Develop, test, and deploy decentralized applications for Ethereum platform About This Book ? Build your first Ethereum Dapp with Truffle: the most popular Ethereum development framework ? Build, compile, and deploy smart contracts in your development environment ? Embrace Blockchains and utilize it to create new generation of secured and scalable apps Who This Book Is For This book is for web developers who are interested in the new world blockchain. Some basic understanding of JavaScript and web services is required. No prior knowledge of Decentralized applications or blockchain is required. What You Will Learn ? Understand the fundamentals of Truffle and Web3 ? Build a decentralized application with Truffle, while choosing the correct Ethereum client ? Connect your Dapp to Ethereum clients including Geth, Parity, and Ganache ? Migrate and test your Dapp with the correct networks such as Ropsten and Rinkeby ? Package a decentralized application into a user-friendly product by integrating Truffle with JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, React and Vue ? Explore tools including Ethereum Package Manager, the Registrar and browser wallets, and exploit third-party smart contract libraries. ? Evaluate the common migration pitfalls and how to mitigate them In Detail Truffle is a world-class development environment, testing framework and asset pipeline for Ethereum, aiming to make life as an Ethereum developer easier. If you are a web developer wanting to try your hand at developing Dapps with Truffle, then this is the book for you. This book will teach you to write smart contracts and build Dapps with Truffle. You will begin with covering the basics of Truffle, briefly explaining how it integrates Solidity and Web3, in orderto start building a mini decentralized application. Also, you will dive into migration, testing and integrating Truffle with the use of popular JavaScript frameworks. Lastly, you will ship your decentralized application and package it into a product. Moreover, you will go through the best practices in Truffle,so as to increase your proficiency in building Dapps with Truffle. By the end of the book, you will be able to write smart contracts and build decentralized applications with Truffle on Ethereum blockchains. Style and approach An intuitive, step-by-step and engaging guide that will teach you to build a real-world, decentralized application with Truffle.

Bring realism to your games by mastering post-processing effects and advanced shading techniques in Unity 2018 About This Book ? Learn the secrets of creating AAA quality shaders without writing long algorithms ? Master shader programming through easy-to-follow examples ? Create stunning visual effects that can be used in 3D games Who This Book Is For Unity Shaders and Effects Cookbook is for developers who want to create their first shaders in Unity 2018 or wish to take their game to a whole new level by adding professional post-processing effects. A solid understanding of Unity is required to get the most from this book. What You Will Learn ? Understand physically based rendering to fit the aesthetic of your game ? Write shaders from scratch in ShaderLab and HLSL/Cg ? Combine shader programming with interactive scripts to add life to your materials ? Design efficient shaders for mobile platforms without sacrificing their realism ? Use state-of-the-art techniques, such as volumetric explosions and fur shading ? Master the math and algorithms behind the most used lighting models ? Understand how shader models have evolved and how you can create your own In Detail Since their introduction to Unity, shaders have been seen as notoriously difficult to understand and implement in games. Complex mathematics has always stood in the way of creating your own shaders and attaining the level of realism you crave. Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook changes that by giving you a recipe-based guide to creating shaders using Unity. It will show you everything you need to know about vectors, how lighting is constructed with them, and how textures are used to create complex effects without the heavy math. This book starts by teaching you how to use shaders without writing code with the post-processing stack. Then, you’ll learn how to write shaders from scratch, build up essential lighting, and finish by creating stunning screen effects just like those in high-quality 3D and mobile games. You'll discover techniques, such as normal mapping, image-based lighting, and animating your models inside a shader. We'll explore how to use physically based rendering to treat light the way it behaves in the real world. At the end, we’ll even look at Unity 2018’s new Shader Graph system. With this book, what seems like a dark art today will be second nature by tomorrow. Style and approach The recipes in this book contain step-by-step instructions, complemented with screenshots, code, and real-world examples.

Enterprise Agility is practical framework for enhancing Agility and equipping your company with the tools to survive. About This Book ? Prepare your company to navigate the rapidly-moving business world ? Enhance Agility in every component of your organization ? Build a framework that meets the unique requirements of your enterprise Who This Book Is For Enterprise Agility is a tool for anyone with the motivation to influence outcomes in an enterprise, who aspires to improve Agility. Readers from the following backgrounds will benefit: chief executive officer, chief information officer, people/human resource director, information technology director, head of change program, head of transformation, and Agile coach/consultant. What You Will Learn ? Drive agility-oriented change across the enterprise ? Understand why agility matters (more than ever) to modern enterprises ? Adopt and influence an Agile mindset in your teams and in your organization ? Understand the concept of a CAS and how to model enterprise and leadership behaviors on CAS characteristics to enhance enterprise agility ? Understand and convey the differences between Agile and true enterprise agility ? Create an enterprise-specific action plan to enhance agility ? Become a champion for enterprise agility ? Recognize the advantages and challenges of distributed teams, and how Agile ways of working can remedy the rough spots ? Enable and motivate your IT partners to adopt Agile ways of working In Detail The biggest challenge enterprises face today is dealing with fast-paced change in all spheres of business. Enterprise Agility shows how an enterprise can address this challenge head on and thrive in the dynamic environment. Avoiding the mechanistic construction of existing enterprises that focus on predictability and certainty, Enterprise Agility delivers practical advice for responding and adapting to the scale and accelerating pace of disruptive change in the business environment. Agility is a fundamental shift in thinking about how enterprises work to effectively deal with disruptive changes in the business environment. The core belief underlying agility is that enterprises are open and living systems. These living systems, also known as complex adaptive systems (CAS), are ideally suited to deal with change very effectively. Agility is to enterprises what health is to humans. There are some foundational principles that can be broadly applied, but the definition of healthy is very specific to each individual. Enterprise Agility takes a similar approach with regard to agility: it suggests foundational practices to improve the overall health of the body—culture, mindset, and leadership—and the health of its various organs: people, process, governance, structure, technology, and customers. The book also suggests a practical framework to create a plan to enhance agility. Style and approach Enterprise Agility is a step-by-step guide to facing change and uncertainty head-on. The books provides practical ways to apply Agile methodologies and boost Agility throughout a business.

Explore powerful R packages to create predictive models using ensemble methods Key Features *Implement machine learning algorithms to build ensemble-efficient models *Explore powerful R packages to create predictive models using ensemble methods *Learn to build ensemble models on large datasets using a practical approach Book Description Ensemble techniques are used for combining two or more similar or dissimilar machine learning algorithms to create a stronger model. Such a model delivers superior prediction power and can give your datasets a boost in accuracy. Hands-On Ensemble Learning with R begins with the important statistical resampling methods. You will then walk through the central trilogy of ensemble techniques – bagging, random forest, and boosting – then you'll learn how they can be used to provide greater accuracy on large datasets using popular R packages. You will learn how to combine model predictions using different machine learning algorithms to build ensemble models. In addition to this, you will explore how to improve the performance of your ensemble models. By the end of this book, you will have learned how machine learning algorithms can be combined to reduce common problems and build simple efficient ensemble models with the help of real-world examples. What you will learn *Carry out an essential review of re-sampling methods, bootstrap, and jackknife *Explore the key ensemble methods: bagging, random forests, and boosting *Use multiple algorithms to make strong predictive models *Enjoy a comprehensive treatment of boosting methods *Supplement methods with statistical tests, such as ROC *Walk through data structures in classification, regression, survival, and time series data *Use the supplied R code to implement ensemble methods *Learn stacking method to combine heterogeneous machine learning models Who this book is for This book is for you if you are a data scientist or machine learning developer who wants to implement machine learning techniques by building ensemble models with the power of R. You will learn how to combine different machine learning algorithms to perform efficient data processing. Basic knowledge of machine learning techniques and programming knowledge of R would be an added advantage.

Make the most of Angular by leveraging design patterns and best practices to build stable and high performing apps Key Features *Get to grips with the benefits and applicability of using different design patterns in Angular with the help of real-world examples *Identify and prevent common problems, programming errors, and anti-patterns *Packed with easy-to-follow examples that can be used to create reusable code and extensible designs Book Description This book is an insightful journey through the most valuable design patterns, and it will provide clear guidance on how to use them effectively in Angular. You will explore some of the best ways to work with Angular and how to use it to meet the stability and performance required in today's web development world. You’ll get to know some Angular best practices to improve your productivity and the code base of your application. We will take you on a journey through Angular designs for the real world, using a combination of case studies, design patterns to follow, and anti-patterns to avoid. By the end of the book, you will understand the various features of Angular, and will be able to apply well-known, industry-proven design patterns in your work. What you will learn *Understand Angular design patterns and anti-patterns *Implement the most useful GoF patterns for Angular *Explore some of the most famous navigational patterns for Angular *Get to know and implement stability patterns *Explore and implement operations patterns *Explore the official best practices for Angular *Monitor and improve the performance of Angular applications Who this book is for If you want to increase your understanding of Angular and apply it to real-life application development, then this book is for you.

Plan, track, and release great software Key Features * Learn to create reports and dashboard for effective project management * Implement your development strategy in JIRA. * Practices to help you manage the issues in the development team Book Description As teams scale in size, project management can get very complicated. One of the best tools to deal with this kind of problem is JIRA. This book will start by organizing your project requirements and the principles of Agile development to get you started. You will then be introduced to set up a JIRA account and the JIRA ecosystem to help you implement a dashboard for your team's work and issues. You will learn how to manage any issues and bugs that might emerge in the development stage. Going ahead, the book will help you build reports and use them to plan the releases based on the study of the reports. Towards the end, you will come across working with the gathered data and create a dashboard that helps you track the project's development. What you will learn * Create your first project (and manage existing projects) in JIRA * Manage your board view and backlogs in JIRA * Run a Scrum Sprint project in JIRA * Create reports (including topic-based reports) * Forecast using versions * Search for issues with JIRA Query Language (JQL) * Execute bulk changes to issues * Create custom filters, dashboards, and widgets * Create epics, stories, bugs, and tasks Who this book is for This book is for administrators who wants to apply the Agile approach to managing the issues, bugs, and releases in their software development projects using JIRA.

Use an open source firewall and features such as failover, load balancer, OpenVPN, IPSec, and Squid to protect your network Key Features *Explore pfSense, a trusted open source network security solution *Configure pfSense as a firewall and create and manage firewall rules *Test pfSense for failover and load balancing across multiple WAN connections Book Description While connected to the internet, you’re a potential target for an array of cyber threats, such as hackers, keyloggers, and Trojans that attack through unpatched security holes. A firewall works as a barrier (or ‘shield’) between your computer and cyberspace. pfSense is highly versatile firewall software. With thousands of enterprises using pfSense, it is fast becoming the world's most trusted open source network security solution. Network Security with pfSense begins with an introduction to pfSense, where you will gain an understanding of what pfSense is, its key features, and advantages. Next, you will learn how to configure pfSense as a firewall and create and manage firewall rules. As you make your way through the chapters, you will test pfSense for failover and load balancing across multiple wide area network (WAN) connections. You will then configure pfSense with OpenVPN for secure remote connectivity and implement IPsec VPN tunnels with pfSense. In the concluding chapters, you’ll understand how to configure and integrate pfSense as a Squid proxy server. By the end of this book, you will be able to leverage the power of pfSense to build a secure network. What you will learn *Understand what pfSense is, its key features, and advantages *Configure pfSense as a firewall *Set up pfSense for failover and load balancing *Connect clients through an OpenVPN client *Configure an IPsec VPN tunnel with pfSense *Integrate the Squid proxy into pfSense Who this book is for Network Security with pfSense is for IT administrators, security administrators, technical architects, chief experience officers, and individuals who own a home or small office network and want to secure it.

Over 60 recipes to help you design interactive, smart, and cross-platform GUI applications Key Features * Get succinct QT solutions to pressing GUI programming problems in Python * Learn how to effectively implement reactive programming * Build customized applications that are robust and reliable Book Description PyQt is one of the best cross-platform interface toolkits currently available; it's stable, mature, and completely native. If you want control over all aspects of UI elements, PyQt is what you need. This book will guide you through every concept necessary to create fully functional GUI applications using PyQt, with only a few lines of code. As you expand your GUI using more widgets, you will cover networks, databases, and graphical libraries that greatly enhance its functionality. Next, the book guides you in using Qt Designer to design user interfaces and implementing and testing dialogs, events, the clipboard, and drag and drop functionality to customize your GUI. You will learn a variety of topics, such as look and feel customization, GUI animation, graphics rendering, implementing Google Maps, and more. Lastly, the book takes you through how Qt5 can help you to create cross-platform apps that are compatible with Android and iOS. You will be able to develop functional and appealing software using PyQt through interesting and fun recipes that will expand your knowledge of GUIs What you will learn * Use basic Qt components, such as a radio button, combo box, and sliders * Use QSpinBox and sliders to handle different signals generated on mouse clicks * Work with different Qt layouts to meet user interface requirements * Create custom widgets and set up customizations in your GUI * Perform asynchronous I/O operations and thread handling in the Python GUI * Employ network concepts, internet browsing, and Google Maps in UI * Use graphics rendering and implement animation in your GUI * Make your GUI application compatible with Android and iOS devices Who this book is for If you’re an intermediate Python programmer wishing to enhance your coding skills by writing powerful GUIs in Python using PyQT, this is the book for you.

Learn the fundamentals of Java EE 8 APIs to build effective web services Key Features *Design modern and stylish web services with Java EE APIs *Secure your web services with JSON Web Tokens *Explore the advanced concepts of RESTful web services and the JAX-RS API Book Description Java Enterprise Edition is one of the leading application programming platforms for enterprise Java development. With Java EE 8 finally released and the first application servers now available, it is time to take a closer look at how to develop modern and lightweight web services with the latest API additions and improvements. Building RESTful Web Services with Java EE 8 is a comprehensive guide that will show you how to develop state-of-the-art RESTful web services with the latest Java EE 8 APIs. You will begin with an overview of Java EE 8 and the latest API additions and improvements. You will then delve into the details of implementing synchronous RESTful web services and clients with JAX-RS. Next up, you will learn about the specifics of data binding and content marshalling using the JSON-B 1.0 and JSON-P 1.1 APIs. This book also guides you in leveraging the power of asynchronous APIs on the server and client side, and you will learn to use server-sent events (SSEs) for push communication. The final section covers advanced web service topics such as validation, JWT security, and diagnosability. By the end of this book, you will have implemented several working web services and have a thorough understanding of the Java EE 8 APIs required for lightweight web service development. What you will learn *Dive into the latest Java EE 8 APIs relevant for developing web services *Use the new JSON-B APIs for easy data binding *Understand how JSON-P API can be used for flexible processing *Implement synchronous and asynchronous JAX-RS clients *Use server-sent events to implement server-side code *Secure Java EE 8 web services with JSON Web Tokens Who this book is for If you're a Java developer who wants to learn how to implement web services using the latest Java EE 8 APIs, this book is for you. Though no prior knowledge of Java EE 8 is required, experience with a previous Java EE version will be beneficial.

Architect and design data-intensive applications and, in the process, learn how to collect, process, store, govern, and expose data for a variety of use cases Key Features *Integrate the data-intensive approach into your application architecture *Create a robust application layout with effective messaging and data querying architecture *Enable smooth data flow and make the data of your application intensive and fast Book Description Are you an architect or a developer who looks at your own applications gingerly while browsing through Facebook and applauding it silently for its data-intensive, yet ?uent and efficient, behaviour? This book is your gateway to build smart data-intensive systems by incorporating the core data-intensive architectural principles, patterns, and techniques directly into your application architecture. This book starts by taking you through the primary design challenges involved with architecting data-intensive applications. You will learn how to implement data curation and data dissemination, depending on the volume of your data. You will then implement your application architecture one step at a time. You will get to grips with implementing the correct message delivery protocols and creating a data layer that doesn’t fail when running high traffic. This book will show you how you can divide your application into layers, each of which adheres to the single responsibility principle. By the end of this book, you will learn to streamline your thoughts and make the right choice in terms of technologies and architectural principles based on the problem at hand. What you will learn *Understand how to envision a data-intensive system *Identify and compare the non-functional requirements of a data collection component *Understand patterns involving data processing, as well as technologies that help to speed up the development of data processing systems *Understand how to implement Data Governance policies at design time using various Open Source Tools *Recognize the anti-patterns to avoid while designing a data store for applications *Understand the different data dissemination technologies available to query the data in an efficient manner *Implement a simple data governance policy that can be extended using Apache Falcon Who this book is for This book is for developers and data architects who have to code, test, deploy, and/or maintain large-scale, high data volume applications. It is also useful for system architects who need to understand various non-functional aspects revolving around Data Intensive Systems.

Implement intelligent agents using PyTorch to solve classic AI problems, play console games like Atari, and perform tasks such as autonomous driving using the CARLA driving simulator Key Features *Explore the OpenAI Gym toolkit and interface to use over 700 learning tasks *Implement agents to solve simple to complex AI problems *Study learning environments and discover how to create your own Book Description Many real-world problems can be broken down into tasks that require a series of decisions to be made or actions to be taken. The ability to solve such tasks without a machine being programmed requires a machine to be artificially intelligent and capable of learning to adapt. This book is an easy-to-follow guide to implementing learning algorithms for machine software agents in order to solve discrete or continuous sequential decision making and control tasks. Hands-On Intelligent Agents with OpenAI Gym takes you through the process of building intelligent agent algorithms using deep reinforcement learning starting from the implementation of the building blocks for configuring, training, logging, visualizing, testing, and monitoring the agent. You will walk through the process of building intelligent agents from scratch to perform a variety of tasks. In the closing chapters, the book provides an overview of the latest learning environments and learning algorithms, along with pointers to more resources that will help you take your deep reinforcement learning skills to the next level. What you will learn *Explore intelligent agents and learning environments *Understand the basics of RL and deep RL *Get started with OpenAI Gym and PyTorch for deep reinforcement learning *Discover deep Q learning agents to solve discrete optimal control tasks *Create custom learning environments for real-world problems *Apply a deep actor-critic agent to drive a car autonomously in CARLA *Use the latest learning environments and algorithms to upgrade your intelligent agent development skills Who this book is for If you’re a student, game/machine learning developer, or AI enthusiast looking to get started with building intelligent agents and algorithms to solve a variety of problems with the OpenAI Gym interface, this book is for you. You will also find this book useful if you want to learn how to build deep reinforcement learning-based agents to solve problems in your domain of interest. Though the book covers all the basic concepts that you need to know, some working knowledge of Python programming language will help you get the most out of it.

Build, design, and style beautiful and informative applications on the Salesforce Lightning platform Key Features *Build and Test Lightning Components that enhance application usability and adaptability *Apply Security Best Practices to your Custom Lightning Components *Design Lightning Components for Salesforce UIs such as Lightning Pages, Salesforce 1 Application, Communities, and more. Book Description Built on the Salesforce App Cloud, the new Salesforce Lightning Experience combines three major components: Lightning Design System, Lightning App Builder, and Lightning Components, to provide an enhanced user experience. This book will enable you to quickly create modern, enterprise apps with Lightning Component Framework. You will start by building simple Lightning Components and understanding the Lightning Components architecture. The chapters cover the basics of Lightning Component Framework semantics and syntax, the security features provided by Locker Service, and use of third-party libraries inside Lightning Components. The later chapters focus on debugging, performance tuning, testing using Lightning Testing Services, and how to publish Lightning Components on Salesforce AppExchange. What you will learn *Understand Lightning Components architecture *Learn Locker security best practices *Debug and Improve performance of your Lightning Components *Use third-party libraries along with Lightning Component Framework *Learn how to publish Lightning Components on AppExchange *Use Lightning Out to take your Lightning Components outside the Salesforce platform Who this book is for This book is for Salesforce developers or developers from other platforms who are familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and want to build and test Salesforce Lightning components. No knowledge of Salesforce Lightning is required.

If your application source code is overly verbose, it can be a nightmare to maintain. Write concise and expressive, type-safe code in an environment that lets you build for the JVM, browser, and more. Key Features *Expert guidance that shows you to efficiently use both object-oriented and functional programming techniques *Understand functional programming libraries, such as Cats and Scalaz, and use them to augment your Scala development *Perfectly balances theory and hands-on exercises, assessments, and activities Book Description This book teaches you how to build and contribute to Scala programs, recognizing common patterns and techniques used with the language. You’ll learn how to write concise, functional code with Scala. After an introduction to core concepts, syntax, and writing example applications with scalac, you’ll learn about the Scala Collections API and how the language handles type safety via static types out-of-the-box. You’ll then learn about advanced functional programming patterns, and how you can write your own Domain Specific Languages (DSLs). By the end of the book, you’ll be equipped with the skills you need to successfully build smart, efficient applications in Scala that can be compiled to the JVM. What you will learn *Understand the key language syntax and core concepts for application development *Master the type system to create scalable type-safe applications while cutting down your time spent debugging *Understand how you can work with advanced data structures via built-in features such as the Collections library *Use classes, objects, and traits to transform a trivial chatbot program into a useful assistant *Understand what are pure functions, immutability, and higher-order functions *Recognize and implement popular functional programming design patterns Who this book is for This is an ideal book for developers who are looking to learn Scala, and is particularly well suited for Java developers looking to migrate across to Scala for application development on the JVM.

Build smart applications by implementing real-world artificial intelligence projects Key Features *Explore a variety of AI projects with Python *Get well-versed with different types of neural networks and popular deep learning algorithms *Leverage popular Python deep learning libraries for your AI projects Book Description Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the newest technology that’s being employed among varied businesses, industries, and sectors. Python Artificial Intelligence Projects for Beginners demonstrates AI projects in Python, covering modern techniques that make up the world of Artificial Intelligence. This book begins with helping you to build your first prediction model using the popular Python library, scikit-learn. You will understand how to build a classifier using an effective machine learning technique, random forest, and decision trees. With exciting projects on predicting bird species, analyzing student performance data, song genre identification, and spam detection, you will learn the fundamentals and various algorithms and techniques that foster the development of these smart applications. In the concluding chapters, you will also understand deep learning and neural network mechanisms through these projects with the help of the Keras library. By the end of this book, you will be confident in building your own AI projects with Python and be ready to take on more advanced projects as you progress What you will learn *Build a prediction model using decision trees and random forest *Use neural networks, decision trees, and random forests for classification *Detect YouTube comment spam with a bag-of-words and random forests *Identify handwritten mathematical symbols with convolutional neural networks *Revise the bird species identifier to use images *Learn to detect positive and negative sentiment in user reviews Who this book is for Python Artificial Intelligence Projects for Beginners is for Python developers who want to take their first step into the world of Artificial Intelligence using easy-to-follow projects. Basic working knowledge of Python programming is expected so that you’re able to play around with code

Real-world examples of cross-browser, mobile, and data-driven testing with all the latest features of Selenium WebDriver 3 Key Features *Unlock the full potential of Selenium to test your web applications *Use Selenium Grid for faster, parallel running, and cross-browser testing *Test iOS and Android Apps with Appium Book Description Selenium WebDriver is an open source automation tool implemented through a browser-specific driver, which sends commands to a browser and retrieves results. The latest version of Selenium 3 brings with it a lot of new features that change the way you use and setup Selenium WebDriver. This book covers all those features along with the source code, including a demo website that allows you to work with an HMTL5 application and other examples throughout the book. Selenium WebDriver 3 Practical Guide will walk you through the various APIs of Selenium WebDriver, which are used in automation tests, followed by a discussion of the various WebDriver implementations available. You will learn to strategize and handle rich web UI using advanced WebDriver API along with real-time challenges faced in WebDriver and solutions to handle them. You will discover different types and domains of testing such as cross-browser testing, load testing, and mobile testing with Selenium. Finally, you will also be introduced to data-driven testing using TestNG to create your own automation framework. By the end of this book, you will be able to select any web application and automate it the way you want. What you will learn *Understand what Selenium 3 is and how is has been improved than its predecessor *Use different mobile and desktop browser platforms with Selenium 3 *Perform advanced actions, such as drag-and-drop and action builders on web page *Learn to use Java 8 API and Selenium 3 together *Explore remote WebDriver and discover how to use it *Perform cross browser and distributed testing with Selenium Grid *Use Actions API for performing various keyboard and mouse actions Who this book is for Selenium WebDriver 3 Practical Guide is for software quality assurance/testing professionals, software project managers, or software developers interested in using Selenium for testing their applications. Prior programming experience in Java is necessary.

A new-look picture book featuring the irrepressible little Twirlywoos and their elusive sidekick, Peekaboo.Join the Twirlywoos on their latest adventure as they explore the concept of ‘collecting’. First the Twirlywoos visit a hen yard where they see some children collecting eggs, and help them finish the job. Then they find lots of other examples of collecting in the outside world, before coming back to the Big Red Boat to discover a collection of brightly-coloured pebbles belonging to Peekaboo, which they have fun dividing into different colours.

‘A stylish and sophisticated thriller. With bold, clever writing, this is an assured debut and very welcome addition to the genre.’ – Aviva Dautch A teenage girl, missing in Paris. A young woman, searching for her mother. A female PI on a mission. When police drop the case on missing Mathilde Benazet, renegade PI Veronique Cotillard steps in to prove that she can succeed where police inspector Guillaume Leveque failed… Alice Weston’s father had always told her that her mother died in childbirth – but now, Alice has proof that her mother may be alive and living in Paris. When her father dies, Alice decides to take matters into her own hands: it’s time to uncover her family’s long-buried secrets… at any cost. As Alice and Veronique’s lives intertwine, and the city of Paris prepares to celebrate Bastille Day in the shadows of a gathering storm, both women must face the ghosts of their past – and the monsters in the present. What reviewers are saying about THE GIRL IN THE SHADOWS: ‘Fast paced and kept me on my toes. I couldn't wait to read what was going to happen next. Veronique is a strong female detective which is really refreshing.’ – Dash Fan, Blogger ‘This is the kind of book that you desperately hope will have a sequel; all of these characters (especially Veronique, Christophe and Guillaume) have such depth that it would be a shame not to meet them again in the future.’ – Lynne Frappier, NetGalley reviewer ‘Katherine Debona is a fine writer. This book is both well written and plotted.’ – Joyce Fox, NetGalley reviewer ‘A girl is missing in this complex family drama that is both heart wrenching and infuriating … Keep the tissues handy! The writer's style is very readable. I loved this book.’ – Judy Dowell, NetGalley reviewer ‘A complex and intricately woven mystery.’ – Rosemary Smith, NetGalley reviewer ‘Kept me guessing as there were twists and turns galore, with a surprising ending.’ – Philip White, NetGalley reviewer ‘I was drawn in from the onset.’ – Susan Anne Burton, NetGalley reviewer

From the bestselling author of A Winter’s Fairytale and The Christmas Project Come home for Christmas to the Best Little Christmas Shop – the snowiest, cosiest place you can be! Perfect for fans of Sarah Morgan and Sue Moorcroft Home for the holidays… Icing gingerbread men, arranging handmade toys and making up countless Christmas wreaths in her family’s cosy little Christmas shop isn’t usually globe-trotter Lexi’s idea of fun. But it’s all that’s keeping her mind off romance. And, with a broken engagement under her belt, she’s planning to stay well clear of that for the foreseeable future…until gorgeous single dad Cal Martin walks through the door! Christmas takes on a whole new meaning as Lexi begins to see it through Cal’s adorable five-year-old son’s eyes. But, finding herself getting dangerously close to the mistletoe with Cal, Lexi knows she needs to back off. She’s sworn off love, and little George needs a stability she can’t provide. One day she’ll decide whether to settle down again – just not yet. But the best little Christmas shop in this sleepy, snow-covered village has another surprise in store… Praise for Maxine Morrey… ’A delightful wintery tale full to the brim with drama, passion and heartwarming cheer.’ – Gem~Bee on The Christmas Project ‘As a festive love story, this book has it all: romance, an engaging heroine you feel you could be friends with, a handsome caring hero…lots of warmth and humour and plenty of snow.’ PortobelloBookBlog ‘This book was a real wintry treat, with all the snow nicely contrasting with all the warmth the story exuded. I couldn’t help but find myself laughing away or sighing with happiness and I’m so excited to read more from Maxine if this is the kind of feel-good novel she’s capable of. I just want to read it all over again and probably will do in Christmases to come.’ Sophie at Reviewed the Book ‘This is a beautiful fairytale for adults, set in and around Christmas, with a healthy helping of romance…this story draws you in and won't let you go. It is beautifully written, very easy and pleasurable to read.’ Rachel’s Random Reads ‘Fantastic strong characters, along with beautifully descriptive writing enabled me to immerse myself into their world and become a fly on the wall. I love books that transport me to Christmas and make me feel all festive and warm and Winter’s Fairytale certainly delivered for me.’ Jill Loves to Read

Explore GIS processing and learn to work with various tools and libraries in Python. About This Book ? Analyze and process geospatial data using Python libraries such as; Anaconda, GeoPandas ? Leverage new ArcGIS API to process geospatial data for the cloud. ? Explore various Python geospatial web and machine learning frameworks. Who This Book Is For The audience for this book includes students, developers, and geospatial professionals who need a reference book that covers GIS data management, analysis, and automation techniques with code libraries built in Python 3. What You Will Learn ? Manage code libraries and abstract geospatial analysis techniques using Python 3. ? Explore popular code libraries that perform specific tasks for geospatial analysis. ? Utilize code libraries for data conversion, data management, web maps, and REST API creation. ? Learn techniques related to processing geospatial data in the cloud. ? Leverage features of Python 3 with geospatial databases such as PostGIS, SQL Server, and SpatiaLite. In Detail Python comes with a host of open source libraries and tools that help you work on professional geoprocessing tasks without investing in expensive tools. This book will introduce Python developers, both new and experienced, to a variety of new code libraries that have been developed to perform geospatial analysis, statistical analysis, and data management. This book will use examples and code snippets that will help explain how Python 3 differs from Python 2, and how these new code libraries can be used to solve age-old problems in geospatial analysis. You will begin by understanding what geoprocessing is and explore the tools and libraries that Python 3 offers. You will then learn to use Python code libraries to read and write geospatial data. You will then learn to perform geospatial queries within databases and learn PyQGIS to automate analysis within the QGIS mapping suite. Moving forward, you will explore the newly released ArcGIS API for Python and ArcGIS Online to perform geospatial analysis and create ArcGIS Online web maps. Further, you will deep dive into Python Geospatial web frameworks and learn to create a geospatial REST API. Style and approach The book takes a practical, example-driven approach to teach you GIS analysis and automation techniques with Python 3.

Practical, hands-on solutions in Python to overcome any problem in Machine Learning About This Book ? Master the advanced concepts, methodologies, and use cases of machine learning ? Build ML applications for analytics, NLP and computer vision domains ? Solve the most common problems in building machine learning models Who This Book Is For This book is for the intermediate users such as machine learning engineers, data engineers, data scientists, and more, who want to solve simple to complex machine learning problems in their day-to-day work and build powerful and efficient machine learning models. A basic understanding of the machine learning concepts and some experience with Python programming is all you need to get started with this book. What You Will Learn ? Select the right algorithm to derive the best solution in ML domains ? Perform predictive analysis effciently using ML algorithms ? Predict stock prices using the stock index value ? Perform customer analytics for an e-commerce platform ? Build recommendation engines for various domains ? Build NLP applications for the health domain ? Build language generation applications using different NLP techniques ? Build computer vision applications such as facial emotion recognition In Detail Machine learning (ML) helps you find hidden insights from your data without the need for explicit programming. This book is your key to solving any kind of ML problem you might come across in your job. You’ll encounter a set of simple to complex problems while building ML models, and you'll not only resolve these problems, but you’ll also learn how to build projects based on each problem, with a practical approach and easy-to-follow examples. The book includes a wide range of applications: from analytics and NLP, to computer vision domains. Some of the applications you will be working on include stock price prediction, a recommendation engine, building a chat-bot, a facial expression recognition system, and many more. The problem examples we cover include identifying the right algorithm for your dataset and use cases, creating and labeling datasets, getting enough clean data to carry out processing, identifying outliers, overftting datasets, hyperparameter tuning, and more. Here, you'll also learn to make more timely and accurate predictions. In addition, you'll deal with more advanced use cases, such as building a gaming bot, building an extractive summarization tool for medical documents, and you'll also tackle the problems faced while building an ML model. By the end of this book, you'll be able to fine-tune your models as per your needs to deliver maximum productivity. Style and approach This book is a step-by-step guide on how to develop machine learning applications for various domains. Each chapter of this book contains the practical guide on how to build specific machine learning applications from its base-line approach to the best possible approach. Basic necessary concepts, conman mistakes for every approach and optimization techniques are discussed for each application.

Get certified as an Azure architect by acing the 70-535 Architecting Microsoft Solutions (70-535) exam using this comprehensive guide with full coverage of the exam objectives About This Book ? Learn to successfully design and architect powerful solutions on the Azure Cloud platform ? Enhance your skills with mock tests and practice questions ? A detailed certification guide that will help you ace the 70-535 exam with confidence Who This Book Is For This book is for architects and experienced developers, who are gearing up for the 70-535 exam. Technical architects interested in learning more about designing Cloud solutions will also find this book useful. What You Will Learn ? Use Azure Virtual Machines to design effective VM deployments ? Implement architecture styles, like serverless computing and microservices ? Secure your data using different security features and design effective security strategies ? Design Azure storage solutions using various storage features ? Create identity management solutions for your applications and resources ? Architect state-of-the-art solutions using Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and Azure Media Services ? Use different automation solutions that are incorporated in the Azure platform In Detail Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions: Exam Guide 70-535 will get Azure architects and developers up-to-date with the latest updates on Azure from an architecture and design perspective. The book includes all the topics that are still relevant from the previous 70-534 exam, and is updated with latest topics covered, including Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and architecture styles. This exam guide is divided into six parts, where the first part will give you a good understanding of how to design a compute infrastructure. It also dives into designing networking and data implementations. You will learn about designing solutions for Platform Service and operations. Next, you will be able to secure your resources and data, as well as design a mechanism for governance and policies. You will also understand the objective of designing solutions for Platform Services, by covering Artificial Intelligence, IoT, media services, and messaging solution concepts. Finally, you will cover the designing for operations objective. This objective covers application and platform monitoring, as well as designing alerting strategies and operations automation strategies. By the end of the book, you'll have met all of the exam objectives, and will have all the information you need to ace the 70-535 exam. You will also have become an expert in designing solutions on Microsoft Azure. Style and approach This book offers clear and crisp explanations of the exam objectives that will help you with all the information needed to pass the 70-535 exam. The detail oriented approach will make you an expert on designing solutions on Microsoft Azure.