Discover Android programming and web development by understanding the concepts of Kotlin Programming About This Book ? Practical solutions to your common programming problems with Kotlin 1.1 ? Leverage the functional power of Kotlin to ease your Android application development ? Learn to use Java code in conjunction with Kotlin Who This Book Is For This book will appeal to Kotlin developers keen to find solutions for their common programming problems. Java programming knowledge would be an added advantage. What You Will Learn ? Understand the basics and object-oriented concepts of Kotlin Programming ? Explore the full potential of collection frameworks in Kotlin ? Work with SQLite databases in Android, make network calls, and fetch data over a network ? Use Kotlin's Anko library for efficient and quick Android development ? Uncover some of the best features of Kotlin: Lambdas and Delegates ? Set up web service development environments, write servlets, and build RESTful services with Kotlin ? Learn how to write unit tests, integration tests, and instrumentation/acceptance tests. In Detail The Android team has announced first-class support for Kotlin 1.1. This acts as an added boost to the language and more and more developers are now looking at Kotlin for their application development. This recipe-based book will be your guide to learning the Kotlin programming language. The recipes in this book build from simple language concepts to more complex applications of the language. After the fundamentals of the language, you will learn how to apply the object-oriented programming features of Kotlin 1.1. Programming with Lambdas will show you how to use the functional power of Kotlin. This book has recipes that will get you started with Android programming with Kotlin 1.1, providing quick solutions to common problems encountered during Android app development. You will also be taken through recipes that will teach you microservice and concurrent programming with Kotlin. Going forward, you will learn to test and secure your applications with Kotlin. Finally, this book supplies recipes that will help you migrate your Java code to Kotlin and will help ensure that it's interoperable with Java. Style and approach This book explains concepts related to Kotlin Programming using a practical approach and with the help of easy-to-follow recipes.

The common patterns and practices of the microservice architecture and their application using the Clojure programming language. About This Book ? Relevance of the microservice architecture and benefits of Clojure's functional and simple features to implement it. ? Learn best practices and common principles to avoid common pitfalls while developing microservices. ? Learn how to use Pedestal to build your next microservices, secure them using JWT, and monitor them using the ELK stack Who This Book Is For You should have a working knowledge of programming in Clojure. However, no knowledge of RESTful architecture, microservices, or web services is expected. If you are looking to apply techniques to your own projects, taking your first steps into microservice architecture, this book is for you. What You Will Learn ? Explore the pros and cons of monolithic and microservice architectures ? Use Clojure to effectively build a reallife application using Microservices ? Gain practical knowledge of the Clojure Pedestal framework and how to use it to build Microservices ? Explore various persistence patterns and learn how to use Apache Kafka to build event-driven microservice architectures ? Secure your Microservices using JWT ? Monitor Microservices at scale using the ELK stack ? Deploy Microservices at scale using container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes In Detail The microservice architecture is sweeping the world as the de facto pattern with which to design and build scalable, easy-tomaintain web applications. This book will teach you common patterns and practices, and will show you how to apply these using the Clojure programming language. This book will teach you the fundamental concepts of architectural design and RESTful communication, and show you patterns that provide manageable code that is supportable in development and at scale in production. We will provide you with examples of how to put these concepts and patterns into practice with Clojure. This book will explain and illustrate, with practical examples, how teams of all sizes can start solving problems with microservices. You will learn the importance of writing code that is asynchronous and non-blocking and how Pedestal helps us do this. Later, the book explains how to build Reactive microservices in Clojure that adhere to the principles underlying the Reactive Manifesto. We finish off by showing you various ways to monitor, test, and secure your microservices. By the end, you will be fully capable of setting up, modifying, and deploying a microservice with Clojure and Pedestal. Style and approach This book highlights the merits of the microservice architecture and its implementation with Clojure. Learn to implement microservices by migrating a monolithic application to a microservice-based architecture.

Learn to use AWS IoT services to build your connected applications with the help of this comprehensive guide. About This Book ? Gets you started with AWS IoT and its functionalities ? Learn different modules of AWS IoT with practical use cases. ? Learn to secure your IoT communication Who This Book Is For This book is for anyone who wants to get started with the AWS IoT Suite and implement it with practical use cases. This book acts as an extensive guide, on completion of which you will be in a position to start building IoT projects using AWS IoT platform and using cloud services for your projects. What You Will Learn ? Implement AWS IoT on IoT projects ? Learn the technical capabilities of AWS IoT and IoT devices ? Create IoT-based AWS IoT projects ? Choose IoT devices and AWS IoT platforms to use based on the kind of project you need to build ? Deploy AWS Greengrass and AWS Lambda ? Develop program for AWS IoT Button ? Visualize IoT AWS data ? Build predictive analytics using AWS IoT and AWS Machine Learning In Detail The Internet of Things market increased a lot in the past few years and IoT development and its adoption have showed an upward trend. Analysis and predictions say that Enterprise IoT platforms are the future of IoT. AWS IoT is currently leading the market with its wide range of device support SDKs and versatile management console. This book initially introduces you to the IoT platforms, and how it makes our IoT development easy. It then covers the complete AWS IoT Suite and how it can be used to develop secure communication between internet-connected things such as sensors, actuators, embedded devices, smart applications, and so on. The book also covers the various modules of AWS: AWS Greengrass, AWS device SDKs, AWS IoT Platform, AWS Button, AWS Management consoles, AWS-related CLI, and API references, all with practical use cases. Near the end, the book supplies security-related best practices to make bi-directional communication more secure. When you've finished this book, you'll be up-and-running with the AWS IoT Suite, and building IoT projects. Style and approach This book is a step-by-step practical guide that helps you learn AWS IoT quickly.

Learn how to write scalable and concurrent programs in Scala, a language that grows with you. About This Book ? Get a grip on the functional features of the Scala programming language ? Understand and develop optimal applications using object-oriented and functional Scala constructs ? Learn reactive principles with Scala and work with the Akka framework Who This Book Is For This book is for programmers who choose to get a grip over Scala to write concurrent, scalable, and reactive programs. No prior experience with any programming language is required to learn the concepts explained in this book. Knowledge of any programming language would help the reader understanding concepts faster though. What You Will Learn ? Get to know the reasons for choosing Scala: its use and the advantages it provides over other languages ? Bring together functional and object-oriented programming constructs to make a manageable application ? Master basic to advanced Scala constructs ? Test your applications using advanced testing methodologies such as TDD ? Select preferred language constructs from the wide variety of constructs provided by Scala ? Make the transition from the object-oriented paradigm to the functional programming paradigm ? Write clean, concise, and powerful code with a functional mindset ? Create concurrent, scalable, and reactive applications utilizing the advantages of Scala In Detail Scala is a general-purpose programming language that supports both functional and object-oriented programming paradigms. Due to its concise design and versatility, Scala's applications have been extended to a wide variety of fields such as data science and cluster computing. You will learn to write highly scalable, concurrent, and testable programs to meet everyday software requirements. We will begin by understanding the language basics, syntax, core data types, literals, variables, and more. From here you will be introduced to data structures with Scala and you will learn to work with higher-order functions. Scala's powerful collections framework will help you get the best out of immutable data structures and utilize them effectively. You will then be introduced to concepts such as pattern matching, case classes, and functional programming features. From here, you will learn to work with Scala's object-oriented features. Going forward, you will learn about asynchronous and reactive programming with Scala, where you will be introduced to the Akka framework. Finally, you will learn the interoperability of Scala and Java. After reading this book, you'll be well versed with this language and its features, and you will be able to write scalable, concurrent, and reactive programs in Scala. Style and approach This book is for programmers who want to master Scala to write concurrent, scalable, and reactive programs. Though no experience with any programming language is needed, some basic knowledge would help understand concepts faster.

Get to grips with the essentials of deep learning by leveraging the power of Python About This Book ? Your one-stop solution to get started with the essentials of deep learning and neural network modeling ? Train different kinds of neural networks to tackle various problems in Natural Language Processing, computer vision, speech recognition, and more ? Covers popular Python libraries such as Tensorflow, Keras, and more, along with tips on training, deploying and optimizing your deep learning models in the best possible manner Who This Book Is For Aspiring data scientists and machine learning experts who have limited or no exposure to deep learning will find this book to be very useful. If you are looking for a resource that gets you up and running with the fundamentals of deep learning and neural networks, this book is for you. As the models in the book are trained using the popular Python-based libraries such as Tensorflow and Keras, it would be useful to have sound programming knowledge of Python. What You Will Learn ? Get to grips with the core concepts of deep learning and neural networks ? Set up deep learning library such as TensorFlow ? Fine-tune your deep learning models for NLP and Computer Vision applications ? Unify different information sources, such as images, text, and speech through deep learning ? Optimize and fine-tune your deep learning models for better performance ? Train a deep reinforcement learning model that plays a game better than humans ? Learn how to make your models get the best out of your GPU or CPU In Detail Deep Learning a trending topic in the field of Artificial Intelligence today and can be considered to be an advanced form of machine learning, which is quite tricky to master. This book will help you take your first steps in training efficient deep learning models and applying them in various practical scenarios. You will model, train, and deploy different kinds of neural networks such as Convolutional Neural Network, Recurrent Neural Network, and will see some of their applications in real-world domains including computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, and so on. You will build practical projects such as chatbots, implement reinforcement learning to build smart games, and develop expert systems for image captioning and processing. Popular Python library such as TensorFlow is used in this book to build the models. This book also covers solutions for different problems you might come across while training models, such as noisy datasets, small datasets, and more. This book does not assume any prior knowledge of deep learning. By the end of this book, you will have a firm understanding of the basics of deep learning and neural network modeling, along with their practical applications. Style and approach This step-by-step guide is filled with real-world practical examples and use cases to solve various deep learning problems.

Learn, develop, and design applications using the new features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM About This Book ? Implement business logic using processes, plugins, and client-side *s with MS Dynamics 365 ? Develop custom CRM solutions to improve your business applications ? A comprehensive guide that covers the new features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and increasingly advanced topics. Who This Book Is For This book targets skilled developers who are looking to build business-solution software and are new to application development in Microsoft Dynamics 365, especially for CRM. What You Will Learn ? Discover new designers tools included in Dynamics 365 CRM ? Develop apps using the platform-agnostic Web API ? Leverage Azure Extensions to design cloud-aware applications ? Learn how to implement CRUD operation ? Create integrated real-world apps using Microsoft PowerApps and Flow by combining services such as Twitter, Facebook, and SharePoint ? Configure and use Artificial Intelligence Azure Cognitive Services for Recommendation and Text Analytic services In Detail Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM is the most trusted name in enterprise-level customer relationship management. Thelatest version of Dynamics CRM comes with the important addition of exciting features guaranteed to make your life easier. It comes straight off the shelf with a whole new frontier of updated business rules, process enhancements, SDK methods, and other enhancements. This book will introduce you to the components of the new designer tools, such as SiteMap, App Module, and Visual Designer for Business Processes. Going deeper, this book teaches you how to develop custom SaaS applications leveraging the features of PowerApps available in Dynamics 365.Further, you will learn how to automate business processes using Microsoft Flow, and then we explore Web API, the most important platform update in Dynamics 365 CRM. Here, you'll also learn how to implement Web API in custom applications. You will learn how to write an Azure-aware plugin to design and integrate cloud-aware solutions. The book concludes with configuring services using newly released features such as Editable grids, Data Export Service, LinkedIn Integration, Relationship Insights, and Live Assist. Style and approach The book takes a pragmatic approach, exploring Dynamics 365 and its CRM features with the help of real-world scenarios.

Enhance your organization’s secure posture by improving your attack and defense strategies About This Book ? Gain a clear understanding of the attack methods, and patterns to recognize abnormal behavior within your organization with Blue Team tactics. ? Learn to unique techniques to gather exploitation intelligence, identify risk and demonstrate impact with Red Team and Blue Team strategies. ? A practical guide that will give you hands-on experience to mitigate risks and prevent attackers from infiltrating your system. Who This Book Is For This book aims at IT professional who want to venture the IT security domain. IT pentester, Security consultants, and ethical hackers will also find this course useful. Prior knowledge of penetration testing would be beneficial. What You Will Learn ? Learn the importance of having a solid foundation for your security posture ? Understand the attack strategy using cyber security kill chain ? Learn how to enhance your defense strategy by improving your security policies, hardening your network, implementing active sensors, and leveraging threat intelligence ? Learn how to perform an incident investigation ? Get an in-depth understanding of the recovery process ? Understand continuous security monitoring and how to implement a vulnerability management strategy ? Learn how to perform log analysis to identify suspicious activities In Detail The book will start talking about the security posture before moving to Red Team tactics, where you will learn the basic syntax for the Windows and Linux tools that are commonly used to perform the necessary operations. You will also gain hands-on experience of using new Red Team techniques with powerful tools such as python and PowerShell, which will enable you to discover vulnerabilities in your system and how to exploit them. Moving on, you will learn how a system is usually compromised by adversaries, and how they hack user's identity, and the various tools used by the Red Team to find vulnerabilities in a system. In the next section, you will learn about the defense strategies followed by the Blue Team to enhance the overall security of a system. You will also learn about an in-depth strategy to ensure that there are security controls in each network layer, and how you can carry out the recovery process of a compromised system. Finally, you will learn how to create a vulnerability management strategy and the different techniques for manual log analysis. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with Red Team and Blue Team techniques and will have learned the techniques used nowadays to attack and defend systems. Style and approach This book uses a practical approach of the cybersecurity kill chain to explain the different phases of the attack, which includes the rationale behind each phase, followed by scenarios and examples that brings the theory into practice.

Explore the concepts and tools you need to discover the world of microservices with various design patterns About This Book ? Get to grips with the microservice architecture and build enterprise-ready microservice applications ? Learn design patterns and the best practices while building a microservice application ? Obtain hands-on techniques and tools to create high-performing microservices resilient to possible fails Who This Book Is For This book is for architects and senior developers who would like implement microservice design patterns in their enterprise application development. The book assumes some prior programming knowledge. What You Will Learn ? How to break monolithic application into microservices ? Implement caching strategies, CQRS and event sourcing, and circuit breaker patterns ? Incorporate different microservice design patterns, such as shared data, aggregator, proxy, and chained ? Utilize consolidate testing patterns such as integration, signature, and monkey tests ? Secure microservices with JWT, API gateway, and single sign on ? Deploy microservices with continuous integration or delivery, Blue-Green deployment In Detail Microservices are a hot trend in the development world right now. Many enterprises have adopted this approach to achieve agility and the continuous delivery of applications to gain a competitive advantage. This book will take you through different design patterns at different stages of the microservice application development along with their best practices. Microservice Patterns and Best Practices starts with the learning of microservices key concepts and showing how to make the right choices while designing microservices. You will then move onto internal microservices application patterns, such as caching strategy, asynchronism, CQRS and event sourcing, circuit breaker, and bulkheads. As you progress, you'll learn the design patterns of microservices. The book will guide you on where to use the perfect design pattern at the application development stage and how to break monolithic application into microservices. You will also be taken through the best practices and patterns involved while testing, securing, and deploying your microservice application. At the end of the book, you will easily be able to create interoperable microservices, which are testable and prepared for optimum performance. Style and approach Comprehensive guide that uses architectural patterns with the best choices involved in application development

Build effective regression models in R to extract valuable insights from real data About This Book ? Implement different regression analysis techniques to solve common problems in data science - from data exploration to dealing with missing values ? From Simple Linear Regression to Logistic Regression - this book covers all regression techniques and their implementation in R ? A complete guide to building effective regression models in R and interpreting results from them to make valuable predictions Who This Book Is For This book is intended for budding data scientists and data analysts who want to implement regression analysis techniques using R. If you are interested in statistics, data science, machine learning and wants to get an easy introduction to the topic, then this book is what you need! Basic understanding of statistics and math will help you to get the most out of the book. Some programming experience with R will also be helpful What You Will Learn ? Get started with the journey of data science using Simple linear regression ? Deal with interaction, collinearity and other problems using multiple linear regression ? Understand diagnostics and what to do if the assumptions fail with proper analysis ? Load your dataset, treat missing values, and plot relationships with exploratory data analysis ? Develop a perfect model keeping overfitting, under-fitting, and cross-validation into consideration ? Deal with classification problems by applying Logistic regression ? Explore other regression techniques – Decision trees, Bagging, and Boosting techniques ? Learn by getting it all in action with the help of a real world case study. In Detail Regression analysis is a statistical process which enables prediction of relationships between variables. The predictions are based on the casual effect of one variable upon another. Regression techniques for modeling and analyzing are employed on large set of data in order to reveal hidden relationship among the variables. This book will give you a rundown explaining what regression analysis is, explaining you the process from scratch. The first few chapters give an understanding of what the different types of learning are – supervised and unsupervised, how these learnings differ from each other. We then move to covering the supervised learning in details covering the various aspects of regression analysis. The outline of chapters are arranged in a way that gives a feel of all the steps covered in a data science process – loading the training dataset, handling missing values, EDA on the dataset, transformations and feature engineering, model building, assessing the model fitting and performance, and finally making predictions on unseen datasets. Each chapter starts with explaining the theoretical concepts and once the reader gets comfortable with the theory, we move to the practical examples to support the understanding. The practical examples are illustrated using R code including the different packages in R such as R Stats, Caret and so on. Each chapter is a mix of theory and practical examples. By the end of this book you will know all the concepts and pain-points related to regression analysis, and you will be able to implement your learning in your projects. Style and approach An easy-to-follow step by step guide which will help you get to grips with real world application of Regression Analysis with R

Master the capabilities of PostgreSQL 10 to efficiently manage and maintain your database About This Book ? Your one-stop guide to mastering advanced concepts in PostgreSQL 10 with ease ? Master query optimization, replication, and high availability with PostgreSQL ? Extend the functionalities of your PostgreSQL instance to suit your organizational needs with minimal effort Who This Book Is For If you are a PostgreSQL data architect or an administrator and want to understand how to implement advanced functionalities and master complex administrative tasks with PostgreSQL 10, then this book is perfect for you. Prior experience of administrating a PostgreSQL database and a working knowledge of SQL are required to make the best use of this book. What You Will Learn ? Get to grips with the advanced features of PostgreSQL 10 and handle advanced SQL ? Make use of the indexing features in PostgreSQL and fine-tune the performance of your queries ? Work with stored procedures and manage backup and recovery ? Master replication and failover techniques ? Troubleshoot your PostgreSQL instance for solutions to common and not-so-common problems ? Learn how to migrate your database from MySQL and Oracle to PostgreSQL without any hassle In Detail PostgreSQL is an open source database used for handling large datasets (big data) and as a JSON document database. This book highlights the newly introduced features in PostgreSQL 10, and shows you how you can build better PostgreSQL applications, and administer your PostgreSQL database more efficiently. We begin by explaining advanced database design concepts in PostgreSQL 10, along with indexing and query optimization. You will also see how to work with event triggers and perform concurrent transactions and table partitioning, along with exploring SQL and server tuning. We will walk you through implementing advanced administrative tasks such as server maintenance and monitoring, replication, recovery, high availability, and much more. You will understand common and not-so-common troubleshooting problems and how you can overcome them. By the end of this book, you will have an expert-level command of advanced database functionalities and will be able to implement advanced administrative tasks with PostgreSQL 10. Style and approach This mastering-level guide delves into the advanced functionalities of PostgreSQL 10

A practical guide designed to get you from basics to current state of art in computer vision systems. About This Book ? Master the different tasks associated with Computer Vision and develop your own Computer Vision applications with ease ? Leverage the power of Python, Tensorflow, Keras, and OpenCV to perform image processing, object detection, feature detection and more ? With real-world datasets and fully functional code, this book is your one-stop guide to understanding Computer Vision Who This Book Is For This book is for machine learning practitioners and deep learning enthusiasts who want to understand and implement various tasks associated with Computer Vision and image processing in the most practical manner possible. Some programming experience would be beneficial while knowing Python would be an added bonus. What You Will Learn ? Learn the basics of image manipulation with OpenCV ? Implement and visualize image filters such as smoothing, dilation, histogram equalization, and more ? Set up various libraries and platforms, such as OpenCV, Keras, and Tensorflow, in order to start using computer vision, along with appropriate datasets for each chapter, such as MSCOCO, MOT, and Fashion-MNIST ? Understand image transformation and downsampling with practical implementations. ? Explore neural networks for computer vision and convolutional neural networks using Keras ? Understand working on deep-learning-based object detection such as Faster-R-CNN, SSD, and more ? Explore deep-learning-based object tracking in action ? Understand Visual SLAM techniques such as ORB-SLAM In Detail In this book, you will find several recently proposed methods in various domains of computer vision. You will start by setting up the proper Python environment to work on practical applications. This includes setting up libraries such as OpenCV, TensorFlow, and Keras using Anaconda. Using these libraries, you'll start to understand the concepts of image transformation and filtering. You will find a detailed explanation of feature detectors such as FAST and ORB; you'll use them to find similar-looking objects. With an introduction to convolutional neural nets, you will learn how to build a deep neural net using Keras and how to use it to classify the Fashion-MNIST dataset. With regard to object detection, you will learn the implementation of a simple face detector as well as the workings of complex deep-learning-based object detectors such as Faster R-CNN and SSD using TensorFlow. You'll get started with semantic segmentation using FCN models and track objects with Deep SORT. Not only this, you will also use Visual SLAM techniques such as ORB-SLAM on a standard dataset. By the end of this book, you will have a firm understanding of the different computer vision techniques and how to apply them in your applications. Style and approach Step-by-step guide filled with real-world, practical examples for understanding and applying various Computer Vision techniques

No memory and orders to kill. Texas Ranger Jameson Beckett discovers Kelly Stockwell alive – except she has amnesia, and a note demanding she kill Jameson! With secrets unravelling and bullets flying, does Jameson trust Kelly enough to save them both?

She fought for her life – but the terror continues. FBI agent Blake Garrett is trying to track a serial killer and now the madman has attacked Marissa Lane. She escaped with her life…but is still in danger. Blake is torn between a need find the killer and protect the woman he can’t possibly keep!

A Sheriff with a secret – and a second chance at love! After being called to the site of a shooting, Sheriff West Garrett finds the only woman he’s ever loved crying over the body and covered in blood! But Tina Ellet is the target of a crazed stalker and West is her only protection – he’ll risk everything for her!

He found his target and lost his heart… SEAL Dalton “Diesel” Landon knows that Reese Brantley is no damsel in distress – but she does need rescuing! Diesel and Reese are on the run. In the middle of the jungle, it’s clear that Diesel’s real danger is losing his heart to Reese…

A sordid past, a killer secret… When Keira Spencer is targeted by a killer, only handsome Omega agent Roman can save her. From entirely different worlds, Roman needs to get over Keira’s infamous past to win her heart.

When you play both sides…there’s always a price Ty Redhorse finds himself tied at a crossroads when he meets FBI agent Beth Hoosay. Forced to choose between his gang and Beth, Ty isn’t sure how much longer he can ignore their sizzling attraction.

Her Holiday Hero Widow Corinne Gallagher’s plans for a peaceful Christmas with her kids go astray when longtime crush Gabe Cutler moves in next door. As if having the hunky state trooper in snowball-throwing distance isn’t distracting enough, Gabe is suddenly in custody of an orphaned infant—and in need of Corinne’s help! She agrees, but her heart draws a line—she can't fall for another lawman. After a devastating loss, Gabe has avoided fatherhood and love. Yet with Corinne and the children, his new house is starting to feel like home. Will Gabe run again, or finally fulfill his secret Christmas wish for a family? Grace Haven: A town full of heart, happiness and home.

The Rancher’s Special Delivery The “package” is addressed to him, but rancher Sterling Blackwell certainly didn’t order a baby! More scandalous still, he and the town’s pretty teacher are named as parents. With gossip running wild, only a marriage of convenience can protect little Gracie and their reputations until her real family is found. Heather O’Connor is content to be Valentine, Montana’s spinster schoolmarm…until Gracie’s arrival stirs her heart. She can’t keep the adorable child without Sterling’s help, though she promises not to interfere with his life. But staying aloof from her handsome husband isn’t easy with a tiny matchmaker in tow. A mistake brought them together, but love might just make them a family by Christmas… Montana Courtships: Romance unfolds under the Big Sky

A Baby for Christmas The only Christmas gift Oscar Rabb’s four-year-old daughter prays for is one the widower can’t provide: a baby sibling. And when his neighbor’s house burns down, he’s willing to open his home to pregnant and widowed Kate Amaker and her in-laws—but not his heart. Even if his little girl’s convinced Kate’s unborn child is the answer to her wish. Kate quickly sees the generous but aloof Oscar has little interest in growing closer to his houseguests. Still, she intends to make the coming Christmas a season to remember for his daughter. And as Oscar starts to open up to her, Kate can’t help picturing just how wonderful the holidays—and a future together—might be.

“DO WHAT WE TELL YOU OR YOUR SON WILL DISAPPEAR…” Master gemstone cutter Carly Rose Kelley will do anything to keep her son safe…but with blackmailers insisting she forge priceless antique stones, she needs help. With Christmas days away, the desperate widow has only one hope—the brother-in-law she never met. Hostage rescue specialist Dallas Morgan never knew about his nephew, or his estranged late brother's wife. Now their lives are in his hands. But the sweet child and vulnerable woman remind Dallas of the family he once had and lost. And he can’t afford distraction. Trapped in the sights of ruthless blackmailers, nowhere is safe…but Dallas won’t let anyone stand in the way of him saving Carly and her little boy. MISSION: RESCUE—No job is too dangerous for these fearless heroes.