In fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, five of which have been published in The New Yorker , the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than ever Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City , Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them. In the title story, in which Jones employs the first-person rhythms of a classic detective story, a Korean War veteran investigates the death of a family friend whose sorry destiny seems inextricable from his mother's own violent Southern childhood. In "In the Blink of God's Eye" and "Tapestry" newly married couples leave behind the familiarity of rural life to pursue lives of urban promise only to be challenged and disappointed. With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw away and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.

The first book in a new trilogy from L. J. Smith! Elena Gilbert is alive again. When Elena sacrificed herself to save the two vampire brothers who love her the handsome, brooding Stefan and the sleek and dangerous Damon she was consigned to a fate beyond death. Until a powerful supernatural force pulled her back. Now Elena is not just human. She has powers and gifts that were bestowed on her in the afterlife. What's more, her blood pulses with an overwhelming and unique force that makes her irresistible to any vampire. Stefan wants to find a way to keep Elena safe so that they can make a life together. Damon, however, is driven by an insatiable desire for power, and wants Elena to rule as his princess. When Stefan is lured away from Fell's Church, Damon seizes his chance to convince her that he is the brother she is meant to be with. . . . But a darkness is infiltrating the town, and Damon, always the hunter, is now the hunted; he becomes the prey of a malevolent creature that can possess him at will, and who desires not just Elena's blood but her death.

In picture-perfect Rosewood, Pennsylvania, ash-blond highlights gleam in the winter sun and frozen lakes sparkle like Swarovski crystals. But pictures often lie and so do Rosewood's four prettiest girls. Hanna, Aria, Spencer, and Emily have been lying ever since they became friends with beautiful Alison DiLaurentis. Ali made them do terrible things things they had to keep secret for years . And even though Ali was killed at the end of seventh grade, their bad-girl ways didn't die with her. Hanna's on a mission to corrupt Rosewood's youth, starting with a very attractive sophomore. Aria's snooping into her boyfriend's past. Spencer's stealing from her family. And pure little Emily's abstaining from abstinence. The girls should be careful, though. They thought they were safe when Ali's killer was arrested and A's true identity was finally revealed. But now there's a new A in town turning up the heat. And this time Rosewood is going to burn.

On the verge of giving up anchored to dreams that never came true and to people who have long since disappeared from their lives Van Booy's characters walk the streets of these stark and beautiful stories until chance meetings with strangers force them to face responsibility for lives they thought had continued on without them.

If God is good and all-powerful, why does he allow his creatures to suffer painAnd what about the suffering of animals, who neither deserve pain nor can be improved by itThe greatest Christian thinker of our time sets out to disentangle these knotty issues. With his signature wealth of compassion and insight, C. S. Lewis offers answers to these crucial questions and shares his hope and wisdom to help heal a world hungering for a true understanding of human nature.

Addressing some of the most difficult issues we face in our day-to-day lives, C. S. Lewis ardent and timeless words provide an unparalleled path to greater spiritual understanding. Considered by many to be his most moving address, The Weight of Glory extols a compassionate vision of Christianity and includes lucid and compelling discussions on forgiveness and faith.

After the sharp-eyed jay and the roaring lion, peace will come. . . . Four warrior Clans have shared the land around the lake as equals for many moons. But a prophecy foretells that three ThunderClan cats will hold the power of the stars in their paws. Jayfeather and Lionblaze know that they are two of the cats in the prophecy. Now the brothers must wait for a sign from StarClan to discover the identity of the third cat. Meanwhile, Dovekit and Ivykit kin of the great leader Firestar are poised to become ThunderClan apprentices. Soon one sister will have an ominous dream and will begin to realize that she possesses mystical skills unmatched by any other cat. In the midst of a cruel season that threatens the lives of all four warrior Clans, bonds will be forged, promises made, and three young cats will start to unravel the secrets that bind them together.

WhatA princess MeYeah, right. Mia Thermopolis is pretty sure there's nothing worse than being a five-foot-nine, flat-chested freshman, who also happens to be flunking Algebra. Is she ever in for a surprise. First Mom announces that she's dating Mia's Algebra teacher. Then Dad has to go and reveal that he is the crown prince of Genovia. And guess who still doesn't have a date for the Cultural Diversity Dance?

Over 80 hands-on recipes to unleash full potential for Xamarin in development and monetization of feature-packed, real-world Android apps About This Book Create a number of Android applications using the Xamarin Android platform Extensively integrate your Android devices with other Android devices to enhance your app creation experience A comprehensive guide packed with real-world scenarios and pro-level practices and techniques to help you build successful Android apps Who This Book Is For If you are a Xamarin developer who wants to create complete Android applications with Xamarin, then this book is ideal for you. No prior knowledge of Android development is needed, however a basic knowledge of C# and .NET would be useful. What You Will Learn Install and use Xamarin.Android with Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio Design an app’s user interface for multiple device configurations Store and protect data in databases, files, and on the cloud Utilize lists and collections to present data to the user Communicate across the network using NFC or Bluetooth Perform tasks in the background and update the user with notifications Capture and play multimedia, such as video and audio, with the camera Implement In-App Billing and Expansion Files and deploy to the store In Detail Xamarin is used by developers to write native iOS, Android, and Windows apps with native user interfaces and share code across multiple platforms not just on mobile devices, but on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Developing apps with Xamarin.Android allows you to use and re-use your code and your skills on different platforms, making you more productive in any development. Although it’s not a write-once-run-anywhere framework, Xamarin provides native platform integration and optimizations. There is no middleware; Xamarin.Android talks directly to the system, taking your C# and F# code directly to the low levels. This book will provide you with the necessary knowledge and skills to be part of the mobile development era using C#. Covering a wide range of recipes such as creating a simple application and using device features effectively, it will be your companion to the complete application development cycle. Starting with installing the necessary tools, you will be guided on everything you need to develop an application ready to be deployed. You will learn the best practices for interacting with the device hardware, such as GPS, NFC, and Bluetooth. Furthermore, you will be able to manage multimedia resources such as photos and videos captured with the device camera, and so much more! By the end of this book, you will be able to create Android apps as a result of learning and implementing pro-level practices, techniques, and solutions. This book will ascertain a seamless and successful app building experience. Style and approach This book employs a step-by-step approach to Android app creation, explained in a conversational and easy-to-follow style. A wide range of examples are listed to ensure a complete understanding of how to deploy competent apps on the Android market.

Create robust and scalable applications along with responsive UI using concurrency and the multi-threading infrastructure in .NET and C#About This BookLearn to combine your asynchronous operations with Task Parallel LibraryMaster C#’s asynchronous infrastructure and use asynchronous APIs effectively to achieve optimal responsiveness of the applicationAn easy-to-follow, example-based guide that helps you to build scalable applications using concurrency in C# Who This Book Is For If you are a C# developer who wants to develop modern applications in C# and wants to overcome problems by using asynchronous APIs and standard patterns, then this book is ideal for you. Reasonable development knowledge, an understanding of core elements and applications related to the .Net platform, and also the fundamentals of concurrency is assumed.What You Will LearnApply general multithreading concepts to your application’s designLeverage lock-free concurrency and learn about its pros and cons to achieve efficient synchronization between user threadsCombine your asynchronous operations with Task Parallel LibraryMake your code easier with C#’s asynchrony supportUse common concurrent collections and programming patternsWrite scalable and robust server-side asynchronous codeCreate fast and responsible client applicationsAvoid common problems and troubleshoot your multi-threaded and asynchronous applications In Detail Starting with the traditional approach to concurrency, you will learn how to write multithreaded concurrent programs and compose ways that won't require locking. You will explore the concepts of parallelism granularity, and fine-grained and coarse-grained parallel tasks by choosing a concurrent program structure and parallelizing the workload optimally. You will also learn how to use task parallel library, cancellations, timeouts, and how to handle errors. You will know how to choose the appropriate data structure for a specific parallel algorithm to achieve scalability and performance. Further, you'll learn about server scalability, asynchronous I/O, and thread pools, and write responsive traditional Windows and Windows Store applications. By the end of the book, you will be able to diagnose and resolve typical problems that could happen in multithreaded applications.Style and approach An easy-to-follow, example-based guide that will walk you through the core principles of concurrency and multithreading using C#.

A practical book with plenty of screenshots to guide you through the many features of multilingual Drupal. A demo ecommerce site is provided if you want to practice on a sample site, although you can apply the techniques learnt in the book directly to your site too. Any Drupal users who know the basics of building a Drupal site and are familiar with the Drupal UI, will benefit from this book. No previous knowledge of localization or internationalization is required.

A practical book with plenty of step-by-step instructions and informative screenshots to guide you through the many features of gradebook. Moodle Gradebook is for anyone who uses Moodle as a course instructor. You will need to know the basic functions of using and navigating Moodle, but no prior knowledge of the grades functions will be required.

This book follows a cookbook style, which will help you achieve outstanding results using ready-to-use recipes for reading comprehension, writing, and composition holding hands with Moodle 1.9 in the Web 2.0 Era. Each recipe is unique; some deal with similar teaching techniques, but they show how to develop the same technique using different software, situations, or topics. Images, videos, poems, songs, artists, classic stories, cartoons, superheroes, painting, the environment, and comics are inserted into the Moodle course, in order to be used as either prewriting or writing activities. If you are an English teacher who wants to discover practical, funny, and engaging activities to insert in your course, this is a perfectly designed book for you. It will help you to use different techniques in the teaching of reading comprehension, writing, and composition using a great variety of resources from the free and open source software available in the Web and interesting websites as well as social networks. You need basic experience with Moodle 1.9 or 1.9.5, as well as installation and configuration procedures.

This book is a step-by-step tutorial for anyone wanting to learn Apache Tomcat 7 from scratch. There are plenty of illustrations and examples to escalate you from a novice to an expert with minimal strain. If you are a J2EE administrator, migration administrator, technical architect, or a project manager for a web hosting domain, and are interested in Apache Tomcat 7, then this book is for you. If you are someone responsible for installation, configuration, and management of Tomcat 7, then too, this book will be of help to you.

The book is written so that both experienced and novice Tclers can find useful information inside. It starts with quick introduction to Tcl and its networking support for those who are less familiar with them. Authors focus on showing practical, yet simple examples for each module and command described so that reader understands how to use them when solving the real life problems. The examples given are useful programs that try to solve real-world needs. All sample programs are clear and concise yet nothing essential is left out and the programming style focuses on readability rather than on stylistic rigor or efficiency. This book is for Tcl developers with basic network programming concepts, who want to add networking capabilities to their applications. Working knowledge of Tcl and basic experience of network protocols will be useful. The reader should be familiar with basic concepts used in modern networking – keywords like TCP, HTTP or XML should not be a mystery. The book does not require advanced knowledge of Tcl – the first chapters will swiftly introduce the reader into it, allowing refreshing the information or gaining a quick overview of the Tcl language abilities.

This highly practical, expert level tutorial teaches you to build a Line of Business application with the aid of a case study which gradually builds throughout the book. It also includes a jumpstart chapter for developers coming from other technologies. If you already have a firm grasp of Silverlight development and are keen to advance your specialist knowledge of Line of Business (LOB) application development, then Expert Line of Business Application Development for Silverlight 5: Quick Start Guide is for you. If you are a developer with experience of other technologies, you may also find this book useful.

This is a problem-solution approach to take your FreeSWITCH skills to the next level, where everything is explained in a practical way. If you are a system administrator, hobbyist, or someone who uses FreeSWITCH on a regular basis, this book is for you. Whether you are a FreeSWITCH expert or just getting started, this book will take your skills to the next level.

This book takes a step-by-step approach to building a complete business website using Drupal and enhancing it to include modern technology used by cutting-edge companies. All instructions are written in such a way that they make sense to readers of any technical level. This book is for anyone who wants to learn how to set up a website quickly for their business using the super powerful Drupal open source content management software.

This book is intended for developers who want to learn what it takes to deploy and manage production level applications on Heroku. You may have already deployed applications to Heroku or may be entirely new to the platform. This book will get you up to speed quickly with all the knowledge needed to run real-world web applications on Heroku. When using the recipes in this book, it would be helpful to have some prior experience of working with Git and command line applications.

As part of Packt's Beginner's Guide, this book focuses on teaching by example. The book walks you through every aspect of PDI, giving step-by-step instructions in a friendly style, allowing you to learn in front of your computer, playing with the tool. The extensive use of drawings and screenshots make the process of learning PDI easy. Throughout the book numerous tips and helpful hints are provided that you will not find anywhere else. The book provides short, practical examples and also builds from scratch a small datamart intended to reinforce the learned concepts and to teach you the basics of data warehousing. This book is for software developers, database administrators, IT students, and everyone involved or interested in developing ETL solutions, or, more generally, doing any kind of data manipulation. If you have never used PDI before, this will be a perfect book to start with. You will find this book is a good starting point if you are a database administrator, data warehouse designer, architect, or any person who is responsible for data warehouse projects and need to load data into them. You don't need to have any prior data warehouse or database experience to read this book. Fundamental database and data warehouse technical terms and concepts are explained in easy-to-understand language.

If you are a business application developer or a system analyst who has learned QlikView and Qlik Sense and now want to take your learning to a higher level, then this book is for you. It is assumed that you are aware of the fundamentals of QlikView and have working knowledge of development and in-memory analytics.