Star Trek. These two simple words bring forth a vast web of mental associations to millions of people. For more than twenty-five years, a remarkable and widely varied group of characters has seemingly taken over a sizable portion of our collective consciousness and made it its own. Perhaps the late science fiction visionary Philip K. Dick saw this when he had a character in his novel A Scanner Darkly refer to the latest entertainment extravaganza as a “captainkirk.”

The Farmer's Instant Family Jeremiah Stoltzfus hopes the Amish community of Harmony Creek will provide a fresh start…until days before closing on his new farm, he finds a beautiful trespasser. Mercy Bamberger claims the property is hers, promised by her late grossdawdi. Jeremiah can't turn out the single mom and her daughter, nor can he leave. His solution: temporarily sharing the farm until ownership is settled. Once a city kid adopted by a Mennonite family, Mercy yearns to make the farm a haven for unwanted children. But living beside the handsome Amish farmer has her yearning for everything that's eluded her…laughter, love and a forever family.

Big Texan Reunion Between providing for her five-year-old twins and achieving her dream of running a wildlife sanctuary, Danica Bergmann has no room for anything—or anyone—else. So when the wildlife volunteer she’s taken on turns out to be Reid McAllister, her secret husband, who disappeared before she got a chance to reveal she was pregnant, it flips her world upside down. Six years ago he wasn’t worth chasing down, but Danica can tell Reid’s a changed man—and he’s still the only man she’s ever loved. It’s a long road to redemption, but can Danica learn to trust Reid with their children…and their future?

Her Temporary Cowboy Attorney Jackson Harris regularly goes toe-to-toe with the world’s toughest lawyers—but none of them compare to Lucy Maxwell. The feisty director of Oklahoma’s Big Heart Ranch for orphans is as stubborn as she is pretty. But Jack must stay focused; he’s only there to evaluate the ranch’s funding. Falling for Lucy and the sweet children she protects is out of the question. Though Lucy is determined to keep the ranch, she’s not about to give control to a city slicker—even a devastatingly good-looking one. But as they bump heads, Jack and Lucy gradually nudge open their hearts. Could a temporary cowboy become a permanent part of Lucy’s life?

‘IT’S THE NIGHTS that are the worst. I don’t know where he is, but my imagination tells me he is close at hand. In daylight I can keep the fears down; at night I am alone with the terror that he has created. If he rings me every ten minutes I think I will go mad with it; if he does not ring I worry that he is outside, watching me.’

‘I was gripped immediately’ KATERINA DIAMOND, author of THE TEACHER ‘Terrific characterisation, great writing and twists to leave you dizzy.’ TERESA DRISCOLL, author of I AM WATCHING YOU Do you really know your friends? ** THE TOP 10 KINDLE BESTSELLER** On the afternoon of Nick and Lisa’s wedding, their close friend is found poised on a hotel window ledge, ready to jump. As the shock hits their friendship group, they soon realise that none of them are being as honest with themselves – or with each other – as they think. And there are secrets lurking that could destroy everything. Tense, disturbing and clever, My Husband’s Lies is a breath-taking read, perfect for fans of Lucy Clarke and Erin Kelly.

Her missing memories could expose a killer After a gunshot wound to the head, Ella Camden turns to the only man she knows will believe she’s being targeted, ex-love and security expert Roman DeHart. Trouble is, amnesia keeps her from remembering why someone might be after her. Roman let her go once, this time he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure she stays alive—and his—forever.

Is the bounty hunter’s target really an innocent woman? Convinced her sheriff brother-in-law murdered her sister, Jamie Carter hides her six-year-old niece away until she can prove his crimes. Bounty hunter Zack Owen is bound by the law to turn her in, but Jamie’s story sways him to protect her instead. On the run together, Zack must face the personal price of falling for his fugitive.

Her True Identity is a Secret The next explosive Military K-9 Unit thriller With his ex-wife next on a killer’s hit list, Military Police Lieutenant Ethan Webb and his K-9 partner Titus must guard the woman posing as her. But courageous private investigator Kendra Bell refuses to be just bait—she wants to help bring down the killer. Can she play her part without falling for her pretend ex-husband?

The question seems unnecessary. After all, argument is a universal human activity in which we all engage as regularly and naturally as breathing. Even if we have never given much thought to the theory behind it, we have enough practical experience to recognize an argument the moment we become embroiled in one or hear others engaged in verbal conflict.

Stanley Spencer (1891 – 1959) has recently been recognised by a wide general public, as well as by art historians, as probably the greatest English painter of the twentieth century. His strange and thrilling settings of biblical and semi-biblical scenes, his grippingly realist portraits, his intense English landscapes, hang in pride of place in our national collections and fetch ever-escalating prices at auction. Although there have been many books about Spencer, Pople's biography is the first to give a thoroughly convincing and coherent account of the life and psyche of the man who produced these extraordinary pictures. Pople has not only had the co-operation of Spencer's daughters and remaining friends' he has had unrestricted access to the artist's letters, diaries and other writings, and has spent ten years unravelling the familiar but so often impenetrable mysteries we see on the canvas. His analysis demonstrates that there never was as artist for whom life and art were so much of a piece, and that without understanding Spencer's doings and circumstances, we have no hope of understanding his paintings.

Angela & John Hicks are the joint principals of the College of Integrated Chinese medicine in Reading. Angela is author of The Five Laws for Healthy Living, Principles of Acupuncture and Principles of Chinese Medicine. John is author of Principles of Chinese Herbal Medicine. They have been practising for over 17 years.

Colette Harris is Editor of Here’s Health. She discovered she had Polycistic Ovary Syndrome three years ago. Theresa Cheung is a full time writer with 5 health books already published in the US including a book on androgen disorders in women. She is author of Men and Depression. She is also a sufferer of PCOS

Building efficient Python applications at minimal cost by adopting serverless architectures About This Book ? Design and set up a data flow between cloud services and custom business logic ? Make your applications efficient and reliable using serverless architecture ? Build and deploy scalable serverless Python APIs Who This Book Is For This book is for Python developers who would like to learn about serverless architecture. Python programming knowledge is assumed. What You Will Learn ? Understand how AWS Lambda and Microsoft Azure Functions work and use them to create an application ? Explore various triggers and how to select them, based on the problem statement ? Build deployment packages for Lambda functions ? Master the finer details about building Lambda functions and versioning ? Log and monitor serverless applications ? Learn about security in AWS and Lambda functions ? Scale up serverless applications to handle huge workloads and serverless distributed systems in production ? Understand SAM model deployment in AWS Lambda In Detail Serverless architectures allow you to build and run applications and services without having to manage the infrastructure. Many companies have adopted this architecture to save cost and improve scalability. This book will help you design serverless architectures for your applications with AWS and Python. The book is divided into three modules. The first module explains the fundamentals of serverless architecture and how AWS lambda functions work. In the next module, you will learn to build, release, and deploy your application to production. You will also learn to log and test your application. In the third module, we will take you through advanced topics such as building a serverless API for your application. You will also learn to troubleshoot and monitor your app and master AWS lambda programming concepts with API references. Moving on, you will also learn how to scale up serverless applications and handle distributed serverless systems in production. By the end of the book, you will be equipped with the knowledge required to build scalable and cost-efficient Python applications with a serverless framework. Style and approach The book takes a pragmatic approach, using a real-world example to demonstrate building efficient, secure, and scalable serverless applications.

Improve the speed of your code and optimize the performance of your apps About This Book ? Understand the common performance pitfalls and improve your application’s performance ? Get to grips with multi-threaded and asynchronous programming in C# ? Develop highly performant applications on .NET Core using microservice architecture Who This Book Is For This book is for .NET developers looking at improving the speed of their code or simply wanting to take their skills to the next level. Basic C# knowledge is assumed. What You Will Learn ? Measure application performance using BenchmarkDotNet ? Explore the techniques to write multithreaded applications ? Leverage TPL and PLinq libraries to perform asynchronous operations ? Get familiar with data structures to write optimized code ? Understand design techniques to increase your application’s performance ? Learn about memory management techniques in .NET Core ? Develop a containerized application based on microservices architecture ? Learn tools and techniques to monitor application performance In Detail While writing an application, performance is paramount. Performance tuning for realworld applications often involves activities geared toward fnding bottlenecks; however, this cannot solve the dreaded problem of slower code. If you want to improve the speed of your code and optimize an application's performance, then this book is for you. C# 7 and .NET Core 2.0 High Performance begins with an introduction to the new features of what?explaining how they help in improving an application's performance. Learn to identify the bottlenecks in writing programs and highlight common performance pitfalls, and learn strategies to detect and resolve these issues early. You will explore multithreading and asynchronous programming with .NET Core and learn the importance and effcient use of data structures. This is followed with memory management techniques and design guidelines to increase an application’s performance. Gradually, the book will show you the importance of microservices architecture for building highly performant applications and implementing resiliency and security in .NET Core. After reading this book, you will learn how to structure and build scalable, optimized, and robust applications in C#7 and .NET. Style and approach This book will be a step by step easy to follow guide with focused examples to increase performance of applications and provide optimization techniques.

Get certified as an Azure architect by acing the 70-535 Architecting Microsoft Solutions (70-535) exam using this comprehensive guide with full coverage of the exam objectives About This Book ? Learn to successfully design and architect powerful solutions on the Azure Cloud platform ? Enhance your skills with mock tests and practice questions ? A detailed certification guide that will help you ace the 70-535 exam with confidence Who This Book Is For This book is for architects and experienced developers, who are gearing up for the 70-535 exam. Technical architects interested in learning more about designing Cloud solutions will also find this book useful. What You Will Learn ? Use Azure Virtual Machines to design effective VM deployments ? Implement architecture styles, like serverless computing and microservices ? Secure your data using different security features and design effective security strategies ? Design Azure storage solutions using various storage features ? Create identity management solutions for your applications and resources ? Architect state-of-the-art solutions using Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and Azure Media Services ? Use different automation solutions that are incorporated in the Azure platform In Detail Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions: Exam Guide 70-535 will get Azure architects and developers up-to-date with the latest updates on Azure from an architecture and design perspective. The book includes all the topics that are still relevant from the previous 70-534 exam, and is updated with latest topics covered, including Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and architecture styles. This exam guide is divided into six parts, where the first part will give you a good understanding of how to design a compute infrastructure. It also dives into designing networking and data implementations. You will learn about designing solutions for Platform Service and operations. Next, you will be able to secure your resources and data, as well as design a mechanism for governance and policies. You will also understand the objective of designing solutions for Platform Services, by covering Artificial Intelligence, IoT, media services, and messaging solution concepts. Finally, you will cover the designing for operations objective. This objective covers application and platform monitoring, as well as designing alerting strategies and operations automation strategies. By the end of the book, you'll have met all of the exam objectives, and will have all the information you need to ace the 70-535 exam. You will also have become an expert in designing solutions on Microsoft Azure. Style and approach This book offers clear and crisp explanations of the exam objectives that will help you with all the information needed to pass the 70-535 exam. The detail oriented approach will make you an expert on designing solutions on Microsoft Azure.

Build rich and collaborative applications using client-side code with React, Redux, and Firebase About This Book ? A practical guide covering the full stack for web development with React 16 and Firebase ? Leverage the power of Firebase Cloud Storage, messaging, functions, OAuth, and database security to develop serverless web applications. ? Develop high-performance applications without the hassle of setting up complex web infrastructure. Who This Book Is For This book is for JavaScript developers who have some previous knowledge of React and want to develop serverless, full-stack applications but without the hassle of setting up a complex infrastructure. What You Will Learn ? Install powerful React.js and Firebase tools to make development much more efficient ? Create React components with Firebase to save and retrieve the data in real-time ? Use Firebase Authentication to make your React user interface secure ? Develop React and Firebase applications with Redux integration ? Firebase database security rules ? Firebase Cloud Storage Integration to upload and store data on the cloud ? Create a complete real-time application with React and firebase ? Using Firebase Cloud messaging and Cloud functions with React ? Firebase Cloud Storage integration with React In Detail ReactJS is a wonderful framework for UI development. Firebase as a backend with React is a great choice as it is easy, powerful, and provides great developer experience. It removes a lot of boilerplate code from your app and allows you to focus on your app to get it out quickly to users. Firebase with React is also a good choice for Most Viable Product (MVP) development. This book provides more practical insights rather than just theoretical concepts and includes basic to advanced examples – from hello world to a real-time seat booking app and Helpdesk application This book will cover the essentials of Firebase and React.js and will take you on a fast-paced journey through building real-time applications with Firebase features such as Cloud Storage, Cloud Function, Hosting and the Realtime Database. We will learn how to secure our application by using Firebase authentication and database security rules. We will leverage the power of Redux to organize data in the front-end, since Redux attempts to make state mutations predictable by imposing certain restrictions on how and when updates can happen. Towards the end of the book you will have improved your React skills by realizing the potential of Firebase to create real-time serverless web applications. Style and approach Practical insights rather than just theoretical concepts while including basic to advanced examples – from hello world to a real-time seat booking app and Helpdesk application.

Combine the power of analytics and cloud computing for faster and efficient insights About This Book ? Master the concept of analytics on the cloud: and how organizations are using it ? Learn the design considerations and while applying a cloud analytics solution ? Design an end-to-end analytics pipeline on the cloud Who This Book Is For This book is targeted at CIOs, CTOs, and even analytics professionals looking for various alternatives to implement their analytics pipeline on the cloud. Data professionals looking to get started with cloud-based analytics will also find this book useful. Some basic exposure to cloud platforms such as GCP will be helpful, but not mandatory. What You Will Learn ? Explore the basics of cloud analytics and the major cloud solutions ? Learn how organizations are using cloud analytics to improve the ROI ? Explore the design considerations while adopting cloud services ? Work with the ingestion and storage tools of GCP such as Cloud Pub/Sub ? Process your data with tools such as Cloud Dataproc, BigQuery, etc ? Over 70 GCP tools to build an analytics engine for cloud analytics ? Implement machine learning and other AI techniques on GCP In Detail With the ongoing data explosion, more and more organizations all over the world are slowly migrating their infrastructure to the cloud. These cloud platforms also provide their distinct analytics services to help you get faster insights from your data. This book will give you an introduction to the concept of analytics on the cloud, and the different cloud services popularly used for processing and analyzing data. If you’re planning to adopt the cloud analytics model for your business, this book will help you understand the design and business considerations to be kept in mind, and choose the best tools and alternatives for analytics, based on your requirements. The chapters in this book will take you through the 70+ services available in Google Cloud Platform and their implementation for practical purposes. From ingestion to processing your data, this book contains best practices on building an end-to-end analytics pipeline on the cloud by leveraging popular concepts such as machine learning and deep learning. By the end of this book, you will have a better understanding of cloud analytics as a concept as well as a practical know-how of its implementation Style and approach Comprehensive guide with a perfect blend of theory, examples, and implementation of real-world use-cases

Get started with designing your serverless application using optimum design patterns and industry standard practices About This Book ? Learn the details of popular software patterns and how they are applied to serverless applications ? Understand key concepts and components in serverless designs ? Walk away with a thorough understanding of architecting serverless applications Who This Book Is For If you're a software architect, engineer, or someone who wants to build serverless applications, which are non-trivial in complexity and scope, then this book is for you. Basic knowledge of programming and serverless computing concepts are assumed. What You Will Learn ? Comprehend the popular design patterns currently being used with serverless architectures ? Understand the various design options and corresponding implementations for serverless web application APIs ? Learn multiple patterns for data-intensive serverless systems and pipelines, including MapReduce and Lambda Architecture ? Learn how to leverage hosted databases, queues, streams, storage services, and notification services ? Understand error handling and system monitoring in a serverless architecture a serverless architecture ? Learn how to set up a serverless application for continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment In Detail Serverless applications handle many problems that developers face when running systems and servers. The serverless pay-per-invocation model can also result in drastic cost savings, contributing to its popularity. While it's simple to create a basic serverless application, it's critical to structure your software correctly to ensure it continues to succeed as it grows. Serverless Design Patterns and Best Practices presents patterns that can be adapted to run in a serverless environment. You will learn how to develop applications that are scalable, fault tolerant, and well-tested. The book begins with an introduction to the different design pattern categories available for serverless applications. You will learn the trade-offs between GraphQL and REST and how they fare regarding overall application design in a serverless ecosystem. The book will also show you how to migrate an existing API to a serverless backend using AWS API Gateway. You will learn how to build event-driven applications using queuing and streaming systems, such as AWS Simple Queuing Service (SQS) and AWS Kinesis. Patterns for data-intensive serverless application are also explained, including the lambda architecture and MapReduce. This book will equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to develop scalable and resilient serverless applications confidently. Style and approach Readers will be taken through a set of specific software patterns and learn, in detail, how to apply these patterns and build working software on top of a serverless system. At each step along the way, the reader will learn about the subcomponents and subsystems which comprise the larger system and which may be used in the future to solve different types of challenges.

Build applications and infrastructures that leverage Function-as-a-Service and Docker About This Book ? Implement containerization in Serverless/FaaS environments ? Utilize Docker as a functional unit of work for Serverless/FaaS platforms ? Use Docker as a portable infrastructure for Serverless Applications Who This Book Is For If you are a Developer, a Docker Engineer, a DevOps Engineer, or any stakeholder interested in learning the use of Docker on Serverless environments then this book is for you. What You Will Learn ? Learn what Serverless and FaaS applications are ? Get acquainted with the architectures of three major serverless systems ? Explore how Docker technologies can help develop Serverless applications ? Create and maintain FaaS infrastructures ? Set up Docker infrastructures to serve as on-premises FaaS infrastructures ? Define functions for Serverless applications with Docker containers In Detail Serverless applications have gained a lot of popularity among developers and are currently the buzzwords in the tech market. Docker and serverless are two terms that go hand-in-hand. This book will start by explaining serverless and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) concepts, and why they are important. Then, it will introduce the concepts of containerization and how Docker fits into the Serverless ideology. It will explore the architectures and components of three major Docker-based FaaS platforms, how to deploy and how to use their CLI. Then, this book will discuss how to set up and operate a production-grade Docker cluster. We will cover all concepts of FaaS frameworks with practical use cases, followed by deploying and orchestrating these serverless systems using Docker. Finally, we will also explore advanced topics and prototypes for FaaS architectures in the last chapter. By the end of this book, you will be in a position to build and deploy your own FaaS platform using Docker. Style and approach A practical guide that offers a simple way to easily understand Serverless Applications utilizing Docker as the development environment.

Learn the most powerful and primary programming language for writing smart contracts and find out how to write, deploy, and test smart contracts in Ethereum. About This Book ? Get you up and running with Solidity Programming language ? Build Ethereum Smart Contracts with Solidity as your scripting language ? Learn to test and deploy the smart contract to your private Blockchain Who This Book Is For This book is for anyone who would like to get started with Solidity Programming for developing an Ethereum smart contract. No prior knowledge of EVM is required. What You Will Learn ? Learn the basics and foundational concepts of Solidity and Ethereum ? Explore the Solidity language and its uniqueness in depth ? Create new accounts and submit transactions to blockchain ? Get to know the complete language in detail to write smart contracts ? Learn about major tools to develop and deploy smart contracts ? Write defensive code using exception handling and error checking ? Understand Truffle basics and the debugging process In Detail Solidity is a contract-oriented language whose syntax is highly influenced by JavaScript, and is designed to compile code for the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Solidity Programming Essentials will be your guide to understanding Solidity programming to build smart contracts for Ethereum and blockchain from ground-up. We begin with a brief run-through of blockchain, Ethereum, and their most important concepts or components. You will learn how to install all the necessary tools to write, test, and debug Solidity contracts on Ethereum. Then, you will explore the layout of a Solidity source file and work with the different data types. The next set of recipes will help you work with operators, control structures, and data structures while building your smart contracts. We take you through function calls, return types, function modifers, and recipes in object-oriented programming with Solidity. Learn all you can on event logging and exception handling, as well as testing and debugging smart contracts. By the end of this book, you will be able to write, deploy, and test smart contracts in Ethereum. This book will bring forth the essence of writing contracts using Solidity and also help you develop Solidity skills in no time. Style and approach Solidity is a high-level programming language best understood using examples. After covering basic concepts of Ethereum and Solidity, programming constructs will be explained with help of examples. As chapters progress, deployment, usage and testing of contacts will form major aspect of the book. Troubleshooting and unit testing is an important exercise and skill to master this language will also be covered in this book.