A powerful novel of love and war, righteousness and redemption, and the triumph of the human spirit. From the author of the critically-acclaimed The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart comes this sweeping novel of love and war, power and oppression, faith and deception, over the course of three defining American decades. At the end of the Pacific War, where he has witnessed terrible things, Loyal Ledford is a lost man, disconnected from the present yet divorced from his dissolute, violent past. His life is set on a new course when he meets his cousins, Dimple and Wimpy, the Bonecutter brothers. Their land, mysterious, elemental Marrowbone Cut, calls to him and it is there, with help from an unlikely bunch, that the Marrowbone Marble Company is slowly forged. Over the next two decades, the factory grounds become a vanguard of the civil rights movement and the war on poverty, a home for those intent on change. Inevitably, such a home invites trouble, and Ledford must fight for his family. Told in clear and powerful prose in the tradition of Cormac McCarthy and John Irving, The Marrowbone Marble Company recounts the transformative journey of a man and his community, taking a harrowing look at the issues of race and class throughout the tumultuous 1950s and '60s. With this, his second novel, Glenn Taylor joins the ranks of the Great American Novelist.

A fabulous all-new contemporary thriller from the master of the genre – the author of the international bestsellers Midnight Runner, A Fine Night for Dying and Bad Company. Sean Dillon is back in another heart-stopping, adrenalin-laced adventure When the president's right hand men foil a plan to assassinate him. Sean Dillon is called upon to trace the would-be killer's history It appears the assassin is British with Muslim connections, and suddenly Dillon is on a trail that leads him to England, Russia and Iraq, where he prepares for the deadliest challenge of his life.

From the first name in heart pounding thriller fiction. Ellis Jackson woke up hugging a twelve-bore shotgun. In the next room, his mistress and his best friend lay naked on the bed, their heads blown to pulp. Back in England at last, Ellis Jackson had finally cracked. Active combat, a Viet Cong prison camp and the callous treachery of his lover and interrogator, Madam Ny, had taken their toll. Ellis Jackson was out of his mind. Or was he? Maybe it would all have been easier to take if he really had been mad

In one corner, a godless young warrior, Voltaire's heralded 'philosopher-king', the It Boy of the Enlightenment. In the other, a devout if bad-tempered old composer of 'outdated' music, a scorned genius in his last years. The sparks from their brief conflict illuminate a turbulent age. Behind the pomp and flash, Prussia's Frederick the Great was a tormented man, son of an abusive king who forced him to watch as his best friend (probably his lover) was beheaded. In what may have been one of history's crueler practical jokes, Frederick challenged 'old Bach' to a musical duel, asking him to improvise a six-part fugue based on an impossibly intricate theme (possibly devised for him by Bach's own son). Bach left the court fuming, but in a fever of composition, he used the coded, alchemical language of counterpoint to write 'A Musical Offering' in response. A stirring declaration of faith, it represented 'as stark a rebuke of his beliefs and world view as an absolute monarch has ever received,' Gaines writes. It is also one of the great works of art in the history of music. Set at the tipping point between the ancient and the modern world, the triumphant story of Bach's victory expands to take in the tumult of the eighteenth century: the legacy of the Reformation, wars and conquest, the birth of the Enlightenment. Brimming with originality and wit, 'Evening in the Palace of Reason' is history of the best kind - intimate in scale and broad in its vision.

Lori Harper was on her own. Recently widowed with a young son to raise and a baby on the way, she had no one she could rely on. And when she went into labor in her isolated home with no way to call for help, she prayed for a miracle…. Delivering gifts to needy families on Christmas Eve, fire department volunteer Mike Martin never imagined he'd be called on to nearly deliver a baby! Drawn to Lori's unbelievable faith and optimism despite her dire circumstances, Mike was determined to take care of her family as best he could. Even if it meant believing in the power of miracles.

MR. TALL, DARK AND DANGEROUS One by one, he'd terrified those women who would be his assistant. Like some dark laird of the manor, Sir Ian MacGowan seemed more beast than man, scowl and scars included. But Jenna Craddock knew her boss was pure male. It was in the way he looked at her, virility sensing virginity, and in the way he underestimated the fairer sex. Ian demanded professionalism; Jenna gave him perfection. He harbored secrets; Jenna insisted bed be the place where nothing came between them. In Ian's fortress, Jenna could almost forget the family betrayal that had led her to Scotland–except that she needed to know who she was as urgently as she needed to know the truth about Ian.

KIDNAPPED! It was every mother's worst nightmare come to life. After her daughter's abduction from a shopping mall, Glynnis March didn't know where to turn. Fortunately, quick-thinking Dan O'Neill was in charge of the investigation, and he was determined that Glynnis get her child back, no matter what. But this wasn't just another case for the handsome, dedicated detective. Dan couldn't get the beautiful single mom, or her splintered family, out of his mind. He was racing against the clock–and the ghosts of his past–to save little Livvy. Could he solve the case…and, in the process, repair his shattered heart?

Meticulous and by-the-book, corporate lawyer Jack Lever was used to order–not the disorder of two small children. When his babysitter abruptly quit, the single dad didn't know where to turn. He couldn't believe his good luck when Zooey Finnegan agreed to become his nanny. Uninhibited and fun, Zooey was happy to take care of Jack's children instead of sitting behind a desk in her family's business. And to her surprise, Zooey soon loved the Levers like they were her own flesh and blood. It didn't take long for Jack's kids to fall hopelessly in love with her, either. Their father could be a different story….

That Man's Only Interests Were Boots, Babes And Beds! A love-'em-and-leave-'em cowboy was not what Nina Cakes wanted when she asked for a muscular man to help move her heirloom bed. After all, it was a cowboy who had gotten her sister into trouble, and no handsome rancher–not even a notorious Jefferson brother named Navarro–would make Nina forget why she'd come to Lonely Hearts Station: to save her sister's good name. Staid, ordinary, respectable, Nina was a librarian on a mission, and it would take more than sweet talk, teasing grins and world-shaking kisses to tempt her onto the wild side…. She'd settle for nothing less than lassoing his untamed heart!

Dearest Godmother, My very last match is almost made! Soon, the curse will be broken. If nothing goes awry… And that's asking quite a bit of fate. Because architect Rick Barnett's scars–physical and emotional–have made him a hard, cynical man. But I've seen the way his gaze follows beautiful Cynthia Forsythe. Her innocence and goodness call to him. No matter how often he uses the shadows of the night to disguise the desire in his eyes, I know she's the one for him! Merry

"This marriage has strings attached, Chance…" Yeah, and it's all based on my, um, performance. When Lana Ramirez came to him with an offer of marriage, Chance Reilly knew it was too good to be true. He needed a wife to claim his rightful inheritance, but what did the sweetly sensual private-duty nurse want from the marriage bed? Little did the rugged rancher guess, the Colton housekeeper's eldest daughter had been hopelessly in love with him forever…and she wanted a baby–his baby. Their torrid nights would no doubt leave her pregnant in Prosperino, but would Chance still be by her side?

C-17 copilot Darcy "Wren" Renshaw wanted a piece of the war-zone action like the rest of her air-force family. Instead, she was stuck hauling a brooding scientist to the calm waters of Guam. Darcy thought she was being shuffled far away from the action…until she met Max Keagan and embarked on the mission of her life. Undercover CIA agent Max needed a military airlift to a South Pacific island. He didn't need First Lieutenant Darcy Renshaw blowing his cover and bringing chaos to his top secret program. But Darcy and danger seemed destined to go hand in hand. And while trying to keep Darcy safe, Max realized he was soon in danger of losing his well-guarded heart.

A TASTE FOR DANGER A simple mistake had cost caterer Madison O'Malley her livelihood–and the fault lay squarely with international playboy Cord Kendrick. Cord went out of his way to make things right…and Madison promised to keep the story out of the tabloids. But as sharing business strategies turned to sharing kisses, Madison knew she was playing with fire…and craved Cord nonetheless. Trouble had a way of finding Cord Kendrick. And as the second son of the revered Kendrick family, he'd do anything to avoid another scandal. But spending time with the lovely Madison was stirring up all kinds of extraordinary feelings. Cord was an adventurer at heart, but could this confirmed bachelor risk falling in love?

WHEN DESIRES BECOME DANGEROUS, LOVE CAN BE DEADLY Whispers of foul play circulate through an upscale community when beautiful Justine Milner disappears. But only when her body is discovered more than two years later is her ex-husband, Michael Frome, accused of murder. Portrait artist Suzie Strickland learned firsthand how manipulative and cruel Justine could be when they were rivals for Mike's affection in high school. She believes in Mike's innocence and suspects she's found a chilling link to a darker side of Justine's privileged life. How deep was her involvement with a mysterious group called The Mulligan Club and their seductive, dangerous games? The answers may come too late. Because the truth about what happened to Justine is proving just as deadly as the secrets she kept….

A RANDALL THROUGH AND THROUGH One look at lovely Victoria Randall, and Dr. Jonathan Wilson knew he was headed for a showdown. She was sexy, smart and she lived right next door. Would the sassy singleton succeed in putting a wedding rope around his neck? Not if Victoria had any say in the matter. Fall for a big-city bachelor who had snubbed her since the first day they'd met–no way! But then they shared a daring rescue and a stormy night of passion. Suddenly Jon and Victoria's future was more complicated. Would they face it together…or would this determined Randall face the unexpected on her own?

From the moment Rebecca Barlow starts her job at a law firm, she knows she's in for a lot of surprises. Especially when her new boss unexpectedly turns out to be her first love–her son's father. Now she not only has to reveal the five-year-old secret she's been keeping from Jeff Jacobs, but also face her unresolved feelings. And spend day after day with him and his fiancée coaching them about parenthood… Jeff is as delighted as he is shocked to see Rebecca, but her little secret isn't the only one in his life. Because although he's committed to another woman now, he's still in love with Rebecca. Not until she's about to leave with her son does the truth finally come out!

Become an advanced practitioner with this progressive set of master classes on application-oriented machine learning About This Book ? Comprehensive coverage of key topics in machine learning with an emphasis on both the theoretical and practical aspects ? More than 15 open source Java tools in a wide range of techniques, with code and practical usage. ? More than 10 real-world case studies in machine learning highlighting techniques ranging from data ingestion up to analyzing the results of experiments, all preparing the user for the practical, real-world use of tools and data analysis. Who This Book Is For This book will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in topics in Data Science or those already working in related areas: ideally, intermediate-level data analysts and data scientists with experience in Java. Preferably, you will have experience with the fundamentals of machine learning and now have a desire to explore the area further, are up to grappling with the mathematical complexities of its algorithms, and you wish to learn the complete ins and outs of practical machine learning. What You Will Learn ? Master key Java machine learning libraries, and what kind of problem each can solve, with theory and practical guidance. ? Explore powerful techniques in each major category of machine learning such as classification, clustering, anomaly detection, graph modeling, and text mining. ? Apply machine learning to real-world data with methodologies, processes, applications, and analysis. ? Techniques and experiments developed around the latest specializations in machine learning, such as deep learning, stream data mining, and active and semi-supervised learning. ? Build high-performing, real-time, adaptive predictive models for batch- and stream-based big data learning using the latest tools and methodologies. ? Get a deeper understanding of technologies leading towards a more powerful AI applicable in various domains such as Security, Financial Crime, Internet of Things, social networking, and so on. In Detail Java is one of the main languages used by practicing data scientists; much of the Hadoop ecosystem is Java-based, and it is certainly the language that most production systems in Data Science are written in. If you know Java, Mastering Machine Learning with Java is your next step on the path to becoming an advanced practitioner in Data Science. This book aims to introduce you to an array of advanced techniques in machine learning, including classification, clustering, anomaly detection, stream learning, active learning, semi-supervised learning, probabilistic graph modeling, text mining, deep learning, and big data batch and stream machine learning. Accompanying each chapter are illustrative examples and real-world case studies that show how to apply the newly learned techniques using sound methodologies and the best Java-based tools available today. On completing this book, you will have an understanding of the tools and techniques for building powerful machine learning models to solve data science problems in just about any domain. Style and approach A practical guide to help you explore machine learning—and an array of Java-based tools and frameworks—with the help of practical examples and real-world use cases.

Leverage the power of Python to collect, process, and mine deep insights from social media data About This Book ? Acquire data from various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, GitHub, and more ? Analyze and extract actionable insights from your social data using various Python tools ? A highly practical guide to conducting efficient social media analytics at scale Who This Book Is For If you are a programmer or a data analyst familiar with the Python programming language and want to perform analyses of your social data to acquire valuable business insights, this book is for you. The book does not assume any prior knowledge of any data analysis tool or process. What You Will Learn ? Understand the basics of social media mining ? Use PyMongo to clean, store, and access data in MongoDB ? Understand user reactions and emotion detection on Facebook ? Perform Twitter sentiment analysis and entity recognition using Python ? Analyze video and campaign performance on YouTube ? Mine popular trends on GitHub and predict the next big technology ? Extract conversational topics on public internet forums ? Analyze user interests on Pinterest ? Perform large-scale social media analytics on the cloud In Detail Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Forums, Pinterest, and YouTube have become part of everyday life in a big way. However, these complex and noisy data streams pose a potent challenge to everyone when it comes to harnessing them properly and benefiting from them. This book will introduce you to the concept of social media analytics, and how you can leverage its capabilities to empower your business. Right from acquiring data from various social networking sources such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and social forums, you will see how to clean data and make it ready for analytical operations using various Python APIs. This book explains how to structure the clean data obtained and store in MongoDB using PyMongo. You will also perform web scraping and visualize data using Scrappy and Beautifulsoup. Finally, you will be introduced to different techniques to perform analytics at scale for your social data on the cloud, using Python and Spark. By the end of this book, you will be able to utilize the power of Python to gain valuable insights from social media data and use them to enhance your business processes. Style and approach This book follows a step-by-step approach to teach readers the concepts of social media analytics using the Python programming language. To explain various data analysis processes, real-world datasets are used wherever required.

Build, Manage and Improve your infrastructure effortlessly. About This Book ? An up-to-date and comprehensive resource on Terraform that lets you quickly and efficiently launch your infrastructure ? Learn how to implement your infrastructure as code and make secure, effective changes to your infrastructure ? Learn to build multi-cloud fault-tolerant systems and simplify the management and orchestration of even the largest scale and most complex cloud infrastructures Who This Book Is For This book is for developers and operators who already have some exposure to working with infrastructure but want to improve their workflow and introduce infrastructure as a code practice. Knowledge of essential Amazon Web Services components (EC2, VPC, IAM) would help contextualize the examples provided. Basic understanding of Jenkins and Shell *s will be helpful for the chapters on the production usage of Terraform. What You Will Learn ? Understand what Infrastructure as Code (IaC) means and why it matters ? Install, configure, and deploy Terraform ? Take full control of your infrastructure in the form of code ? Manage complete infrastructure, starting with a single server and scaling beyond any limits ? Discover a great set of production-ready practices to manage infrastructure ? Set up CI/CD pipelines to test and deliver Terraform stacks ? Construct templates to simplify more complex provisioning tasks In Detail Terraform is a tool used to efficiently build, configure, and improve the production infrastructure. It can manage the existing infrastructure as well as create custom in-house solutions. This book shows you when and how to implement infrastructure as a code practices with Terraform. It covers everything necessary to set up the complete management of infrastructure with Terraform, starting with the basics of using providers and resources. It is a comprehensive guide that begins with very small infrastructure templates and takes you all the way to managing complex systems, all using concrete examples that evolve over the course of the book. The book ends with the complete workflow of managing a production infrastructure as code—this is achieved with the help of version control and continuous integration. The readers will also learn how to combine multiple providers in a single template and manage different code bases with many complex modules. It focuses on how to set up continuous integration for the infrastructure code. The readers will be able to use Terraform to build, change, and combine infrastructure safely and efficiently. Style and approach This book will help and guide you to implement Terraform in your infrastructure. The readers will start by working on very small infrastructure templates and then slowly move on to manage complex systems, all by using concrete examples that will evolve during the course of the book.

For former private investigator Dana Miller, there can be no peace of mind until she finds the person who killed her husband. Now a single mother to three boys, Dana wants closure. But it turns out she’ll need to form an alliance with the man she holds responsible for the death. And uncovering answers may mean bringing down the program her husband believed in. Rick Sanchez has no intention of letting Dana destroy all the good he and Ken Miller worked for. As he and Dana try to learn the truth about what happened, he discovers that he and his old friend have something else in common – an undeniable attraction toward this intrepid, high-spirited woman who fights for the people she loves.

Rachel de Luca’s uncanny sense of perception is the key to her success as a self-help celebrity. Even before she regained her sight, she had a gift for seeing people’s most carefully hidden secrets. But the secret she shares with Detective Mason Brown is one she has promised to keep. As for Mason, he sees Rachel more clearly than she’d like to admit. After a single night of adrenaline-fueled passion, they have agreed to keep their distance—until a string of murders brings them together again. Mason thinks that he can protect everyone he loves, including Rachel, by taking them to a winter hideaway, but danger follows them up the mountain. As guests disappear from the snowbound resort, the race to find the murderer intensifies. Rachel knows she’s a target. Will acknowledging her feelings for Mason destroy her—or save them both and stop a killer?