The fifth action-packed quest in an exciting new six book character-led series for 7+ girls who love fantasy, adventure, and high-kicking heroines! Very few people ever enter the Shadow Woods, for these woods are like no others. Hidden deep within them is the Gateway to the Shadow Realm – a dark and chaotic world where all kinds of gruesome creatures live… On her tenth birthday, tomboy Sophie learns she is the Guardian of the magical gateway, and that her destiny is to protect the human world from the goblins, trolls and evil sprites that inhabit the Shadow Woods. Each book sees Sophie having to outwit weird and terrifying creatures from the Shadow Woods, and in this fifth action-packed adventure, it’s the turn of the nasty Icicle Imps!

‘Why couldn’t I be a perfumer’s muse? I’ve come such a long way in the realm of scent. In fact, I was never really meant to poke my nose into it …’ The Perfume Lover by Denyse Beaulieu is an intimate journey into the mystery of scent. What if the most beautiful night in your life inspired a fragrance? Denyse Beaulieu is a respected fragrance writer; it is her world, her love, her life. When she was growing up, perfume was forbidden in her house, spurring a childhood curiosity that went on to become an intellectual and sensual passion. It is this passion she pursued all the way to Paris, where she now lives, and entered the secretive world of the perfume industry. But little did she know that it would lead her to achieve a fragrance lover’s wildest dream … When Denyse tells a famous perfumer of a sensual night spent in Seville under an orange tree in full blossom, wrapped in the arms of a beautiful young man, the story stirs his imagination and together they create a scent that captures the essence of that night. This is the story of that perfume. As the unique creative collaboration unfolds, the perfume-in-progress conjures intimate memories, leading Beaulieu to make sense of her life through scents. Throughout, she weaves the evocative history of perfumery into her personal journey, in an intensely passionate voice: the masters and the masterpieces; the myths and the myth-busting, down to the molecular mysteries that weld our flesh to flowers… The Perfume Lover is an unprecedented account of the creative process that goes into composing a fragrance, and a uniquely candid insider’s view into the world and history of fragrance. Your world will never smell the same.

Jimmy’s back in the electrifying sequel to Jimmy Coates: Killer. Stand back for this high-speed adventure, packed with surprises, danger and escape against the odds. “Jimmy's fingers were slipping. Smeared with blood, he had hardly any grip. He had to hold on. Mitchell chopped his hand down hard into Jimmy's shoulder, cutting off the nerves to his fingers. Staring up into Mitchell's ice-cold eyes, Jimmy fell into the shredder.” Jimmy Coates is still on the run – and this time NJ7 are pulling no punches. They’re out for blood, and even though Jimmy has gone into hiding in France, they still track him down. Jimmy might think that life could hold no further surprises for him – but he’s very, very wrong.

The inside story of the ‘reluctant medium’, finally available in a mass-market A-format edition Betty Shine was originally an opera singer, but studied all forms of alternative healing, becoming a vitamin and mineral therapist. Guided by spirit voices from the age of two, she became a world-famous medium. This is the story of how she became the best known medium and healer in the UK. Through her books, tapes and absent healing service, she is in touch with thousands of people worldwide. The hardback publication of her book produced a tremendous response from both the media and the general public and this A-format edition will bring her story to an even wider audience.

Nine-year-old Meena can’t wait to grow up and break free from her parents. But, as the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the mining village of Tollington, her struggle for independence is different from most. Meena wants fishfingers and chips, not chapati and dhal; she wants an English Christmas, not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities – but more than anything, she wants to roam the backyards of working-class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang. Blonde, cool, aloof, outrageous and sassy, Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita’s life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future threaten to turn Anita’s salad days sour. Anita and Me paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath. It is a unique vision of a British childhood in the Seventies, a childhood caught between two cultures, each on the brink of change.

From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the sequel to one of her most celebrated novels, ‘The Fifth Child’. ‘The Fifth Child’, Doris Lessing’s 1988 novel, made a powerful impact on publication. Its account of idyllic marital and parental bliss shattered by the arrival of the feral fifth child of the Lovatts made for unnerving and compulsive reading. That child, Ben, is the central character of this sequel, which picks up the fable at the end of his childhood and takes our primal, misunderstood, maladjusted teenager out into the world. He meets mostly with mockery, fear and incomprehension, but with just enough kindness and openness to keep him afloat as his adventures take him from London to the south of France and on to South America in his restless quest for community, companionship and peace. Lessing employs a plain, unadorned prose fit for fables; again, we have a childlike perspective at the heart of the book; again, the world in all its malevolence and misapprehension swirls around at the edge, while, occasionally, a strong character steps forward to try to set a good example.

The inside story of the one of the most successful British stand-up comedians, as told by the person best qualified to reveal all about the man behind the comic, his wife of over 20 years – Pamela Stephenson. Once in a lifetime, there strides upon the stage someone who can truly be called a legend. Such a person is the inimitable, timeless genius who is Billy Connolly. His effortlessly wicked whimsy has entranced, enthralled – and split the sides of – thousands upon thousands of adoring audiences. And when he isn't doing that…he's turning in award-winning performances on film and television. He's the man who needs no introduction, and yet he is the ultimate enigma. From a troubled and desperately poor childhood in the docklands of Glasgow he is now the intimate of household names the world over. How did this happen, who is the real Billy Connolly? Only one person can answer that question: his wife, Pamela Stephenson. Pamela’s writing combines the very personal with a frank objectivity that makes for a compelling, moving and hugely entertaining biography. This is the real Billy Connolly. This genre-defining book is now released as an ebook for a new generation of comedy fans, with a new Foreword from the author. Pamela’s vision of Billy is as true now as it ever was – as groundbreaking, as moving and as laugh-out-loud funny – and here she brings the book fully into its context, as one of the most influential biographies ever written.

The ultimate biography of this ever-popular star and icon, from a young Cambridge don who has already made his name with a much praised biography of Marilyn Monroe. Cary Grant made men seem like a good idea. Tall, dark and handsome with a rare gift for light comedy, he played a leading man who liked to be led, a man of the world who was a man of the people. Cary Grant was Hollywood’s quintessential democratic gentleman. Born in England as Archie Leach, made famous in America as Cary Grant, he was a star for more than 30 years, in more than 70 movies, his popularity still intact when he brought his career to a close. He was never replaced: nobody else talked like that, looked like that, behaved like that. He was a class apart. Cary Grant never explained how he came to play ‘Cary Grant’ so well. ‘Nobody is every truthful about his own life,’ he said. ‘There are always ambiguities.’ This book explores the ambiguities in the life and work of Cary Grant: a working class Englishman who portrayed a well-bred American; the playful entertainer who became a powerful businessman; the intimate stranger who was often the seduced male. Thorough and meticulously researched, this book is a dazzling and entertaining account of Cary Grant’s broad and enduring appeal.

‘Snort up “Cocaine Nights”. It’s disorientating, deranging and knocks the work of other avant-garde writers into a hatted cock’ Will Self Five people die in an unexplained house fire in the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, an exclusive enclave for the rich, retired British, centred on the thriving Club Nautico. The club manager, Frank Prentice, pleads guilty to charges of murder – yet not even the police believe him. When his Charles arrives to unravel the truth, he gradually discovers that behind the resort’s civilized fa?ade flourishes a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex. At once an engrossing mystery and a novel of ideas, ‘Cocaine Nights’ is a stunningly original work, a vision of a society coming to terms with a life of almost unlimited leisure. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Neil Gaiman, Zadie Smith, John Lanchester and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.

This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the brilliant, prolific writer, C. S. Lewis. C. S. Lewis was a deeply complex man, capable of inspiring both great devotion and great hostility. This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the clever child from the ‘Little End Room’ of his Ulster childhood and adult life, exploring Lewis’s unwilling conversion to Christianity, the genesis of his writing, and the web of his relationships.

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.

Build scalable, reliable, and cost-effective applications with a serverless architecture About This Book ? Design a real-world serverless application from scratch ? Learn about AWS Lambda function and how to use Lambda functions to glue other AWS Services ? Use the Java programming language and well-known design patterns. Although Java is used for the examples in this book, the concept is applicable across all languages ? Learn to migrate your JAX-RS application to AWS Lambda and API Gateway Who This Book Is For This book is for developers and software architects who are interested in designing on the back end. Since the book uses Java to teach concepts, knowledge of Java is required. What You Will Learn ? Learn to form microservices from bigger Softwares ? Orchestrate and scale microservices ? Design and set up the data flow between cloud services and custom business logic ? Get to grips with cloud provider’s APIs, limitations, and known issues ? Migrate existing Java applications to a serverless architecture ? Acquire deployment strategies ? Build a highly available and scalable data persistence layer ? Unravel cost optimization techniques In Detail Over the past years, all kind of companies from start-ups to giant enterprises started their move to public cloud providers in order to save their costs and reduce the operation effort needed to keep their shops open. Now it is even possible to craft a complex software system consisting of many independent micro-functions that will run only when they are needed without needing to maintain individual servers. The focus of this book is to design serverless architectures, and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, along with decision factors to consider. You will learn how to design a serverless application, get to know that key points of services that serverless applications are based on, and known issues and solutions. The book addresses key challenges such as how to slice out the core functionality of the software to be distributed in different cloud services and cloud functions. It covers basic and advanced usage of these services, testing and securing the serverless software, automating deployment, and more. By the end of the book, you will be equipped with knowledge of new tools and techniques to keep up with this evolution in the IT industry. Style and approach The book takes a pragmatic approach, showing you all the examples you need to build efficient serverless applications.

A practical guide to help you undertand the ability of Apache jMeter to load and performance test various server types in a more efficient way. About This Book ? Use jMeter to create and run tests to improve the performance of your webpages and applications ? Learn to build a test plan for your websites and analyze the results ? Unleash the power of various features and changes introduced in Apache jMeter 3.0 Who This Book Is For This book is for software professionals who want to understand and improve the performance of their applications with Apache jMeter. What You Will Learn ? See why performance testing is necessary and learn how to set up JMeter ? Record and test with JMeter ? Handle various form inputs in JMeter and parse results during testing ? Manage user sessions in web applications in the context of a JMeter test ? Monitor JMeter results in real time ? Perform distributed testing with JMeter ? Get acquainted with helpful tips and best practices for working with JMeter In Detail JMeter is a Java application designed to load and test performance for web application. JMeter extends to improve the functioning of various other static and dynamic resources. This book is a great starting point to learn about JMeter. It covers the new features introduced with JMeter 3 and enables you to dive deep into the new techniques needed for measuring your website performance. The book starts with the basics of performance testing and guides you through recording your first test scenario, before diving deeper into JMeter. You will also learn how to configure JMeter and browsers to help record test plans. Moving on, you will learn how to capture form submission in JMeter, dive into managing sessions with JMeter and see how to leverage some of the components provided by JMeter to handle web application HTTP sessions. You will also learn how JMeter can help monitor tests in real-time. Further, you will go in depth into distributed testing and see how to leverage the capabilities of JMeter to accomplish this. You will get acquainted with some tips and best practices with regard to performance testing. By the end of the book, you will have learned how to take full advantage of the real power behind Apache JMeter. Style and approach The book is a practical guide starting with introducing the readers to the importance of automated testing. It will then be a beginner’s journey from getting introduced to Apache jMeter to an in-detail discussion of more advanced features and possibilities with it.

Build Machine Learning models with a sound statistical understanding. About This Book ? Learn about the statistics behind powerful predictive models with p-value, ANOVA, and F- statistics. ? Implement statistical computations programmatically for supervised and unsupervised learning through K-means clustering. ? Master the statistical aspect of Machine Learning with the help of this example-rich guide to R and Python. Who This Book Is For This book is intended for developers with little to no background in statistics, who want to implement Machine Learning in their systems. Some programming knowledge in R or Python will be useful. What You Will Learn ? Understand the Statistical and Machine Learning fundamentals necessary to build models ? Understand the major differences and parallels between the statistical way and the Machine Learning way to solve problems ? Learn how to prepare data and feed models by using the appropriate Machine Learning algorithms from the more-than-adequate R and Python packages ? Analyze the results and tune the model appropriately to your own predictive goals ? Understand the concepts of required statistics for Machine Learning ? Introduce yourself to necessary fundamentals required for building supervised & unsupervised deep learning models ? Learn reinforcement learning and its application in the field of artificial intelligence domain In Detail Complex statistics in Machine Learning worry a lot of developers. Knowing statistics helps you build strong Machine Learning models that are optimized for a given problem statement. This book will teach you all it takes to perform complex statistical computations required for Machine Learning. You will gain information on statistics behind supervised learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, and more. Understand the real-world examples that discuss the statistical side of Machine Learning and familiarize yourself with it. You will also design programs for performing tasks such as model, parameter fitting, regression, classification, density collection, and more. By the end of the book, you will have mastered the required statistics for Machine Learning and will be able to apply your new skills to any sort of industry problem. Style and approach This practical, step-by-step guide will give you an understanding of the Statistical and Machine Learning fundamentals you'll need to build models.

Use scikit-learn to apply machine learning to real-world problems About This Book ? Master popular machine learning models including k-nearest neighbors, random forests, logistic regression, k-means, naive Bayes, and artificial neural networks ? Learn how to build and evaluate performance of efficient models using scikit-learn ? Practical guide to master your basics and learn from real life applications of machine learning Who This Book Is For This book is intended for software engineers who want to understand how common machine learning algorithms work and develop an intuition for how to use them, and for data scientists who want to learn about the scikit-learn API. Familiarity with machine learning fundamentals and Python are helpful, but not required. What You Will Learn ? Review fundamental concepts such as bias and variance ? Extract features from categorical variables, text, and images ? Predict the values of continuous variables using linear regression and K Nearest Neighbors ? Classify documents and images using logistic regression and support vector machines ? Create ensembles of estimators using bagging and boosting techniques ? Discover hidden structures in data using K-Means clustering ? Evaluate the performance of machine learning systems in common tasks In Detail Machine learning is the buzzword bringing computer science and statistics together to build smart and efficient models. Using powerful algorithms and techniques offered by machine learning you can automate any analytical model. This book examines a variety of machine learning models including popular machine learning algorithms such as k-nearest neighbors, logistic regression, naive Bayes, k-means, decision trees, and artificial neural networks. It discusses data preprocessing, hyperparameter optimization, and ensemble methods. You will build systems that classify documents, recognize images, detect ads, and more. You will learn to use scikit-learn’s API to extract features from categorical variables, text and images; evaluate model performance, and develop an intuition for how to improve your model’s performance. By the end of this book, you will master all required concepts of scikit-learn to build efficient models at work to carry out advanced tasks with the practical approach. Style and approach This book is motivated by the belief that you do not understand something until you can describe it simply. Work through toy problems to develop your understanding of the learning algorithms and models, then apply your learnings to real-life problems.

Harness the power of Scala to program Spark and analyze tonnes of data in the blink of an eye! About This Book ? Learn Scala’s sophisticated type system that combines Functional Programming and object-oriented concepts ? Work on a wide array of applications, from simple batch jobs to stream processing and machine learning ? Explore the most common as well as some complex use-cases to perform large-scale data analysis with Spark Who This Book Is For Anyone who wishes to learn how to perform data analysis by harnessing the power of Spark will find this book extremely useful. No knowledge of Spark or Scala is assumed, although prior programming experience (especially with other JVM languages) will be useful to pick up concepts quicker. What You Will Learn ? Understand object-oriented & functional programming concepts of Scala ? In-depth understanding of Scala collection APIs ? Work with RDD and DataFrame to learn Spark’s core abstractions ? Analysing structured and unstructured data using SparkSQL and GraphX ? Scalable and fault-tolerant streaming application development using Spark structured streaming ? Learn machine-learning best practices for classification, regression, dimensionality reduction, and recommendation system to build predictive models with widely used algorithms in Spark MLlib & ML ? Build clustering models to cluster a vast amount of data ? Understand tuning, debugging, and monitoring Spark applications ? Deploy Spark applications on real clusters in Standalone, Mesos, and YARN In Detail Scala has been observing wide adoption over the past few years, especially in the field of data science and analytics. Spark, built on Scala, has gained a lot of recognition and is being used widely in productions. Thus, if you want to leverage the power of Scala and Spark to make sense of big data, this book is for you. The first part introduces you to Scala, helping you understand the object-oriented and functional programming concepts needed for Spark application development. It then moves on to Spark to cover the basic abstractions using RDD and DataFrame. This will help you develop scalable and fault-tolerant streaming applications by analyzing structured and unstructured data using SparkSQL, GraphX, and Spark structured streaming. Finally, the book moves on to some advanced topics, such as monitoring, configuration, debugging, testing, and deployment. You will also learn how to develop Spark applications using SparkR and PySpark APIs, interactive data analytics using Zeppelin, and in-memory data processing with Alluxio. By the end of this book, you will have a thorough understanding of Spark, and you will be able to perform full-stack data analytics with a feel that no amount of data is too big. Style and approach Filled with practical examples and use cases, this book will hot only help you get up and running with Spark, but will also take you farther down the road to becoming a data scientist.

Advanced analytics on your Big Data with latest Apache Spark 2.x About This Book ? An advanced guide with a combination of instructions and practical examples to extend the most up-to date Spark functionalities. ? Extend your data processing capabilities to process huge chunk of data in minimum time using advanced concepts in Spark. ? Master the art of real-time processing with the help of Apache Spark 2.x Who This Book Is For If you are a developer with some experience with Spark and want to strengthen your knowledge of how to get around in the world of Spark, then this book is ideal for you. Basic knowledge of Linux, Hadoop and Spark is assumed. Reasonable knowledge of Scala is expected. What You Will Learn ? Examine Advanced Machine Learning and DeepLearning with MLlib, SparkML, SystemML, H2O and DeepLearning4J ? Study highly optimised unified batch and real-time data processing using SparkSQL and Structured Streaming ? Evaluate large-scale Graph Processing and Analysis using GraphX and GraphFrames ? Apply Apache Spark in Elastic deployments using Jupyter and Zeppelin Notebooks, Docker, Kubernetes and the IBM Cloud ? Understand internal details of cost based optimizers used in Catalyst, SystemML and GraphFrames ? Learn how specific parameter settings affect overall performance of an Apache Spark cluster ? Leverage Scala, R and python for your data science projects In Detail Apache Spark is an in-memory cluster-based parallel processing system that provides a wide range of functionalities such as graph processing, machine learning, stream processing, and SQL. This book aims to take your knowledge of Spark to the next level by teaching you how to expand Spark’s functionality and implement your data flows and machine/deep learning programs on top of the platform. The book commences with an overview of the Spark ecosystem. It will introduce you to Project Tungsten and Catalyst, two of the major advancements of Apache Spark 2.x. You will understand how memory management and binary processing, cache-aware computation, and code generation are used to speed things up dramatically. The book extends to show how to incorporate H20, SystemML, and Deeplearning4j for machine learning, and Jupyter Notebooks and Kubernetes/Docker for cloud-based Spark. During the course of the book, you will learn about the latest enhancements to Apache Spark 2.x, such as interactive querying of live data and unifying DataFrames and Datasets. You will also learn about the updates on the APIs and how DataFrames and Datasets affect SQL, machine learning, graph processing, and streaming. You will learn to use Spark as a big data operating system, understand how to implement advanced analytics on the new APIs, and explore how easy it is to use Spark in day-to-day tasks. Style and approach This book is an extensive guide to Apache Spark modules and tools and shows how Spark's functionality can be extended for real-time processing and storage with worked examples.

Saddle up for the eleventh Pony Club Secrets adventure! Issie leaps to new heights with showjumper Comet, but will she ride to victory on Liberty? The penultimate book in a best-selling pony adventure series. Issie and Comet have travelled to Lexington, USA to take on the best riders in the world at the famed four-star horse trials. It’s Issie first experience of competing against adult professional riders and she begins to worry that she’s out of her depth. But then the competition gets even more exciting when Tara Kelly calls with the offer of a chance ride on another horse. With everything at stake does Issie have what it takes to win?

Just after ‘Bring Up the Bodies’ author Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker for ‘Wolf Hall’, she fell gravely ill. This is her remarkable hospital diary. Originally published in the London Review of Books, this diary by the acclaimed author Hilary Mantel explores in forensic detail her loss of dignity, her determination, the concentration of the senses into an animalistic struggle to get through, and the attendant hallucinations she was plagued by during her stay in hospital. With her health now improved, and the acknowledgement of the Man Booker prize-winning follow-up to ‘Wolf Hall’, ‘Bring Up the Bodies’ as one of our greatest works of fiction, ‘Ink in the Blood’ remains a significant testament to the traumas of illness, and one of the most incredible and haunting essays published in a very long time.

Once bitten, twice shy Nothing could fade the bitter memories Candy had of Cameron Strythe. How could he have been so callous, abandoning her pregnant sister all those years ago? He'd disrupted their lives, and he was stilldisturbing Candy's peace of mind with his dynamic presence and all too charming manner…. But this man had betrayed her sister and, Candy vowed, it was her absolute duty to exact a full and meaningful revenge–at any cost! "Helen Brooks pens a superb story with rich characters, sparkling interplay and a riveting emotional conflict." –Romantic Times

Contract–one wife! Reid Kennard is a ruthless financier used to buying and selling stocks, shares and priceless artifacts. But now Reid has his eye on a very different acquisition–Francesca Turner. Left destitute by her father's recent death, Francesca had walked into Reid's bank looking to extend her overdraft rather than for a marriage proposal! As Fran needs money and Reid needs a wife, he proposes the perfect barter: he'll rescue her and her family if she'll agree to marry him! But in this marriage of convenience can Fran ever be anything more than a bartered bride? Of A Marriage Has Been Arranged: "Talented writer Anne Weale's…masterful character development and charming scenes create a rich reading experience." –Romantic Times