After years of caring for her ailing father, the Earl of Medwin, the ethereally beautiful young Lady Ancella Winn is pale, drawn and exhausted now that he has died and she is devastated. Worse still, she has nowhere to go, except for the home of her strait-laced and disapproving aunts. So when family friend and doctor, Sir Felix Johnson, suggests that it would be good for her health to travel to the French Riviera to work as the nurse-companion to an ageing Russian Princess, she nervously agrees. Although her new employer is difficult and demanding, Ancella is bewitched, first by the beauty of the C?te d’Azur and then by the Princess’s ineffably handsome son, Prince Vladimer. Caught up in the glamour of the Monte Carlo Casino, the den of iniquity against which her aunts had warned her in no uncertain terms, it seems that she has won the Prince’s heart as the feckless aristocrats around her lose fortunes at Roulette and Baccarat. But then to her horror her hopes of the love she has always dreamt about are dashed when it she finds that Prince Vladimer has betrayed her with the grasping but alluring Marchioness of Chiswick.

Hugo, the Duke of Wynchester enjoys many affaires de coeur and his latest lover, the beautiful but scheming and spoilt Olive Lady Brandon, is trying to blackmail him into marriage by forcing her husband to divorce her. Storming angrily from her house, Hugo finds a strange stowaway aboard his carriage. It transpires that this frail elfin beauty is none other that Janeta Brandon, Olive’s step-daughter, and that she is fleeing the marriage her stepmother has arranged to an old man known to beat not only his servants and horses but also his late wife. When the Duke realises that Janeta means to kill herself rather than face a loveless marriage, he is struck by a cunning way to rescue them both by announcing their ‘engagement’. They are then married in a quiet ceremony in the Duke’s private Chapel. It is only when Janeta saves him from death by poisoning by the hand of her stepmother that the Duke realises that he has been in love with her from the moment he first saw her. But surely the scorned Olive’s fury will ensure their love is doomed before it can blossom.

The beautiful Ariana Dancer is orphaned and has led a cheerless life in London with her disagreeable Guardian, Uncle Konstantin Bardici. He has shown little interest in his niece and she has been left very much to her own devices. One day Uncle Konstantin suggests that Ariana marry an Albanian Prince – one who is seeking an English wife and who claims to have fallen in love with her portrait – and it does not take much to persuade her to agree. Even before she sets out for Albania, she begins to dream of romance and her lonely heart ensures that she quickly fancies herself in love with a man she has never seen. She is sure in her heart that she will find everlasting happiness with Prince Stefan of Dukka in the depths of Albania.! But the journey she must take to fulfil her dreams is longer and more treacherous than she could ever have imagined. When she and her hapless maid are kidnapped en route to Castle Dukka by brigands, the rosy future she dreamed of becomes bitterly compromised. Soon life in the wild mountains begins to exert an unexpected pull, while the King of the Brigands turns out to possess an irresistible charm. Ariana discovers that love can have a double meaning and that image is not all that it seems. Forced to choose between honour and passion and faced with the responsibility of deciding life or death for the man she loves, she bravely makes the ultimate sacrifice. Even then Ariana’s torment is not over – Find out how Ariana unexpectedly finds all that she has been seeking, and more, in this exciting and unusual romantic tale by BARBARA CARTLAND

The handsome Viscount Trent finally makes up his mind to accede to the pleadings of his family and get married. He is twenty-seven and for a long time they have been begging him to take a wife and produce an heir to his illustrious title, his famous stately home and his vast estate. On the whole he finds debutantes extremely boring and has enjoyed a number of affaires-de-coeur with older married women. However there is one girl, Marigold Marlow, he considers outstanding and she is the acknowledged great beauty of the Season. As she is so beautiful, the Viscount is convinced that Marigold will make him a perfect wife, but he is astonished when, having proposed to her, she tells him that she has not quite made up her mind. She will let him know on Wednesday if she accepts his proposal of marriage. As the Viscount expects her to fall immediately into his arms, he is surprised, but content to wait until Wednesday for her answer, which he is certain will be ‘yes’. As he drives away from Marigold’s house, a young girl holding a white Pekingese in her arms begs him to give her a lift to London. He sees no reason to refuse and finds as they drive off that she is Salvia, a cousin of the beautiful Marigold. He then learns that Marigold has her eyes on the son of the Duke of Northerncliff, who is seriously ill. In fact if he dies as expected, she intends to marry his heir as one day soon he will be a Duke. Feeling surprised and angry, he is even more astonished to learn that Marigold is cruel to animals and that Salvia is running away because she is so unkind to her dog as well as to her. How the Viscount dreams up a way to avenge himself on Marigold and, if the Duke does recover, how he can escape marrying her as he has now changed his mind. How the Viscount’s plan succeeds. And how Salvia takes London by storm, faces appalling danger and finally finds the love of her life is all told in this unusual story by BARBARA CARTLAND.

Successfully scrape data from any website with the power of PythonAbout This BookA hands-on guide to web scraping with real-life problems and solutionsTechniques to download and extract data from complex websitesCreate a number of different web scrapers to extract information Who This Book Is For This book is aimed at developers who want to use web scraping for legitimate purposes. Prior programming experience with Python would be useful but not essential. Anyone with general knowledge of programming languages should be able to pick up the book and understand the principals involved.What You Will LearnExtract data from web pages with simple Python programmingBuild a threaded crawler to process web pages in parallelFollow links to crawl a websiteDownload cache to reduce bandwidthUse multiple threads and processes to scrape fasterLearn how to parse JavaScript-dependent websitesInteract with forms and sessionsSolve CAPTCHAs on protected web pagesDiscover how to track the state of a crawl In Detail The Internet contains the most useful set of data ever assembled, largely publicly accessible for free. However, this data is not easily reusable. It is embedded within the structure and style of websites and needs to be carefully extracted to be useful. Web scraping is becoming increasingly useful as a means to easily gather and make sense of the plethora of information available online. Using a simple language like Python, you can crawl the information out of complex websites using simple programming. This book is the ultimate guide to using Python to scrape data from websites. In the early chapters it covers how to extract data from static web pages and how to use caching to manage the load on servers. After the basics we'll get our hands dirty with building a more sophisticated crawler with threads and more advanced topics. Learn step-by-step how to use Ajax URLs, employ the Firebug extension for monitoring, and indirectly scrape data. Discover more scraping nitty-gritties such as using the browser renderer, managing cookies, how to submit forms to extract data from complex websites protected by CAPTCHA, and so on. The book wraps up with how to create high-level scrapers with Scrapy libraries and implement what has been learned to real websites.Style and approach This book is a hands-on guide with real-life examples and solutions starting simple and then progressively becoming more complex. Each chapter in this book introduces a problem and then provides one or more possible solutions.

Make life at the office easier for server administrators by helping them build resilient Ubuntu server systems About This Book Tackle the issues you come across in keeping your Ubuntu server up and running Build server machines and troubleshoot cloud computing related issues using Open Stack Discover tips and best practices to be followed for minimum maintenance of Ubuntu Server 3 Who This Book Is For This book is for a vast audience of Linux system administrators who primarily work on Debian-based systems and spend long hours trying fix issues with the enterprise server. Ubuntu is already one of the most popular OSes and this book targets the most common issues that most administrators have to deal with. With the right tools and definite solutions, you will be able to keep your Ubuntu servers in the pink of health. What You Will Learn Deploy packages and their dependencies with repositories Set up your own DNS and network for Ubuntu Server Authenticate and validate users and their access to various systems and services Maintain, monitor, and optimize your server resources and avoid tremendous load Get to know about processes, assigning and changing priorities, and running processes in background Optimize your shell with tools and provide users with an improved shell experience Set up separate environments for various services and run them safely in isolation Understand, build, and deploy OpenStack on your Ubuntu Server In Detail Ubuntu is becoming one of the favorite Linux flavors for many enterprises and is being adopted to a large extent. It supports a wide variety of common network systems and the use of standard Internet services including file serving, e-mail, Web, DNS, and database management. A large scale use and implementation of Ubuntu on servers has given rise to a vast army of Linux administrators who battle it out day in and day out to make sure the systems are in the right frame of operation and pre-empt any untoward incidents that may result in catastrophes for the businesses using it. Despite all these efforts, glitches and bugs occur that affect Ubuntu server's network, memory, application, and hardware and also generate cloud computing related issues using OpenStack. This book will help you end to end. Right from setting up your new Ubuntu Server to learning the best practices to host OpenStack without any hassles. You will be able to control the priority of jobs, restrict or allow access users to certain services, deploy packages, tackle issues related to server effectively, and reduce downtime. Also, you will learn to set up OpenStack, and manage and monitor its services while tuning the machine with best practices. You will also get to know about Virtualization to make services serve users better. Chapter by chapter, you will learn to add new features and functionalities and make your Ubuntu server a full-fledged, production-ready system. Style and approach This book contains topic-by-topic discussion in an easy-to-understand language with loads of examples to help you take care of Ubuntu Server. Plenty of screenshots will guide you through a step-by-step approach.

A complete guide for Python programmers to master scientific computing using Python APIs and tools About This Book The basics of scientific computing to advanced concepts involving parallel and large scale computation are all covered. Most of the Python APIs and tools used in scientific computing are discussed in detail The concepts are discussed with suitable example programs Who This Book Is For If you are a Python programmer and want to get your hands on scientific computing, this book is for you. The book expects you to have had exposure to various concepts of Python programming. What You Will Learn Fundamentals and components of scientific computing Scientific computing data management Performing numerical computing using NumPy and SciPy Concepts and programming for symbolic computing using SymPy Using the plotting library matplotlib for data visualization Data analysis and visualization using Pandas, matplotlib, and IPython Performing parallel and high performance computing Real-life case studies and best practices of scientific computing In Detail In today's world, along with theoretical and experimental work, scientific computing has become an important part of scientific disciplines. Numerical calculations, simulations and computer modeling in this day and age form the vast majority of both experimental and theoretical papers. In the scientific method, replication and reproducibility are two important contributing factors. A complete and concrete scientific result should be reproducible and replicable. Python is suitable for scientific computing. A large community of users, plenty of help and documentation, a large collection of scientific libraries and environments, great performance, and good support makes Python a great choice for scientific computing. At present Python is among the top choices for developing scientific workflow and the book targets existing Python developers to master this domain using Python. The main things to learn in the book are the concept of scientific workflow, managing scientific workflow data and performing computation on this data using Python. The book discusses NumPy, SciPy, SymPy, matplotlib, Pandas and IPython with several example programs. Style and approach This book follows a hands-on approach to explain the complex concepts related to scientific computing. It details various APIs using appropriate examples.

Get to grips with key data visualization and predictive analytic skills using R About This Book Acquire predictive analytic skills using various tools of R Make predictions about future events by discovering valuable information from data using R Comprehensible guidelines that focus on predictive model design with real-world data Who This Book Is For If you are a statistician, chief information officer, data scientist, ML engineer, ML practitioner, quantitative analyst, and student of machine learning, this is the book for you. You should have basic knowledge of the use of R. Readers without previous experience of programming in R will also be able to use the tools in the book. What You Will Learn Customize R by installing and loading new packages Explore the structure of data using clustering algorithms Turn unstructured text into ordered data, and acquire knowledge from the data Classify your observations using Na?ve Bayes, k-NN, and decision trees Reduce the dimensionality of your data using principal component analysis Discover association rules using Apriori Understand how statistical distributions can help retrieve information from data using correlations, linear regression, and multilevel regression Use PMML to deploy the models generated in R In Detail R is statistical software that is used for data analysis. There are two main types of learning from data: unsupervised learning, where the structure of data is extracted automatically; and supervised learning, where a labeled part of the data is used to learn the relationship or scores in a target attribute. As important information is often hidden in a lot of data, R helps to extract that information with its many standard and cutting-edge statistical functions. This book is packed with easy-to-follow guidelines that explain the workings of the many key data mining tools of R, which are used to discover knowledge from your data. You will learn how to perform key predictive analytics tasks using R, such as train and test predictive models for classification and regression tasks, score new data sets and so on. All chapters will guide you in acquiring the skills in a practical way. Most chapters also include a theoretical introduction that will sharpen your understanding of the subject matter and invite you to go further. The book familiarizes you with the most common data mining tools of R, such as k-means, hierarchical regression, linear regression, association rules, principal component analysis, multilevel modeling, k-NN, Na?ve Bayes, decision trees, and text mining. It also provides a de*ion of visualization techniques using the basic visualization tools of R as well as lattice for visualizing patterns in data organized in groups. This book is invaluable for anyone fascinated by the data mining opportunities offered by GNU R and its packages. Style and approach This is a practical book, which analyzes compelling data about life, health, and death with the help of tutorials. It offers you a useful way of interpreting the data that’s specific to this book, but that can also be applied to any other data.

The Professor and the Madman , masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED , begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

Bernie Rhodenbarr is a personable chap, a good neighbor, a passable poker player. His chosen profession, however, might not sit well with some. Bernie is a burglar, a good one, effortlessly lifting valuables from the not-so-well-protected abodes of well-to-do New Yorkers like a modern-day Robin Hood. (The poor, as Bernie would be the first to tell you, alas, have nothing worth stealing.) He's not perfect, however; he occasionally makes mistakes. Like accepting a paid assignment from a total stranger to retrieve a particular item from a rich man's apartment. Like still being there when the cops arrive. Like having a freshly slain corpse lying in the next room, and no proof that Bernie isn't the killer. Now he's really got his hands full, having to locate the true perpetrator while somehow eluding the police -- a dirty job indeed, but if Bernie doesn't do it, who will?

The most successful business book of the last decade, Reengineering the Corporation is the pioneering work on the most important topic in business today: achieving dramatic performance improvements. This book leads readers through the radical redesign of a company's processes, organization, and culture to achieve a quantum leap in performance. Michael Hammer and James Champy have updated and revised their milestone work for the New Economy they helped to create -- promising to help corporations save hundreds of millions of dollars more, raise their customer satisfaction still higher, and grow ever more nimble in the years to come.

A respected senator from Georgia, Will Lee has aspirations of more.But a cruel stroke of fate thrusts him onto the national stage well before he expects, and long before he's ready, for a national campaign. The road to the White House, however, will be more treacherous -- and deadly -- than Will and his intelligent, strikingly beautiful wife, Kate, an associate director in the Central Intelligence Agency, can imagine.A courageous and principled man, Will soon learns he has more than one opponent who wants him out of the race. Thrust into the spotlight as never before, he's become the target of clandestine enemies from the past who will use all their money and influence to stop him -- dead. Now Will isn't just running for president -- he's running for his life.

Eleven Minutes is the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that "love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer. . . ." A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune. Maria's despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness -- sexual pleasure for its own sake -- or risking everything to find her own "inner light" and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

A stranger arrives at the remote village of Viscos, carrying with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. He comes searching for the answer to a question that torments him: Are human beings, in essence, good or evilIn welcoming the mysterious foreigner, the whole village becomes an accomplice to his sophisticated plot, which will forever mark their lives. A novel of temptation by the internationally bestselling author Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym is a thought-provoking parable of a community devoured by greed, cowardice, and fear as it struggles with the choice between good and evil.

Tess loves math because it's the one subject she can trust there's always just one right answer, and it never changes. But then she starts algebra and is introduced to those pesky and mysterious variables, which seem to be everywhere in eighth grade. When even your friends and parents can be variables, how in the world do you find out the right answers to the really important questions, like what to do about a boy you like or whom to tell when someone's done something really badWill Tess's life ever stop changing long enough for her to figure it all out?

This nonfiction book has been faithfully adapted for young readers from the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Marley & Me by John Grogan! Marley, a lovable Labrador retriever, is always getting himself into trouble. Some may say he is the world's worst dog. But those who know and love Marley understand that nothing can stop his loyalty, exuberance, and passion not even the Grogans' screen door! How this big, rambunctious dog becomes the heart of the Grogan family is the story of Marley .

Olivia is a vegetarian. Ivy is a vampire. And they're twins?!?Ever since Olivia discovered that her long-lost twin sister, Ivy, is a vampire, she's been soaking up everything Ivy will tell her about Franklin Grove's vampire community. It's all top secret, and Olivia's sworn that she'll never tell another soul. But now, nosy tabloid reporter Serena Star is snooping around. As she gets closer and closer to the truth, it's up to Ivy and Olivia to throw her off track. This is one fangtastic news story that can't get out!

In fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, five of which have been published in The New Yorker , the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than ever Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City , Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them. In the title story, in which Jones employs the first-person rhythms of a classic detective story, a Korean War veteran investigates the death of a family friend whose sorry destiny seems inextricable from his mother's own violent Southern childhood. In "In the Blink of God's Eye" and "Tapestry" newly married couples leave behind the familiarity of rural life to pursue lives of urban promise only to be challenged and disappointed. With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw away and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.

Set just months before Sutton Mercer's untimely death, this stand-alone 100-page digital original novella from #1 New York Times bestselling author Sara Shepard is an exciting, must-read companion to the Lying Game series.It's the summer after junior year and Sutton Mercer's world is turned upside down when her secret boyfriend, Thayer Vega, disappears without a trace. When he finally calls, he says he needs "space."Furious, Sutton does what any jilted girl would do—she gets over her last boyfriend by finding a new one. And luckily Garrett Austin is happy to step up and be her new leading man. The only catch: Garrett used to date Sutton's best friend Charlotte. Now an annoyed Charlotte is insisting that Sutton's younger sister, Laurel, be admitted to the Lying Game clique. If Sutton wants to keep Laurel out, she'll need to outdo her in a series of prank challenges. Defeating Laurel should be a no-brainer, but little sis has some tricks up her sleeve. . . .Will Sutton prove she's the only Mercer fit for the clubOr is the Lying Game queen about to get overthrown by her not-so-loyal subjects?

One of the world's greatest suspense writers returns with this gripping, powerful new novel featuring Inspector Alan Banks, hailed by Michael Connelly as "a man for all seasons."Life. Death.Good. Evil.Innocence. Guilt.All can be found IN THE DARK PLACES.It's a double mystery: two young men have vanished, and the investigation leads to two troubling clues in two different locations.As Inspector Banks and his team scramble for answers, the inquiry takes an even darker turn when a truck careens off an icy road in a freak hailstorm. In the wreckage, rescuers find the driver, who was killed on impact, as well as another corpse . . . that of someone who was dead well before the crash.Snow falls. The body count rises. And Banks, perceptive and curious as ever, feels himself being drawn deeper into a web of crime . . . and at its center something—or someone—dark and dangerous lying in wait.Vibrating with tension, ingeniously plotted, and filled with soul and poignancy, In the Dark Places is a remarkable achievement from this masterful talent. For readers of Michael Connelly, Louise Penny, and Tess Gerritsen, this is a novel to be read with white knuckles and a fast-beating heart.

She's a tomboy. He's the boy next door.With three older brothers, Charlotte Reynolds, aka Charlie, has always been more comfortable calling the shots on a basketball court than flirting with the opposite sex. So when her police officer dad demands she get a summer job to pay for the latest in a long line of speeding tickets, she's more than a little surprised to find herself working at a chichi boutique and going out with a boy who has never seen her tear it up in a pickup game. Charlie seeks late-night refuge in her backyard, talking out her problems with her neighbor and honorary fourth brother, Braden, sitting back-to-back against the fence that separates them. Braden may know her better than anyone. But there's a secret Charlie's keeping that even he hasn't figured out—she's fallen for him. Hard. She knows what it means to go for the win, but if spilling her secret means losing him for good, the stakes just got too high.On the Fence is a sweet and satisfying read about finding yourself and finding love where you least expect it.