Gold is the final and crowning achievement of the fifty-year career of science fiction's transcendent genius, the world-famous author who defined the field of science fiction for its practitioners, its millions of readers, and the world at large.The first section contains stories that range from the humorous to the profound, at the heart of which is the title story, "Gold," a moving and revealing drama about a writer who gambles everything on a chance at immortality: a gamble Asimov himself made -- and won. The second section contains the grand master's ruminations on the SF genre itself. And the final section is comprised of Asimov's thoughts on the craft and writing of science fiction.

Nothing can prepare criminal attorney Bennie Rosato for her new client, Alice Connolly, who bears an uncanny physical resemblance to her and tells her, "Pleased to meet you. I'm your twin." But Bennie grew up an only child. She doesn't have a twin. Or does sheBennie takes on the woman's defense in a murder case and plunges into the mystery of the murder—as well as the secret of her own identity. Not until the verdict is in will she finally learn the truth.

It is a secret that has been hidden for more than a half century. . . . The clues have been scattered across the globe. Now someone has begun to piece them together—and the future of the world depends on his being stopped in time.In Maryland, a vicious gang breaks into the National Cryptologic Museum and steals a Nazi Enigma machine. In a London hospital, an Auschwitz survivor is murdered in his bed, his killers making off with a macabre trophy—his severed left arm. In Prague, a seemingly worthless painting is stolen from a synagogue. Three cities. Three puzzling thefts. Could there possibly be a connection?When former art thief Tom Kirk is first asked to investigate, the Prague theft certainly seems unremarkable enough—until the stolen painting turns up alongside the amputated human arm. As Tom digs deeper into the past, both items appear to be elements in an elaborate trail of clues laid down in the dying days of the Third Reich by a secret order of SS knights—clues that stretch from the remote mountains of Idaho to the snowy streets of St. Petersburg and ultimately lead to a fabled treasure lost in the ashes of war.Spurred on by the sinister light of the Black Sun emblem, ghosts from his past, and the poisonous manipulations of a deadly enemy, Tom finds himself trapped in a situation where the greatest prize of all is life itself—and not just his own. . . .

Matt Scudder is finally leading a comfortable life. The crime rate's down and the stock market's up. Gentrification's prettying-up the old neighborhood. The New York streets don't look so mean anymore.Then all hell breaks loose.Scudder quickly discovers the spruced-up sidewalks are as mean as ever, dark and gritty and stained with blood. He's living in a world where the past is a minefield, the present is a war zone, and the future's an open question. It's a world where nothing is certain and nobody's safe, a random universe where no one's survival can be taken for granted. Not even his own.A world where everybody dies.

Off the coast of Indonesia, an American cargo ship has been seized by terrorists, its captain kidnapped and its crew mercilessly slaughtered. In Washington, a peace-loving President's refusal to punish the transgressors has enraged the sitting Congress, led by a wrathful Speaker of the House.An ambitious young congressional assistant, Jim Dillon has discovered a time bomb hidden away in America's Constitution—a provision that could be used to wrest power from the Chief Executive, a long-forgotten law that could incite a devastating constitutional crisis . . . and plunge the country into chaos.Now, as a battle group steams toward a fateful confrontation in the Java Sea—commissioned by Congress and opposed by the President—Dillon finds himself in the center of a firestorm that rages from the highest court in the land to the killing fields half a world away. Suddenly there is much more at stake than the life of a single surviving hostage and a superpower's military credibility—as a great nation prepares for war . . . against itself.

Phillip Margolin -- author of the smash New York Times bestsellersWild Justice and Gone, But Not Forgotten -- returns with a thrilling tale of politics, secrets, and murder . . .Amanda Jaffe was a rising star of Portland's legal community, until a run-in with a psychopath left her scared and craving anonymity. But her new case promises to keep her in the spotlight -- and in danger. Defending the accused murderer of a U.S. senator will place her and those she loves directly in the path of a deadly cabal with ambitions that extend all the way to the presidency of the United States . . .

For more than four decades, Ursula K. Le Guin has enthralled readers with her imagination, clarity, and moral vision. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, this renowned writer has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in The Birthday of the World, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.Here are stories that explore complex social interactions and troublesome issues of gender and sex; that define and defy notions of personal relationships and of society itself; that examine loyalty, survival, and introversion; that bring to light the vicissitudes of slavery and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history. The first six tales in this spectacular volume are set in the author's signature world of the Ekumen, "my pseudo-coherent universe with holes in the elbows," as Le Guin describes it -- a world made familiar in her award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness. The seventh, title story was hailed by Publishers Weekly as "remarkable . . . a standout." The final offering in the collection, Paradises Lost, is a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness.In her foreword, Ursula K. Le Guin writes, "to create difference-to establish strangeness-then to let the fiery arc of human emotion leap and close the gap: this acrobatics of the imagination fascinates and satisfies me as no other." In The Birthday of the World, this gifted literary acrobat exhibits a dazzling array of skills that will fascinate and satisfy us all.

This is a city that seduces dreamers . . . then eats their dreams.Matthew Scudder understands the futility of his search for a longtime missing Midwestern innocent who wanted to be an actress in the vast meat-grinder called New York City. But her frantic father heard that Schudder is the best—and now the ex-cop-turned-p.i. is scouring the hell called Hell's Kitchen looking for anything that might resemble a lead. And in this neighborhood of the lost, he's finding love—and death—in the worst possible places.

A vile rumor sweeps across the desert like a swiftly gathering sandstorm: Queen Hatshepsut plans to disband much of her frontier army and transform its fortresses into storehouses. The arrival of Amonked—the Queen's cousin and Storekeeper of Amon—at the city of Buhen convinces an uneasy Lieutenant Bak of the Medjay police that the whisperings that have alarmed the populace are true. Then, a day after Amonked inspects the local garrison and departs, a body is found stabbed in the house where he and his party rested. The slain man was a local prince, beloved by his people, so Bak travels upriver to join the caravan and investigate. Though nothing tangible connects Amonked and his people to the heinous act, Bak's inquiry soon sheds a disturbing light on an inexplicable crime. For the clues suggest that twisted honor and vengeance lie at its root . . . and a shocking secret, protected by murder and silence, that could itself silence the truth—and Bak—for eternity.

After twenty years in Los Angeles, Ed Loy has come home to bury his mother. But hers is only the first dead body he encounters after crossing an ocean.The city Loy once knew is an unrecognizable place, filled with gangsters, seducers, hucksters, and crazies, each with a scheme and an angle. But he can't refuse the sexy former schoolmate who asks him to find her missing husband—or the old pal-turned-small time criminal who shows up on Loy's doorstep with a hard-luck story and a recently fired gun. Suddenly, a tragic homecoming could prove fatal for the grieving investigator, as an unexplained photograph of his long-vanished father, a murky property deal, and a corpse discovered in the foundations of town hall combine to turn a curious case into a dark obsession—dragging Ed Loy into a violent underworld of drugs, extortion, and murder . . . and through his own haunted past where the dead will never rest.

A poet and biographer, Jay Parini is also a novelist whose fiction has been acclaimed as "dazzli/ng," (Los Angeles Times) "achingly beautiful," (Washington Post) and "a subtle masterpiece" (John Bayley in the Times Literary Supplement). In his new novel, The Apprentice Lover, Parini evokes the gorgeous Mediterranean island of Capri during the summer of 1970 as the setting for a sensuous, deeply affecting story of a young American's coming into his own and reconciling himself with his past. When Alex Massolini's brother is killed in Vietnam, he drops out of Columbia University and leaves his conservative family behind for Capri to become secretary to Rupert Grant, a famous British novelist and poet, who dominates the island like a latter-day Prospero. Alex soon finds himself ensnared in a web of love affairs, friendships, and rivalries within the eccentric community that inhabits the idyllic beauty of the isolated Italian island. Among that group are the selfish, cunning, and brilliant Rupert Grant; his wife Vera, a charming and sophisticated social manipulator; the elusive Holly and the mysterious Marisa, who act as Grant's research assistants; the young philosophy student from the Sorbonne, Patrice LaRue; and Father Aurelio, who is desperate for parishioners. The Apprentice Lover traces a young American's enchantment and disenchantment-with his American past, with his new European mentor, and with the various characters on an island famous for its characters. As Alex stumbles upon intrigues and secrets, he tries to balance what others demand of him with his own nascent desires. His apprenticeship in love, literature, and life unfolds with a combination of Mediterranean clarity, wry humor, wit, and emotional power that only a master of fiction could orchestrate.

The Simple Science of a Healthy Life From fitness to diets to emotional health and longevity, what do people who feel and look healthy do differently than those who are overtired, depressed, or out of shapeEvery day we face an avalanche of studies and statistics that tell us what we should or shouldn't eat, how long we need to exercise, or how to protect ourselves from secondhand smoke and the harmful rays from the sun. Not only are these studies often contradictory, but the actual scientific information is usually inaccessible. Moving beyond the myths and misinformation, the advice in these pages is not based on one person's opinions or one expert's study. For the first time the research available on the health of average Americans has been distilled into one hundred essential ways that we can become healthier and happier. Each of the core findings is accompanied by a real life example showing these results in action. ?Eat more often. Oxford University researchers found that people who ate five or six times a day had a 5 percent lower total cholesterol than average and were 45 percent more likely to be able to sustain their target weight than people who ate once or twice a day. ?Who says caffeine is bad for youThe majority of scientific evidence shows that, for a healthy adult, moderate quantities of caffeine (about three cups of coffee per day) pose no significant health risks. ?Home sweet home. People who described their home lives as satisfying were 24 percent more likely to live beyond normal life expectancy, according to a UCLA study.

Kate McKinnon is back -- and this time it's personal. When two hideously eviscerated bodies are discovered and the only link between them is a bizarre painting left at each crime scene, the NYPD turns to former cop Kate McKinnon, the woman who brought the serial killer the Death Artist to justice. Having settled back into her satisfying life as art historian, published author, host of a weekly PBS television series, and wife of one of New York's top lawyers, Kate wants no part of it. But Kate's sense of tranquillity is shattered when this new sequence of murders strikes too close to home. With grief and fury to fuel her, she rejoins her former partner, detective Floyd Brown, and his elite homicide squad on the hunt for a vicious psychopath known as the Color-Blind Killer. In her rage and desperation, Kate allows herself to be drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse. She abandons her glamorous life for the gritty streets of Manhattan, immersing herself in a world where brutality and madness appear to be the norm, where those closest to her may have betrayed her -- and where, in the end, nothing is what it seems.

All the creatures of the night gather in the Hollows of Cincinnati, to hide, to prowl, to party . . . and to feed.Vampires rule the darkness in a predator-eat-predator world rife with dangers beyond imagining and it's Rachel Morgan's job to keep that world civilized.A bounty hunter and witch with serious sex appeal and an attitude, she'll bring back alive, dead . . . or undead.

New York Times bestselling author William Lashner returns with a brilliantly twisty tale that probes the dark side of the law -- and man Unlike the rest of you, I cheerfully admit to my own utter selfishness. I am self-made, self-absorbed, self-serving, self-referential, even self-deprecating, in a charming sort of way. In short, I am all the selfs except selfless. Yet every so often, I run across a force of nature that shakes my sublime self-centeredness to its very roots. Something that tears through the landscape like a tornado, leaving nothing but ruin and reexamination in its wake. Something like Bob. --Victor Carl A beautiful young woman is dead, her husband convicted of the murder. In seeking a new trial for the husband, defense attorney Victor Carl must confront not only a determined prosecutor and a police detective who might have set up his client, but also a strange little busybody named Bob. Bob has the aspiration, one could even say compulsion, to help those around him. And it usually works out well for all concerned, except when it ends in blood. But Victor doesn’t know that . . . yet. Thanks to Bob, Victor is suddenly dressing better, dating a stunning woman, and both his economic prospects and his teeth are gleaming. It’s all good, until Victor finds a troubling connection between Bob and the murdered wife. Is Bob a kind of saint or is this obsessive Good Samaritan, in reality, a murdererFilled with the keen wit, deep poignancy, twisting suspense, and dark realism that has entranced readers, impressed reviewers, and made William Lashner’s previous novels bestsellers, Falls the Shadow is a riveting novel sure to leave readers eager for more.

"Lust will make a fool of any man, but it is only love that can truly ruin him." So says Victor Carl, the ethically adventurous Philadelphia lawyer who usually ends up doing the right thing, but, as his law partner says, often for all the wrong reasons. Late one night Victor gets a panicked phone call from an old law school classmate. Guy Forrest claims he has just found the body of his fiancée lying murdered in the house they shared. The victim is Hailey Prouix, for whose love Guy had abandoned his children, his job, his wife, his life. Hailey had mesmerized every man she ever met -- including, unbeknownst to Guy, Victor Carl. Convinced that Guy is Hailey's killer, Victor agrees to represent him, all the while secretly vowing to see justice done, whatever the cost. The plan would have to be dirty, base, vile, the plan would have to exhibit a complete lack of moral fiber in the soul of the deranged maniac who dreamed it up. I was just the man for the job. But when Victor's certainty begins to crack, he embarks on a quest that will take him from Philadelphia to Las Vegas to the valleys of West Virginia and back again. He digs further and further into Hailey Prouix's past and discovers that nothing is as simple as it had seemed, especially the woman he thought he loved. Who was Hailey ProuixBehind the answer lurks a killer. As Guy's murder trial heads toward its shattering conclusion, Victor must find the brutal truth before the mechanism of retribution he himself has set into motion falls like a hatchet, smack on his client's head.

Sound is the stand-alone companion to Alexandra Duncan's acclaimed debut novel Salvage, which was praised by internationally bestselling author Stephanie Perkins as "brilliant, feminist science fiction." For fans of Beth Revis, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica.As a child, Ava's adopted sister, Miyole, watched her mother take to the stars, piloting her own ship from Earth to space making deliveries. Now a teen herself, Miyole is finally living her dream as a research assistant on her very first space voyage. If she plays her cards right, she could even be given permission to conduct her own research and experiments in her own habitat lab on the flight home. But when her ship saves a rover that has been viciously attacked by looters and kidnappers, Miyole, along with a rescued rover girl named Cassia, embarks on a mission to rescue Cassia's abducted brother, and that changes the course of Miyole's life forever. Harrowing, provocative, and stunning, Sound begins roughly a decade after the action in the author's critically acclaimed Salvage, and is a powerful stand-alone companion.

Pioneers in the field of nutrition and internationally renowned filmmakers, James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch join with leading experts to offer proven strategies to lose weight, prevent and reverse disease, and optimize health.With Hungry for Change you'll discover:Amazingly delicious, nutritious recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and dessertsHow to navigate your supermarket: what to buy and what to avoidThe real truth behind DIET, SUGAR-FREE, and FAT-FREEproductsHow to overcome food addictions and cravingsWhy fad diets don't workHow to read labels and what food additives to avoidThe most effective detox and cleansing strategiesHow to eat for clear eyes, glowing skin, and healthy hairProviding practical solutions, Hungry for Change shows that your health is in your hands and that you can escape the diet trap forever. Experts from the fi eld of medicine and nutrition plus transformational stories from those who know what it's like to be sick and overweight give us the tools and inspiration we need to begin our journey toward health today.Hungry for Change will help boost your energy levels, strengthen your body, and make you look and feel better every day for the rest of your life.

From Dan Fante, the son of novelist John Fante, comes a gritty detective novel featuring JD Fiorella, an ex-private investigator who's bent on avenging his friend's murder.Failed private investigator JD Fiorella was a pro at finding trouble. Mixing it up with the wrong people in New York, he escaped to L.A.—only to hit rock-bottom after too many nightmares and too much booze.Now forty-six and sober, JD?is working hard to get it together. Living in Malibu at his mother's house in Point Dume, he's got a new job selling used cars with his friend Woody and a new girlfriend. But just as things are looking up, JD discovers a gruesome murder. Now the ex-private detective has to make a choice.Determined to exact vengeance, he follows a twisting trail of clues that leads him to unexpected truths about himself and his new life—and to a psychopathic killer with an eerie connection to his past. And, as JD soon learns, this time there's no easy way out.

Harness the power of Magento 2 – The most recent version of the world’s favourite e-Commerce platform for your online store About This Book Set up, configure, and power up your Magento environment from development to production Master the use of Web API to communicate with the Magento system and create custom services Create custom modules from scratch to extend the core functionality of the Magento system Who This Book Is For This book is intended primarily for intermediate to professional-level PHP developers who are interested in Magento development. For backend developers, several topics are covered that will enable you to modify and extend your Magento 2 store. Frontend developers will also find some coverage on how to customize the look of the site in the frontend. What You Will Learn Set up the development and production environment of Magento 2 Understand the new major concepts and conventions used in Magento 2 Build a miniature yet fully-functional module from scratch to manage your e-commerce platform efficiently Write models and collections to manage and search your entity data Dive into backend development such as creating events, observers, cron jobs, logging, profiling, and messaging features Get to the core of frontend development such as blocks, templates, layouts, and the themes of Magento 2 Use token, session, and Oauth token-based authentication via various flavors of API calls, as well as creating your own APIs Get to grips with testing Magento modules and custom themes, which forms an integral part of development In Detail Magento is one of the most exciting, flexible, and customizable e-commerce systems. It offers you an extensive suite of powerful tools for creating and managing an online store. After years of development, Magento 2 introduces itself with a strong emphasis on modularity, Web API's, automated testing and overall new technology stack platform. The long-awaited Magento 2 release introduces a whole new e-commerce platform to develop online stores. The all new Magento 2 architecture, Web APIs, and a host of other features are equally challenging to master as much as they are exciting to use. This book will ease the learning curve by offering step-by-step guidance on how to extend the core functionality of your Magento 2 store. This book is your one-stop guide to build and customize a quality e-commerce website from the latest version of one of the largest, fastest growing, and most popular e-commerce platforms—Magento 2. We start off with an introduction to the fundamental concepts of Magento to give you a foundation to work from. We then move on to configure the development and basic production environment for Magento. After this, you’ll get to grips with the major concepts and conventions that are new to the Magento 2 platform. We then delve deeper to get to the core of automated deployments, persisting data, writing data fixture *s and applying various backend and frontend modifications. As we near the end of the book, you will learn to make API calls and write automated tests. Finally, you will be guided through building a full-blown helpdesk module from scratch. By the end of this book, you will have learned a wide range of techniques to extend and customize your Magento 2 store to fit the requirements of your business. Style and approach This book is a mix of theoretical and step-by-step approaches, explained in a conversational and easy-to-follow style. Topics are explained sequentially, giving detailed explanations of the basic and advanced features to get you working on Magento 2.

Welcome to Lily Dale, New York . . . a sleepy summer resort, home to a population of psychics, and the place where Julia Garrity and Kristin Shuttleworth formed a fast friendship broken only by death.Ten Summer Street is no ordinary house. It was there, fifteen years ago, that Kristin saw something on a Halloween night that would haunt her until the end of her days. Since then, Julia has watched both Kristin and her mother fall prey to whomever—or whatever—lurks there.Now Kristin's blind six-year-old daughter, Dulcie, has come to live in Lily Dale—at Ten Summer Street. Appointing herself protector, Julia is determined to coax the secrets of the house out into the light, to discover what the little girl "sees" roaming its halls . . . before the murderous force residing there makes them both its next victims.