Ninth in the high-octane Sandman Slim series, The Kill Society has the kick-ass action and inventive fantasy that are the hallmarks of New York Times bestselling author Richard Kadrey. Sandman Slim has reached the far edge of Tenebrae: the desolate home of the lost dead. Alone and with no clue how to get back home, he collides with a caravan of the damned, led by the ruthless Magistrate. Slim didn’t land in Tenebrae by chance. When he tried to open Heaven, he sent a tsunami across the universe and now the afterlife is falling apart. The angels know Slim is close by, and they have put a tempting bounty on his head. It’s one thing to ride with a ferocious criminal gang across the land of the dead – it’s quite another to do it while everyone is trying to make sure you stay there. But Slim’s not too worried. He’s been fighting cosmic forces hell-bent on destruction for years. A pack of vicious bounty hunters, vengeful angels, and dangerous enemies with friendly smiles isn’t going to stop him fixing the chaos he’s caused…

A stunning, delicate portrait of a family bookended by war, Home Fires explores the legacy of loss, the strictures of class and the long road to redemption. Max Weston, twenty-one, leaves for his first army posting in central Africa. What happens to him changes the lives of his family forever. At home, his parents struggle to cope. The overwhelming love Caroline has always felt for her only child is now matched by the intensity of Max's absence. The silence is broken by the arrival of Caroline's mother-in-law, Elsa, who at the age of ninety-eight can no longer look after herself. After years of living in fear of putting a foot wrong in front of this elegant, cuttingly courteous lady, finally, Caroline has the upper hand.

Develop, test, and deploy decentralized applications for Ethereum platform About This Book ? Build your first Ethereum Dapp with Truffle: the most popular Ethereum development framework ? Build, compile, and deploy smart contracts in your development environment ? Embrace Blockchains and utilize it to create new generation of secured and scalable apps Who This Book Is For This book is for web developers who are interested in the new world blockchain. Some basic understanding of JavaScript and web services is required. No prior knowledge of Decentralized applications or blockchain is required. What You Will Learn ? Understand the fundamentals of Truffle and Web3 ? Build a decentralized application with Truffle, while choosing the correct Ethereum client ? Connect your Dapp to Ethereum clients including Geth, Parity, and Ganache ? Migrate and test your Dapp with the correct networks such as Ropsten and Rinkeby ? Package a decentralized application into a user-friendly product by integrating Truffle with JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, React and Vue ? Explore tools including Ethereum Package Manager, the Registrar and browser wallets, and exploit third-party smart contract libraries. ? Evaluate the common migration pitfalls and how to mitigate them In Detail Truffle is a world-class development environment, testing framework and asset pipeline for Ethereum, aiming to make life as an Ethereum developer easier. If you are a web developer wanting to try your hand at developing Dapps with Truffle, then this is the book for you. This book will teach you to write smart contracts and build Dapps with Truffle. You will begin with covering the basics of Truffle, briefly explaining how it integrates Solidity and Web3, in orderto start building a mini decentralized application. Also, you will dive into migration, testing and integrating Truffle with the use of popular JavaScript frameworks. Lastly, you will ship your decentralized application and package it into a product. Moreover, you will go through the best practices in Truffle,so as to increase your proficiency in building Dapps with Truffle. By the end of the book, you will be able to write smart contracts and build decentralized applications with Truffle on Ethereum blockchains. Style and approach An intuitive, step-by-step and engaging guide that will teach you to build a real-world, decentralized application with Truffle.

Bring realism to your games by mastering post-processing effects and advanced shading techniques in Unity 2018 About This Book ? Learn the secrets of creating AAA quality shaders without writing long algorithms ? Master shader programming through easy-to-follow examples ? Create stunning visual effects that can be used in 3D games Who This Book Is For Unity Shaders and Effects Cookbook is for developers who want to create their first shaders in Unity 2018 or wish to take their game to a whole new level by adding professional post-processing effects. A solid understanding of Unity is required to get the most from this book. What You Will Learn ? Understand physically based rendering to fit the aesthetic of your game ? Write shaders from scratch in ShaderLab and HLSL/Cg ? Combine shader programming with interactive scripts to add life to your materials ? Design efficient shaders for mobile platforms without sacrificing their realism ? Use state-of-the-art techniques, such as volumetric explosions and fur shading ? Master the math and algorithms behind the most used lighting models ? Understand how shader models have evolved and how you can create your own In Detail Since their introduction to Unity, shaders have been seen as notoriously difficult to understand and implement in games. Complex mathematics has always stood in the way of creating your own shaders and attaining the level of realism you crave. Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook changes that by giving you a recipe-based guide to creating shaders using Unity. It will show you everything you need to know about vectors, how lighting is constructed with them, and how textures are used to create complex effects without the heavy math. This book starts by teaching you how to use shaders without writing code with the post-processing stack. Then, you’ll learn how to write shaders from scratch, build up essential lighting, and finish by creating stunning screen effects just like those in high-quality 3D and mobile games. You'll discover techniques, such as normal mapping, image-based lighting, and animating your models inside a shader. We'll explore how to use physically based rendering to treat light the way it behaves in the real world. At the end, we’ll even look at Unity 2018’s new Shader Graph system. With this book, what seems like a dark art today will be second nature by tomorrow. Style and approach The recipes in this book contain step-by-step instructions, complemented with screenshots, code, and real-world examples.

Enterprise Agility is practical framework for enhancing Agility and equipping your company with the tools to survive. About This Book ? Prepare your company to navigate the rapidly-moving business world ? Enhance Agility in every component of your organization ? Build a framework that meets the unique requirements of your enterprise Who This Book Is For Enterprise Agility is a tool for anyone with the motivation to influence outcomes in an enterprise, who aspires to improve Agility. Readers from the following backgrounds will benefit: chief executive officer, chief information officer, people/human resource director, information technology director, head of change program, head of transformation, and Agile coach/consultant. What You Will Learn ? Drive agility-oriented change across the enterprise ? Understand why agility matters (more than ever) to modern enterprises ? Adopt and influence an Agile mindset in your teams and in your organization ? Understand the concept of a CAS and how to model enterprise and leadership behaviors on CAS characteristics to enhance enterprise agility ? Understand and convey the differences between Agile and true enterprise agility ? Create an enterprise-specific action plan to enhance agility ? Become a champion for enterprise agility ? Recognize the advantages and challenges of distributed teams, and how Agile ways of working can remedy the rough spots ? Enable and motivate your IT partners to adopt Agile ways of working In Detail The biggest challenge enterprises face today is dealing with fast-paced change in all spheres of business. Enterprise Agility shows how an enterprise can address this challenge head on and thrive in the dynamic environment. Avoiding the mechanistic construction of existing enterprises that focus on predictability and certainty, Enterprise Agility delivers practical advice for responding and adapting to the scale and accelerating pace of disruptive change in the business environment. Agility is a fundamental shift in thinking about how enterprises work to effectively deal with disruptive changes in the business environment. The core belief underlying agility is that enterprises are open and living systems. These living systems, also known as complex adaptive systems (CAS), are ideally suited to deal with change very effectively. Agility is to enterprises what health is to humans. There are some foundational principles that can be broadly applied, but the definition of healthy is very specific to each individual. Enterprise Agility takes a similar approach with regard to agility: it suggests foundational practices to improve the overall health of the body—culture, mindset, and leadership—and the health of its various organs: people, process, governance, structure, technology, and customers. The book also suggests a practical framework to create a plan to enhance agility. Style and approach Enterprise Agility is a step-by-step guide to facing change and uncertainty head-on. The books provides practical ways to apply Agile methodologies and boost Agility throughout a business.

Learn how to implement the reactive programming paradigm with C++ and build asynchronous and concurrent applications About This Book ? Efficiently exploit concurrency and parallelism in your programs ? Use the Functional Reactive programming model to structure programs ? Understand reactive GUI programming to make your own applications using Qt Who This Book Is For If you’re a C++ developer interested in using reactive programming to build asynchronous and concurrent applications, you’ll find this book extremely useful. This book doesn’t assume any previous knowledge of reactive programming. What You Will Learn ? Understand language-level concurrency in C++ ? Explore advanced C++ programming for the FRP ? Uncover the RxCpp library and its programming model ? Mix the FP and OOP constructs in C++ 17 to write well-structured programs ? Master reactive microservices in C++ ? Create custom operators for RxCpp ? Learn advanced stream processing and error handling In Detail Reactive programming is an effective way to build highly responsive applications with an easy-to-maintain code base. This book covers the essential functional reactive concepts that will help you build highly concurrent, event-driven, and asynchronous applications in a simpler and less error-prone way. C++ Reactive Programming begins with a discussion on how event processing was undertaken by different programming systems earlier. After a brisk introduction to modern C++ (C++17), you’ll be taken through language-level concurrency and the lock-free programming model to set the stage for our foray into the Functional Programming model. Following this, you’ll be introduced to RxCpp and its programming model. You’ll be able to gain deep insights into the RxCpp library, which facilitates reactive programming. You’ll learn how to deal with reactive programming using Qt/C++ (for the desktop) and C++ microservices for the Web. By the end of the book, you will be well versed with advanced reactive programming concepts in modern C++ (C++17). Style and approach The book includes real-world problems that you will solve with the reactive programming model. It highlights the way event processing has evolved in the programming world.

Build enterprise-grade microservice ecosystems with intensive case studies using C# About This Book ? Learn to build message-based microservices ? Packed with case studies to explain the intricacies of large-scale microservices ? Build scalable, modular, and robust architectures with C# Who This Book Is For C# developers, software architects, and professionals who want to master the art of designing the microservice architecture that is scalable based on environment. Developers should have a basic understanding of.NET application development using C# and Visual Studio What You Will Learn ? Explore different open source tools within the context of designing microservices ? Learn to provide insulation to exception-prone function calls ? Build common messages used between microservices for communication ? Learn to create a microservice using our base class and interface ? Design a quantitative financial machine microservice ? Learn to design a microservice that is capable of using Blockchain technology In Detail C# is a powerful language when it comes to building applications and software architecture using rich libraries and tools such as .NET. This book will harness the strength of C# in developing microservices architectures and applications. This book shows developers how to develop an enterprise-grade, event-driven, asynchronous, message-based microservice framework using C#, .NET, and various open source tools. We will discuss how to send and receive messages, how to design many types of microservice that are truly usable in a corporate environment. We will also dissect each case and explain the code, best practices, pros and cons, and more. Through our journey, we will use many open source tools, and create file monitors, a machine learning microservice, a quantitative financial microservice that can handle bonds and credit default swaps, a deployment microservice to show you how to better manage your deployments, and memory, health status, and other microservices. By the end of this book, you will have a complete microservice ecosystem you can place into production or customize in no time. Style and approach A step-by-step guide that enables readers to create a complete microservice ecosystem they can place into production or customize in no time.

Mark Sperring is the author of several highly-acclaimed pciture books including the Sunflower Sword and Captain Buckleboots on the Naughty Step. He lives in Bristol where he also works as a bookseller.Sarah Warburton is the illustrator of Rumblewick, the Ruby and Grub stories and Sir Laughalot. She has a stellar track record in fantastic picture books. Sarah lives in Bristol with her busband and two children.

First published in 2005 and now available as an ebook. Des Lynam’s autobiography gives a frank and opinionated insight into the man behind the myth. Des Lynam is one of Britain's best-loved and most successful personalities. Famously guarded about his private life, Des will attempt to set the record straight and talk about the ladies in his life, his childhood days in Ireland, as well as his early marriage and life in 70s London. Des takes us through his 30 years at the BBC from a reporter on local radio to the drama of his top-secret move to ITV which was front page news on every national newspaper. The World Cups, the Olympic Games including his reporting of the Israeli shootings in Munich. Following Muhammad Ali to his fights in Zaire, Malaysia and the USA. The Grand National that never was, the IRA threatened race. The programmes he turned down, the ones he wished he had! Des offers a candid account of life behind the scenes at the national broadcaster, the people he has met, the triumphs, the disasters. In the unique role of top presenter on both main channels, he tells of his 5 years at ITV, his reasons for going there and why his decision was justified but in other ways disastrous.

Ian Botham was the most thrilling sight in sport for nearly two decades at the top of international cricket. He retired from the game in 1993 and has since acted as coaching advisor to the England team on the 1997/98 Zimbabwe and New Zealand tour, a commentator for Sky TV, and he has a newspaper column in the Daily Mirror. He continues to be a keen analyser of the game.

Jory John is co-author of the bestselling All My Friends Are Dead and a sequel, among other humour books. This is Jory's debut picture book for children. He lives (and sleeps) in San Francisco, USA. Benji Davies is an animation director and illustrator of children's books. He lives in London with his wife, Nina.

Linda Birch paints in oils, watercolour and pastels and has taught amateurs for many years. She writes regularly for the Leisure Painter magazine and is author of The Indoor Artist. She has also illustrated many children’s books.

Nancy Carson lives in Staffordshire and is a keen student of local history. All her novels are based around real events, and focus on the lives and loves of the people of the Black Country.

Michael Bond was born in Newbury, Berkshire on 13 January 1926 and educated at Presentation College, Reading. He served in the Royal Air Force and the British Army before working as a cameraman for BBC TV for 19 years. In 2015, Michael was awarded a CBE for his services to children’s literature, to add to the OBE he received in 1997. Michael died in 2017, leaving behind one of the great literary legacies of our time.

The ninth title in this successful series. A factually accurate but hilarious look at the life of Leonardo Da Vinci as he mixes with the colourful set in Renaissance Italy! From his passion for horses, to his painting of the Mona Lisa – all is revealed. Leonardo da Vinci’s life from 1470 to 1519 as seen through the eyes of one, Luigi Cannelloni, Leonardo’s trusty assistant. From his Adoration of the Magi; his passion for the structure of horses; his painting of the Mona Lisa not to mention the highlife of Renaissance Italy – all is revealed in an hilarious way. As with the other Lost Diaries, this is factually accurate but the fictional voice brings in the humour

In The Importance of Being Earnest what Lady Bracknell said of Ernest’s loss of both his parents could also be said about the losing of elections. If the loss of one election is unfortunate, and two careless, then three is reckless, four criminal, and to lose five in succession might well prove fatal. This chapter looks at the reasons for Labour’s losing streak. It considers whether the Party is now so enfeebled that it will be unable to win again, unless it offers an electoral reform which will ensure that it is unlikely ever to form a one-party government again. The promise of electoral reform must be accompanied by the most fundamental changes in the Party’s constitution if Labour is to continue to be a serious political force.

INTO THE DARK Fran has come back to face her ghosts: the fears she buried four long years ago. If she confronts the creatures from her nightmares, she’ll know that they were only in her mind. Her best friend and the man she loves are waiting, and spring in sunny Oxford seems to light the way ahead. But on Salisbury Plain she meets a living shadow and finds she is destined for a darker road. Martin is still challenging his demons: the phantoms that he’s glimpsed and can’t forget. Before his eyes they swarmed out of a medieval star chart and vanished in the night without a trace. He has unleashed the Ravensbreed: a band of ruthless warriors, sworn to defend their ancient kingdom in its darkest hour. The world has moved on, and yet the land still needs them. Beyond the peaceful English fields, old enemies are gathering again. From city streets to wild woods, among outcasts and resisters, Fran and Martin must join the Ravensbreed in their final, desperate war – a long and bloody struggle which, if lost, will plunge their country and everyone they love into a brutal New Dark Age.

Mick Hume is a journalist and author of ‘Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?’ He is editor-at-large of Spiked and writes regularly on free-speech issues. He had a weekly column in The Times for ten years, and was described as ‘Britain’s only libertarian Marxist newspaper columnist’. More recently he has written in defence of freedom of speech and a free press in The Times, the Sunday Times, the Independent and the Sun.

Ada Adverse was brought up in a deeply puritanical household where looking at a cake or using words containing more than one vowel were considered decadences punishable by a night in the coal cellar. But at fifteen she ran away from home and is now the world’s leading authority on Having Fun, which is definitely an actual job, she has ‘Fungineer’ printed on her business cards to prove it, though in retrospect she should have been more clear that this does not mean she specialises in mushrooms. Ada’s hobbies include topiary, mazes, homing pigeons, flea circuses, forming imaginary bands in her head, embalming things, tattoos, pylons, and the films of Billy Wilder. Ada’s dislikes include predatory mcaws, getting out the wrong side of the bed, collections of masks, and porcelain dolls with realistic teeth.

Passion, adventure, struggle for survival and love for life – on a remote island. You’re fed up with your office job, your flatmate, your bank manager and yourself. Fate throws you a lifeline. You’re now the sole inheritor of a cottage on a remote island off New Zealand. Do you take it? Of course you do. So, off sets Rosie Trethewey, not knowing what she’s in for but pretty certain it can’t be worse than what she’s got. She’s not counted on her reclusive neighbours: a traumatised refugee of the war in Burma, and a misanthrope of an ex-policeman. They can’t abide each other, let alone the thought of a newcomer. And a woman at that. But you can’t survive on an island without some degree of contact. Rosie is the catalyst that forces the loners to come to terms with themselves, each other and the encroaching world.

The winners of the 1993 IAN ST JAMES AWARDS. The Ian St James Awards enabled new writers from every walk of life to break into print. 1993’s collection introduced more new writers than ever before, with six short stories and ten longer pieces. Entertaining, thought provoking, original, each of these stories is a winner, selected from thousands of entries from all over the world.