In Dirty Game, Annie Bailey was an East End Madam. In Black Widow she’s queen of the gangs and trying to save her daughter’s life… Annie Bailey had done it all; Madam, mistress and Gangster's moll. Now she's Annie Carter, and she taking over the East End. Annie knew that it wouldn't last. Everything was going so well; she was living in Majorca, had Max Carter - the head of the Carter firm by her side, and had given him a beautiful daughter, Layla. But if there was one thing life had taught her, it was that everything could change in the blink of an eye. One minute she's lying by the pool, the next she's out cold. When she comes round Max and Layla are gone. It's not long before she gets the demands. They want money or she'll be getting her little girl back in pieces… There's only one thing Annie can do, she heads back to the East End of London and gathers the Carter firm together. Someone has snatched her husband and child. Now there's a score to settle, and it's being settled Annie Carter style…

The brilliant suspense thriller from the author of THE EAGLE HAS LANDED, set in the wartime battlegrounds of the Mediterranean. A brilliant suspense thriller from the wartime battlegrounds of the Mediterranean. In the historic summer offensive of 1943, the Allies stand ready to invade Sicily. The cost will be high in lives and time, unless the Sicilians themselves can be persuaded to rise against their Nazi oppressors. Only the Mafia can command an uprising – and the Godfather refuses to fight… Desperate action is needed to dent Hitler's evil pride. Someone who understands Mafia ways, and knows how to earn the loyalty the Allies crave. Someone who isn't afraid of killing his own…

A classic thriller featuring the most daring escape of the Second World War, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Eagle Has Landed. American Colonel Hugh Kelso is washed ashore on German-held Jersey in Spring 1944, with top-secret D-Day plans in his possession. To get him back, the most daring escape of the Second World War must be planned and executed. Harry Martineau, bilingual philosophy professor turned assassin, and Sarah Drayton, a beautiful, half-French Jersey native, are selected to carry out the mission, and set off to steal the most precious Allied asset from under the noses of the Nazis. . .

The very first novel written by Jack Higgins, re-packaged to celebrate 50 years of bestsellerdom. He guesses it's around 3am. Gun runner and occasional smuggler Mark Hagen, hears a scream through the fog. He finds a girl; young, beautiful, trouble. But as Mark Hagen himself said "I love trouble, angel. It makes life so much more interesting." Before long he is hauled into a chaotic chase involving The Red Chinese, and a lot of gold. From feeling he had lost everything to suddenly fighting for his life, Hagen must battle his inner demons and some truly terrifying enemies in a deadly game of power, action and murder.

Reissue of the timeless Higgins classic… Captain Hugh Lomax's last view of Kyros had been as a German prisoner of war. The picturesque beauty of the Greek Islands hiding their blood-drenched history and the terrifying carnage that took place years earlier. But there are questions still unanswered. Lomax knows he was innocent, and as he returns to Kyros he begins to remember things he had long since buried in the back of his mind; the deadly mission he undertook, as well as a horrific massacre that still remains without reason. Now, the time has come for answers. Lomax is set to unlock the secrets of his past; someone betrayed the islanders at the height of the Nazi occupation, and they want their secret kept, whatever it takes, whoever has to suffer.

Jack Higgins, the undisputed master of action and suspense is back with a brand new adventure featuring the unstoppable Sean Dillon. For intelligence operative Sean Dillon, it is a routine passport check. But the events it will lead to will be as bloody as any he has ever known. The man he stops at Heathrow airport is Caspar Rashid, born and bred in England, but with family ties to a Bedouin tribe fiercely wedded to the old ways, as Rashid has just found out to his pain. His thirteen-year-old daughter, Sara, has been kidnapped by Rashid's own father and taken to Iraq to be married to a man known as the Hammer of God, one of the Middle East's most feared terrorists. Dillon has had his own run-ins with the tribe, and when the distraught man begs him for help, he sees a chance to settle some old scores – but Dillon has no idea of the terrible chain of events he is about to unleash, nor of the implacable enemies he is about to gain. Before his journey is done, many men will die – and Dillon may be one of them.

The electrifying WWII bestseller from the master of the game. On the 30th April 1945, Russian radar reported a light aircraft leaving the vicinity of the Tiergarten in Berlin. But who was on board, and where was the plane going? Berlin was in ruins as the Russians moved relentlessly towards the concrete bunker where the Nazi adminstration was in ruins. But one man, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Adolf Hitler’s secretary and eminence grise had a daring plan to escape. Far away to the sout–west , at Schloss Arlberg above the River Inn, five prisoners of war were contemplating their fate. Would they be murdered by their captors or liberated by the Russians? Unbeknown to them Bormann has is own plans. They are about to become part of a mystery that has fascinated the world for over sixty years. What exactly did happen to Bormann and his prisoners?

Unleash the power of Python and its robust data science capabilities About This Book Unleash the power of Python 3 objects Learn to use powerful Python libraries for effective data processing and analysis Harness the power of Python to analyze data and create insightful predictive models Unlock deeper insights into machine learning with this vital guide to cutting-edge predictive analytics Who This Book Is For Entry-level analysts who want to enter in the data science world will find this course very useful to get themselves acquainted with Python’s data science capabilities for doing real-world data analysis. What You Will Learn Install and setup Python Implement objects in Python by creating classes and defining methods Get acquainted with NumPy to use it with arrays and array-oriented computing in data analysis Create effective visualizations for presenting your data using Matplotlib Process and analyze data using the time series capabilities of pandas Interact with different kind of database systems, such as file, disk format, Mongo, and Redis Apply data mining concepts to real-world problems Compute on big data, including real-time data from the Internet Explore how to use different machine learning models to ask different questions of your data In Detail The Python: Real-World Data Science course will take you on a journey to become an efficient data science practitioner by thoroughly understanding the key concepts of Python. This learning path is divided into four modules and each module are a mini course in their own right, and as you complete each one, you’ll have gained key skills and be ready for the material in the next module. The course begins with getting your Python fundamentals nailed down. After getting familiar with Python core concepts, it’s time that you dive into the field of data science. In the second module, you'll learn how to perform data analysis using Python in a practical and example-driven way. The third module will teach you how to design and develop data mining applications using a variety of datasets, starting with basic classification and affinity analysis to more complex data types including text, images, and graphs. Machine learning and predictive analytics have become the most important approaches to uncover data gold mines. In the final module, we'll discuss the necessary details regarding machine learning concepts, offering intuitive yet informative explanations on how machine learning algorithms work, how to use them, and most importantly, how to avoid the common pitfalls. Style and approach This course includes all the resources that will help you jump into the data science field with Python and learn how to make sense of data. The aim is to create a smooth learning path that will teach you how to get started with powerful Python libraries and perform various data science techniques in depth.

Master the art of getting the maximum out of your machine data using Splunk About This Book A practical and comprehensive guide to the advanced functions of Splunk,, including the new features of Splunk 6.3 Develop and manage your own Splunk apps for greater insight from your machine data Full coverage of high-level Splunk techniques including advanced searches, manipulations, and visualization Who This Book Is For This book is for Splunk developers looking to learn advanced strategies to deal with big data from an enterprise architectural perspective. It is expected that readers have a basic understanding and knowledge of using Splunk Enterprise. What You Will Learn Find out how to develop and manage apps in Splunk Work with important search commands to perform data analytics on uploaded data Create visualizations in Splunk Explore tweaking Splunk Integrate Splunk with any pre-existing application to perform data crunching efficiently and in real time Make your big data speak with analytics and visualizations using Splunk Use SDK and Enterprise integration with tools such as R and Tableau In Detail Master the power of Splunk and learn the advanced strategies to get the most out of your machine data with this practical advanced guide. Make sense of the hidden data of your organization – the insight of your servers, devices, logs, traffic and clouds. Advanced Splunk shows you how. Dive deep into Splunk to find the most efficient solution to your data problems. Create the robust Splunk solutions you need to make informed decisions in big data machine analytics. From visualizations to enterprise integration, this well-organized high level guide has everything you need for Splunk mastery. Start with a complete overview of all the new features and advantages of the latest version of Splunk and the Splunk Environment. Go hands on with uploading data, search commands for basic and advanced analytics, advanced visualization techniques, and dashboard customizing. Discover how to tweak Splunk to your needs, and get a complete on Enterprise Integration of Splunk with various analytics and visualization tools. Finally, discover how to set up and use all the new features of the latest version of Splunk. Style and approach This book follows a step by step approach. Every new concept is built on top of its previous chapter, and it is full of examples and practical scenarios to help the reader experiment as they read.

Master the art of building dynamic, modern web applications with React About This Book Learn the hot new frontend web framework from Facebook – ReactJS, an easy way of developing the V in MVC and a better approach to software engineering in JavaScript A fast-paced guide to designing and building scalable and maintainable web apps with React.js Learn all the new ES6 features and be among the most prominent JavaScript developers who can write efficient JS programs as per the latest standards Master the art of building modern web applications using React Learn to build modern native iOS and Android applications using JavaScript and the incredible power of React Who This Book Is For This course is for web developers that want to unlock high performance dynamism in the applications that they create. If you want a comprehensive journey into one of the most important JavaScript frameworks around today, dive into this course. What You Will Learn Take control of the front end with reactive JavaScript programming Discover what ReactJS offers your development - before mastering it Create React elements with properties and children Use JSX to speed up your React development process Test your React components with the Jest test framework Learn the latest syntax of ES6 Execute ES6 in a non-supported ES6 environment Learn the principles of object-oriented programming Create a complete single-page application Use an application design plan to write smarter, more meaningful code Learn how to use animations to give extra style to your application Get to grips with the React Native environment Write your own custom native UI components Integrate native modules in Objective-C and Java that interact with JavaScript In Detail ReactJS has helped to transform the web as we know it. Designed by Facebook to help developers build rapid, responsive UI that can deal with data-intensive usage, it’s an essential component in any web developer’s skillset. This ReactJS course, in five connected modules, provides you with a fast, engaging and practical route into ReactJS—so you can build powerful, elegant, and modern web applications. Beginning with the Reactive Programming with JavaScript module, you will learn how to take advantage of a reactive and functional programming paradigm to rethink how you approach your JavaScript code. It’s built to help you understand the concepts, relevant and applicable for any frontend developer. You’ll then dive a little deeper into ReactJS. The second module gives you a rapid look through the fundamentals of ReactJS, showing you how to build a basic application and demonstrating how to implement the Flux architecture. In the third module you will get to grips with ES6—this will make you a more fluent JavaScript developer, giving you control over ReactJS. You can put your old JavaScript hacks aside and instead explore how to create ES6 custom iterators. In the final two modules you’ll learn how to fully master ReactJS, exploring its wider ecosystem of tools that have helped to make it one of the most important tools in web development today. Ending with insights and guidance on React Native, the tool built for today’s demand for native, intuitive user experiences and interfaces, with this course you can be confident in building dynamic and modern apps with React. Style and approach Consisting of five separate modules, journey from the fundamentals of reactive programming to the exciting possibilities of React Native. Each module builds on each other, helping you to incrementally develop your skills and knowledge.

Master the art of making Docker more extensible, composable, and modular by leveraging plugins and other supporting tools About This Book Get the first book on the market that shows you how to extend the capabilities of Docker using plugins and third-party tools Master the skills of creating various plugins and integrating great tools in order to enhance the functionalities of Docker A practical and learning guide that ensures your investment in Docker becomes more valuable Who This Book Is For This book is for developers and sys admins who are well versed Docker and have knowledge on basic programming languages. If you can’t wait to extend Docker and customize it to meet your requirements, this is the book for you! What You Will Learn Find out about Docker plugins and the problems they solve Gain insights into creating your own plugin Use Docker tools to extend the basic functionality of the core Docker engine Get to grips with the installation and configuration of third-party tools available to use with Docker plugins Install, configure, and use a scheduling service to manage the containers in your environment Enhance your day-to-day Docker usage through security, troubleshooting, and best practices In Detail With Docker, it is possible to get a lot of apps running on the same old servers, making it very easy to package and ship programs. The ability to extend Docker using plugins and load third-party plugins is incredible, and organizations can massively benefit from it. In this book, you will read about what first and third party tools are available to extend the functionality of your existing Docker installation and how to approach your next Docker infrastructure deployment. We will show you how to work with Docker plugins, install it, and cover its lifecycle. We also cover network and volume plugins, and you will find out how to build your own plugin. You’ll discover how to integrate it with Puppet, Ansible, Jenkins, Flocker, Rancher, Packer, and more with third-party plugins. Then, you’ll see how to use Schedulers such as Kubernetes and Amazon ECS. Finally, we’ll delve into security, troubleshooting, and best practices when extending Docker. By the end of this book, you will learn how to extend Docker and customize it based on your business requirements with the help of various tools and plugins. Style and approach An easy to follow guide with plenty of hands-on practical examples which can be executed both on your local machine or externally hosted services.

Create fast, scalable, and high performance applications with C#, ASP.NET Core 1.0, and MVC 6 About This Book Learn the importance of measuring, profiling, and locating the most impactful problems Discover the common areas you might encounter performance problems and areas you don’t need to worry about Understand the differences between development workstations and production infrastructure and how these can amplify problems Design workflows that run asynchronously and are resilient to transient performance issues Who This Book Is For This book is for ASP.NET and C# developers who have experience with the MVC framework for web application development and are looking to deploy applications that will perform well in live production environments. These could be virtual machines or hosted by a cloud service provider such as AWS or Azure. What You Will Learn Why performance matters and when it should be considered Use different tools to measure performance Spot common performance issues, their root causes, and how to easily mitigate them Improve performance at the network level and I/O level, and how to optimize the application as a whole Work with caching and message queuing tools, including patterns and strategies Discover the dark side of performance improvement and find out how to manage complexity Monitor performance as part of continuous integration and regression testing Assess and solve performance issues with other advanced technologies In Detail ASP.NET Core is the new, open source, and cross-platform, web-application framework from Microsoft. It's a stripped down version of ASP.NET that's lightweight and fast. This book will show you how to make your web apps deliver high performance when using it. We'll address many performance improvement techniques from both a general web standpoint and from a C#, ASP.NET Core, and .NET Core perspective. This includes delving into the latest frameworks and demonstrating software design patterns that improve performance. We will highlight common performance pitfalls, which can often occur unnoticed on developer workstations, along with strategies to detect and resolve these issues early. By understanding and addressing challenges upfront, you can avoid nasty surprises when it comes to deployment time. We will introduce performance improvements along with the trade-offs that they entail. We will strike a balance between premature optimization and inefficient code by taking a scientific- and evidence-based approach. We'll remain pragmatic by focusing on the big problems. By reading this book, you'll learn what problems can occur when web applications are deployed at scale and know how to avoid or mitigate these issues. You'll gain experience of how to write high-performance applications without having to learn about issues the hard way. You'll see what's new in ASP.NET Core, why it's been rebuilt from the ground up, and what this means for performance. You will understand how you can now develop on and deploy to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux using cross-platform tools, such as Visual Studio Code. Style and approach Starting with a drill down into the nuts and bolts of various performance parameters, you will get an understanding of the ASP.NET MVC 6 framework with the help of rich code-based examples that will equip you to build highly scalable and optimized applications.

Build scalable microservices with Spring, Docker, and Mesos About This Book Learn how to efficiently build and implement microservices in Spring, and how to use Docker and Mesos to push the boundaries of what you thought possible Examine a number of real-world use cases and hands-on code examples. Distribute your microservices in a completely new way Who This Book Is For If you are a Spring developers and want to build cloud-ready, internet-scale applications to meet modern business demands, then this book is for you Developers will understand how to build simple Restful services and organically grow them to truly enterprise grade microservices ecosystems. What You Will Learn Get to know the microservices development lifecycle process See how to implement microservices governance Familiarize yourself with the microservices architecture and its benefits Use Spring Boot to develop microservices Find out how to avoid common pitfalls when developing microservices Be introduced to end-to-end microservices written in Spring Framework and Spring Boot In Detail The Spring Framework is an application framework and inversion of the control container for the Java platform. The framework's core features can be used by any Java application, but there are extensions to build web applications on top of the Java EE platform. This book will help you implement the microservice architecture in Spring Framework, Spring Boot, and Spring Cloud. Written to the latest specifications of Spring, you'll be able to build modern, Internet-scale Java applications in no time. We would start off with the guidelines to implement responsive microservices at scale. We will then deep dive into Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Docker, Mesos, and Marathon. Next you will understand how Spring Boot is used to deploy autonomous services, server-less by removing the need to have a heavy-weight application server. Later you will learn how to go further by deploying your microservices to Docker and manage it with Mesos. By the end of the book, you'll will gain more clarity on how to implement microservices using Spring Framework and use them in Internet-scale deployments through real-world examples. Style and approach The book follows a step by step approach on how to develop microservices using Spring Framework, Spring Boot, and a set of Spring Cloud components that will help you scale your applications.

Spontaneity may be in her blood but walking down the aisle to wed a stranger is the riskiest thing Sara Darling’s ever done. But to adopt her infant niece, she’ll first need to say an “I do” of convenience to war-traumatised soldier Jake Martin. She thought she could resist his rugged charm, but before long Sara needs their ready-made family as much as he does…

Pint-sized matchmakers on the loose! Responsibility is not something Maggie Bell has ever wanted. Sure, she’s never felt the need to leave her family business, but she can’t give up her freedom, even for someone as cute as Garrett McHale. The former Air Force pilot turned single father knows his family life filled with two sprightly little girls isn’t much to offer someone as lively as Maggie, but he can’t help feeling attracted. But when Maggie gets a good look at parenting, will she take fright? Or will Garrett show her that, when love’s involved, anything is possible?

Damsel in a wedding dress! Jilted at the altar, celebrity chef Meghan Finnegan flees the scene--and the baying press--only to run straight into the muscled torso of Cash Sullivan. The former rodeo champion knows what it's like to have your life crumble in the spotlight, so he offers Meghan a place to lie low at his ranch. Fresh air, no paparazzi and the brooding rancher's lazy smile are making Meghan not want to leave her sanctuary. But she and her unborn baby can't stay here forever...can they?

With his boss’s words, “Work hard and hands off my daughters”, etched into his memory, Vance Rivers knew from the very beginning that Ana Slater was strictly off limits! But now, with Ana back on the ranch and in need of his help, the rules are set to change!

Everything about contractor Alex McKnight was hard – hard body, hard heart, and he was damn hard to ignore. Yet while architect Ellie Hart couldn’t deny her attraction, she was going to resist! Until she got injured and Alex offered her a place to stay while she recovered. Then he suggested the unthinkable: a no-strings-attached, passion-unleashed affair… !

It has been seven years since Kara Jameson last saw Jason Greene. Returning home as a wounded war hero, Jason is a shell of the man she once knew. Yet her heart still skips a beat… Jason might not be so sure, but when they end up snowbound together they are forced to confront the ghosts of Christmas past.

After a rocky year, Casey Caravetta pulls herself together and puts on a smile for her best friend’s Christmas Eve wedding. However, she hadn’t expected to see Turner Kennedy, the first man to break her heart. Special Forces Commando Turner is now hard, dark and dangerous, tortured by his experiences of war. Coming face to face again with beautiful Casey is a painful reminder of the path he might have taken. Back then they were living on borrowed time, but now – with a sprinkling of holiday magic – they have a another chance… if only they’re prepared to believe it!

Caught in a blizzard, Georgia Beckett is forced down a narrow lane she hoped to avoid… and not just because of the snow! The road takes her past the beautiful abandoned house of her youth, the new residence of her childhood sweetheart. Sebastian Corder’s shocked to hear the doorbell ring - he never expected to see Georgia again. Nine years ago, both chasing different dreams, they went their separate ways. Now Sebastian’s hand hesitates. Is he ready to open the doors to the past? But the snow’s getting heavier… and there’s only one way to find out!