen Baxter, Martin Dexter, Evin Evans, David Manning, Peter Dawson, John Frederick, and Pete Morland. Faust was born in Seattle. He grew up in central California and later worked as a cowhand on one of the many ranches of the San Joaquin Valley. Faust attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he began to write frequently. During the 1910s, Faust started to sell stories to the many emerging pulp magazines of the era. In the 1920s, Faust wrote furiously in many genres, achieving success and fame, first in the pulps and later in the upscale "slick" magazines. His love for mythology was, however, a constant source of inspiration for his fiction and his classical and literary inclinations. The classical influences are particularly noticeable in his first novel The Untamed (1919), which was also made into a motion picture starring Tom Mix in 1920.

Classic novel. According to Wikipedia: "Bret Harte (August 25, 1836[2] – May 6, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California. He was born in Albany, New York. ... He moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist. He spent part of his life in the northern California coast town now known as Arcata, then just a mining camp on Humboldt Bay. His first literary efforts, including poetry and prose, appeared in The Californian, an early literary journal edited by Charles Henry Webb. In 1868 he became editor of The Overland Monthly, another new literary magazine, but this one more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California. His story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," appeared in the magazine's second edition, propelling Harte to nationwide fame... Determined to pursue his literary career, in 1871 he and his family traveled back East, to New York and eventually to Boston, where he contracted with the publisher of The Atlantic Monthly for an annual salary of $10,000, "an unprecedented sum at the time." His popularity waned, however, and by the end of 1872 he was without a publishing contract and increasingly desperate. He spent the next few years struggling to publish new work (or republish old), delivering lectures about the gold rush, and even selling an advertising jingle to a soap company. In 1878 Harte was appointed to the position of United States Consul in the town of Krefeld, Germany and then to Glasgow in 1880. In 1885 he settled in London. During the thirty years he spent in Europe, he never abandoned writing, and maintained a prodigious output of stories that retained the freshness of his earlier work. He died in England in 1902 of throat cancer and is buried at Frimley."

The four Sherlock Holmes novels are: A Study in Scarlet, Sign of the Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Valley of Fear. According to Wikipedia: "Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was an author most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction."

La version fran?aise originale du conte épique d'Esmeralda et Quasimodo, situé à Paris en 1482. Wikipedia rapporte: "L'énorme popularité du livre en France a stimulé le mouvement de conservation historique naissante dans ce pays et a fortement encouragé l'architecture de renaissance gothique. Des rénovations majeures à Notre-Dame au XIXe siècle, sous la direction d'Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, résultent en grande partie de l'aspect actuel de la cathédrale. D'abord publié en 1831. Selon Wikipedia: "Victor-Marie Hugo (1802 - 1885) était un poète fran?ais, dramaturge, romancier, essayiste, artiste visuel, homme d'?tat, défenseur des droits de l'homme et représentant du mouvement romantique en France. La réputation littéraire de Hugo repose principalement sur sa production poétique et dramatique et seulement secondairement sur ses romans.Parmi les nombreux volumes de poésie, Les Contemplations et La Légende des siècles tiennent une haute estime critique, et Hugo est parfois identifié comme le plus grand poète fran?ais. France, ses ?uvres les plus connues sont les romans Les Misérables et Notre-Dame de Paris (parfois traduits en anglais sous le titre Le Bossu de Notre Dame). "

Classic novel. According to Wikipedia: "Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson ( 1850 - 1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of Neo-romanticism in English literature. He was the man who "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins", as G. K. Chesterton put it. He was also greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Vladimir Nabokov, and J. M. Barrie. Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their definition of modernism. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the canon."

Classic novel. According to Wikipedia: "Thackeray is most often compared to one other great novelist of Victorian literature, Charles Dickens. During the Victorian era, he was ranked second only to Dickens, but he is now much less read and is known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair. In that novel he was able to satirize whole swaths of humanity while retaining a light touch. It also features his most memorable character, the engagingly roguish Becky Sharp. As a result, unlike Thackeray's other novels, it remains popular with the general reading public; it is a standard fixture in university courses and has been repeatedly adapted for movies and television. In Thackeray's own day, some commentators, such as Anthony Trollope, ranked his History of Henry Esmond as his greatest work, perhaps because it expressed Victorian values of duty and earnestness, as did some of his other later novels. It is perhaps for this reason that they have not survived as well as Vanity Fair, which satirizes those values."