The Sunday Times Number 1 Bestseller ‘A fabulous story, superbly told … cannot be bettered’ Max Hastings ‘Some battles change nothing. Waterloo changed almost everything.’ On the 18th June 1815 the armies of France, Britain and Prussia descended upon a quiet valley south of Brussels. In the previous three days the French army had beaten the British at Quatre-Bras and the Prussians at Ligny. The Allies were in retreat. The blood-soaked battle of Waterloo would become a landmark in European history, to be examined over and again, not least because until the evening of the 18th, the French army was close to prevailing on the battlefield. Now, brought to life by the celebrated novelist Bernard Cornwell, this is the chronicle of the four days leading up to the actual battle and a thrilling hour-by-hour account of that fateful day. In his first work of non-fiction, Cornwell combines his storytelling skills with a meticulously researched history to give a riveting account of every dramatic moment, from Napoleon’s escape from Elba to the smoke and gore of the battlefields. Through letters and diaries he also sheds new light on the private thoughts of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, as well as the ordinary officers and soldiers. Published to coincide with the bicentenary in 2015, Waterloo is a tense and gripping story of heroism and tragedy – and of the final battle that determined the fate of Europe.

Build key business relationships Collins Small Talk gives you the confidence to start a conversation and transition into bigger conversation topics so that you are able to build relationships, develop business partnerships and be successful in business. Learn the language to: ? Meet people for the first time ? Greet people in subsequent meetings ? Show and receive hospitality ? Deal with remote communication ? End a conversation The book includes information on best practice and key phrases for students to refer to and practise saying out loud using online audio. Online audio also includes good and bad examples of authentic recordings of small talk for learners to listen to and assess. Suitable for students whose level of English is Intermediate / CEF level B1 and higher. Small Talk is part of Collins’ English for Business range of materials to help business people who need to use English frequently in their work. It is designed for people who are about to or already work for a foreign or multinational company, deal with overseas customers or travel for business. Other titles in the Collins English for Business range: Reading ? Writing ? Listening ? Speaking ? Key Business Skills ? Business Grammar & Practice ? Business Vocabulary in Practice ? Effective International Business Communication

The new Hercule Poirot novel – another brilliant murder mystery that can only be solved by the eponymous Belgian detective and his ‘little grey cells’. Since the publication of her first book in 1920, Agatha Christie wrote 33 novels, two plays and more than 50 short stories featuring Hercule Poirot. Now, for the first time ever, the guardians of her legacy have approved a brand new novel featuring Dame Agatha's most beloved creation. Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffee house is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified, but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at the fashionable Bloxham Hotel have been murdered, a cufflink placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim… In the hands of internationally bestselling author Sophie Hannah, Poirot plunges into a mystery set in 1920s London – a diabolically clever puzzle that can only be solved by the talented Belgian detective and his ‘little grey cells’.

The No 1 Swedish thriller by the author of The Hypnotist and The Fire Witness He's Sweden's most prolific serial killer. Jurek Walter is serving a life sentence. Kept in solitary confinement, he is still considered extremely dangerous by psychiatric staff. He'll lull you into a sense of calm. Mikael knows him as “the sandman”. Seven years ago, he was taken from his bed along with his sister. They are both presumed dead. He has one target left. When Mikael is discovered on a railway line, close to death, the hunt begins for his sister. To get to the truth, Detective Inspector Joona Linna will need to get closer than ever to the man who stripped him of a family; the man who wants Linna dead.

The fascinating sequel to THE GIVER which inspired the dystopian genre and is soon to be a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges, Katie Holmes and Taylor Swift.

The fascinating third companion novel to THE GIVER which inspired the dystopian genre and is soon to be a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges, Katie Holmes and Taylor Swift.

The highly-acclaimed sequel to H G Wells’s The Time Machine, from the heir to Arthur C. Clarke. Written to celebrate the centenary of the publication of H G Wells’s classic story The Time Machine, Stephen Baxter’s stunning sequel is an outstanding work of imaginative fiction. The Time Traveller has abandoned his charming and helpless Eloi friend Weena to the cannibal appetites of the Morlocks, the devolved race of future humans from whom he was forced to flee. He promptly embarks on a second journey to the year AD 802,701, pledged to rescue Weena. He never arrives! The future was changed by his presence… and will be changed again. Hurled towards infinity, the Traveller must resolve the paradoxes building around him in a dazzling temporal journey of discovery. He must achieve the impossible if Weena is to be saved.

Ben Hogan’s The Modern Fundamentals of Golf is the best-selling sports book ever, with over six million copies sold worldwide. This sequel to the original book offers previously unpublished photographs and the expert commentary of David Leadbetter. First published in 1957, Ben Hogan’s Modern Fundamentals was judged by Golf Digest in 1999 to be the best instructional book ever written. In this sequel all the illustrations from the previous book have been expertly reworked, while also included are 80 previously unseen photographs of Hogan, that were shot for the original book but never published. In addition to these exclusive photos, David Leadbetter, the most heralded golf instructor of the modern day, lends his expertise in the form of a revealing commentary. Famous for his work with Greg Norman, Nick Faldo and Ernie Els, Leadbetter analyses Hogan’s swing and explains what you can learn from the old master. The Fundamentals of Hogan is destined to become a golf classic. In one package you have the restoration of the number one golf book of all time, by the most heralded teacher of the modern day, about a man who had the greatest golf swing of all time. The Fundamentals of Hogan will surely be the instructional book for the new Millennium.

From the critically acclaimed author of THE BROKEN EMPIRE series comes a brilliant new epic fantasy series, THE RED QUEEN’S WAR.

WINNER OF THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTIONNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR FICTION A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II

From the winner of the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2012 for Best Thriller of the Year comes a gripping and suspenseful new spy novel. Perfect for fans of John le Carré, Charles Cumming is ‘the master of the modern spy thriller’ (Mail on Sunday) MI6's Head of Station in Turkey is killed in a mysterious plane crash. Amelia Levene, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, wants the incident investigated – quickly and quietly. The only man she can trust is Thomas Kell, a disgraced spy searching for redemption. Arriving in Istanbul, Kell discovers that MI6 operations in the region have been fatally compromised: a traitor inside Western Intelligence threatens not just the Special Relationship, but the security of the entire Middle East. Kell’s search for the mole takes him from London, to Greece, and into Eastern Europe. But when Kell is betrayed by those closest to him, the stakes become personal. He will do anything to see this operation through – including putting himself, and others, in the line of fire…

Pulitzer-winning, scintillating studies in yearning and exile from a Bengali Bostonian woman of immense promise. A couple exchange unprecedented confessions during nightly blackouts in their Boston apartment as they struggle to cope with a heartbreaking loss; a student arrives in new lodgings in a mystifying new land and, while he awaits the arrival of his arranged-marriage wife from Bengal, he finds his first bearings with the aid of the curious evening rituals that his centenarian landlady orchestrates; a schoolboy looks on while his childminder finds that the smallest dislocation can unbalance her new American life all too easily and send her spiralling into nostalgia for her homeland… Jhumpa Lahiri’s prose is beautifully measured, subtle and sober, and she is a writer who leaves a lot unsaid, but this work is rich in observational detail, evocative of the yearnings of the exile (mostly Indians in Boston here), and full of emotional pull and reverberation.

This practical and inspirational guide, in a handy sketchbook format, is aimed at the practised beginner and shows how to achieve successful watercolour paintings of people in just 30 minutes – ideal for the busy amateur artist who doesn't have much time to paint. Many people think they don't have enough time to paint, but in this attractive guide Trevor Waugh encourages quick and simple painting. By working with just a few materials and focusing on the key techniques it is possible to achieve successful, realistic paintings of people in no more than half an hour. And for those artists who already have a little painting experience, learning to work more quickly enables them to free up their style and paint more spontaneously. All the key topics are covered, from watercolour techniques, colour and tone to learning about proportions, simple silhouettes, facial features, and backgrounds.

Design and implement successful private clouds with OpenStack About This Book Explore the various design choices available for cloud architects within an OpenStack deployment Craft an OpenStack architecture and deployment pipeline to meet the unique needs of your organization Create a product roadmap for Infrastructure as a Service in your organization using this hands-on guide Who This Book Is For This book is written especially for those who will design OpenStack clouds and lead their implementation. These people are typically cloud architects, but may also be in product management, systems engineering, or enterprise architecture. What You Will Learn Familiarize yourself with the components of OpenStack Build an increasingly complex OpenStack lab deployment Write compelling documentation for the architecture teams within your organization Apply Agile configuration management techniques to deploy OpenStack Integrate OpenStack with your organization's identity management, provisioning, and billing systems Configure a robust virtual environment for users to interact with Use enterprise security guidelines for your OpenStack deployment Create a product roadmap that delivers functionality quickly to the users of your platform In Detail Over the last five years, hundreds of organizations have successfully implemented Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms based on OpenStack. The huge amount of investment from these organizations, industry giants such as IBM and HP, as well as open source leaders such as Red Hat have led analysts to label OpenStack as the most important open source technology since the Linux operating system. Because of its ambitious scope, OpenStack is a complex and fast-evolving open source project that requires a diverse skill-set to design and implement it. This guide leads you through each of the major decision points that you'll face while architecting an OpenStack private cloud for your organization. At each point, we offer you advice based on the experience we've gained from designing and leading successful OpenStack projects in a wide range of industries. Each chapter also includes lab material that gives you a chance to install and configure the technologies used to build production-quality OpenStack clouds. Most importantly, we focus on ensuring that your OpenStack project meets the needs of your organization, which will guarantee a successful rollout. Style and approach This is practical, hands-on guide to implementing OpenStack clouds, where each topic is illustrated with real-world examples and then the technical points are proven in the lab.

Over 50 practical and immediately applicable recipes to help you manage services in your enterprise environment efficiently About This Book Solve problems and challenges encountered while implementing or using ServiceNow in your organization Helps you build core administration, management, and maintenance skills to automate and orchestrate your IT environment Comes with recipes to improve the way you design and create automated workflows Who This Book Is For This book targets IT professionals and administrators who have some experience of working with ServiceNow already and are looking to solve regular or unique problems that surface when using ServiceNow. It’s advisable to have a basic level of administration experience with ServiceNow. Familiarity with JavaScript is assumed. What You Will Learn Grasp the basics, such as entering and navigation, required to implement ServiceNow Perform core configuration and management tasks Use the ServiceNow plugins to manage development Build and publish custom applications for service management Design data-driven apps to connect with outside worlds by getting into Client and server *ing Configure alerts and notifications and understand e-mail troubleshooting and watermarking Build and configure reports to set up your dashboard as per the requirement Create and configure workflow activities In Detail ServiceNow is the ideal platform for you to create enterprise-level applications, giving borh requesters and fulfillers better visibility and access to a process. With this title we’ll guide you through the world of ServiceNow, letting you take on the best the platform offers you with the least amount of hassle. Starting with the core configuration and management tasks, this book will help you build data-driven apps and it will also explore development best practices. You will learn to set up email notifications for users and work with the database view for reporting. Next, the book will guide you through creating various tasks from the workflow and show you how to make the most of the workflow utilities available in ServiceNow. Finally, the book will drive you through the auditing and diagnosing aspects of ServiceNow. By the end of this book, you will acquire immediately applicable skills to rectify everyday problems encountered on the ServiceNow platform. Style and approach This book follows a recipe-based problem-solution approach to address and dispel challenges faced when implementing and using ServiceNow on a regular basis. It will act as a quick solution when trying to solve specific problems without having to read an exhaustive tutorial.

Leverage the full potential of Entity Framework with this collection of powerful and easy-to-follow recipes About This Book Learn how to use the new features of Entity Framework Core 1 Improve your queries by leveraging some of the advanced features Avoid common pitfalls Make the best of your .NET APIs by integrating with Entity Framework Who This Book Is For This book is for .NET developers who work with relational databases on a daily basis and understand the basics of Entity Framework, but now want to use it in a more efficient manner. You are expected to have some prior knowledge of Entity Framework. What You Will Learn Master the technique of using sequence key generators Validate groups of entities that are to be saved / updated Improve MVC applications that cover applications developed using ASP.NET MVC Core 1 Retrieve database information (table, column names, and so on) for entities Discover optimistic concurrency control and pessimistic concurrency control. Implement Multilatency on the data side of things. Enhance the performance and/or scalability of Entity Framework Core Explore and overcome the pitfalls of Entity Framework Core In Detail Entity Framework is a highly recommended Object Relation Mapping tool used to build complex systems. In order to survive in this growing market, the knowledge of a framework that helps provide easy access to databases, that is, Entity Framework has become a necessity. This book will provide .NET developers with this knowledge and guide them through working efficiently with data using Entity Framework Core. You will start off by learning how to efficiently use Entity Framework in practical situations. You will gain a deep understanding of mapping properties and find out how to handle validation in Entity Framework. The book will then explain how to work with transactions and stored procedures along with improving Entity Framework using query libraries. Moving on, you will learn to improve complex query scenarios and implement transaction and concurrency control. You will then be taught to improve and develop Entity Framework in complex business scenarios. With the concluding chapter on performance and scalability, this book will get you ready to use Entity Framework proficiently. Style and approach Filled with rich code-based examples, this book takes a recipe-based approach that will teach .NET developers to improve their understanding of Entity Framework and help them effortlessly apply this knowledge in everyday situations.

Learn how to use the power of Xcode to turn your next great app idea into a reality About This Book Learn the theory and tools behind app development using Swift 3 and Xcode 8 Build a fully featured iOS app, including a companion app for the Apple Watch Optimize, debug, and ultimately release your app on Test Flight and the App Store Who This Book Is For This book is intended for programmers looking to get a jump-start into the world of iOS development. Whether you’re a young student who has only spent a few months with Java, or a seasoned developer who has spent their career developing for a different platform, all that is expected is a basic understanding of a programming language such as C++, C#, or Java. What You Will Learn Understand the most important features of the Xcode IDE Write Swift 3 code for application data models and view controllers Prepare visual layouts for an iOS application using storyboards, size classes, and auto-layout Integrate many common technologies into an app, such as multi-touch gestures, CoreData, and notifications Build companion applications for the Apple Watch with watchOS 3 Debug applications using Xcode’s suite of debugging tools, and prevent bugs with unit testing Optimize an application using Xcode 8’s profiling tools and asset catalogs Distribute a beta application through TestFlight, and a finished application through the App Store In Detail Over the last few years, we’ve seen a breakthrough in mobile computing and the birth of world-changing mobile apps. With a reputation as one of the most user-centric and developer-friendly platforms, iOS is the best place to launch your next great app idea. As the official tool to create iOS applications, Xcode is chock full of features aimed at making a developer’s job easier, faster, and more fun. This book will take you from complete novice to a published app developer, and covers every step in between. You’ll learn the basics of iOS application development by taking a guided tour through the Xcode software and Swift programming language, before putting that knowledge to use by building your first app called “Snippets.” Over the course of the book, you will continue to explore the many facets of iOS development in Xcode by adding new features to your app, integrating gestures and sensors, and even creating an Apple Watch companion app. You’ll also learn how to use the debugging tools, write unit tests, and optimize and distribute your app. By the time you make it to the end of this book, you will have successfully built and published your first iOS application. Style and approach This easy-to-follow guide presents topics in a hands-on lecture format where concepts are introduced and explained, then used in an example as reinforcement. The first third of the book covers the separate building blocks of development, while the second two thirds cover the development of an app from start to finish.

Learn to build expert NLP and machine learning projects using NLTK and other Python libraries About This Book Break text down into its component parts for spelling correction, feature extraction, and phrase transformation Work through NLP concepts with simple and easy-to-follow programming recipes Gain insights into the current and budding research topics of NLP Who This Book Is For If you are an NLP or machine learning enthusiast and an intermediate Python programmer who wants to quickly master NLTK for natural language processing, then this Learning Path will do you a lot of good. Students of linguistics and semantic/sentiment analysis professionals will find it invaluable. What You Will Learn The scope of natural language complexity and how they are processed by machines Clean and wrangle text using tokenization and chunking to help you process data better Tokenize text into sentences and sentences into words Classify text and perform sentiment analysis Implement string matching algorithms and normalization techniques Understand and implement the concepts of information retrieval and text summarization Find out how to implement various NLP tasks in Python In Detail Natural Language Processing is a field of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence that deals with human-computer interaction. It provides a seamless interaction between computers and human beings and gives computers the ability to understand human speech with the help of machine learning. The number of human-computer interaction instances are increasing so it’s becoming imperative that computers comprehend all major natural languages. The first NLTK Essentials module is an introduction on how to build systems around NLP, with a focus on how to create a customized tokenizer and parser from scratch. You will learn essential concepts of NLP, be given practical insight into open source tool and libraries available in Python, shown how to analyze social media sites, and be given tools to deal with large scale text. This module also provides a workaround using some of the amazing capabilities of Python libraries such as NLTK, scikit-learn, pandas, and NumPy. The second Python 3 Text Processing with NLTK 3 Cookbook module teaches you the essential techniques of text and language processing with simple, straightforward examples. This includes organizing text corpora, creating your own custom corpus, text classification with a focus on sentiment analysis, and distributed text processing methods. The third Mastering Natural Language Processing with Python module will help you become an expert and assist you in creating your own NLP projects using NLTK. You will be guided through model development with machine learning tools, shown how to create training data, and given insight into the best practices for designing and building NLP-based applications using Python. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package and is designed to help you quickly learn text processing with Python and NLTK. It includes content from the following Packt products: NTLK essentials by Nitin Hardeniya Python 3 Text Processing with NLTK 3 Cookbook by Jacob Perkins Mastering Natural Language Processing with Python by Deepti Chopra, Nisheeth Joshi, and Iti Mathur Style and approach This comprehensive course creates a smooth learning path that teaches you how to get started with Natural Language Processing using Python and NLTK. You’ll learn to create effective NLP and machine learning projects using Python and NLTK.

Learn effective tools and techniques to separate big data into manageable and logical components for efficient data visualization About This Book This unique guide teaches you how to visualize your cluttered, huge amounts of big data with ease It is rich with ample options and solid use cases for big data visualization, and is a must-have book for your shelf Improve your decision-making by visualizing your big data the right way Who This Book Is For This book is for data analysts or those with a basic knowledge of big data analysis who want to learn big data visualization in order to make their analysis more useful. You need sufficient knowledge of big data platform tools such as Hadoop and also some experience with programming languages such as R. This book will be great for those who are familiar with conventional data visualizations and now want to widen their horizon by exploring big data visualizations. What You Will Learn Understand how basic analytics is affected by big data Deep dive into effective and efficient ways of visualizing big data Get to know various approaches (using various technologies) to address the challenges of visualizing big data Comprehend the concepts and models used to visualize big data Know how to visualize big data in real time and for different use cases Understand how to integrate popular dashboard visualization tools such as Splunk and Tableau Get to know the value and process of integrating visual big data with BI tools such as Tableau Make sense of the visualization options for big data, based upon the best suited visualization techniques for big data In Detail When it comes to big data, regular data visualization tools with basic features become insufficient. This book covers the concepts and models used to visualize big data, with a focus on efficient visualizations. This book works around big data visualizations and the challenges around visualizing big data and address characteristic challenges of visualizing like speed in accessing, understanding/adding context to, improving the quality of the data, displaying results, outliers, and so on. We focus on the most popular libraries to execute the tasks of big data visualization and explore "big data oriented" tools such as Hadoop and Tableau. We will show you how data changes with different variables and for different use cases with step-through topics such as: importing data to something like Hadoop, basic analytics. The choice of visualizations depends on the most suited techniques for big data, and we will show you the various options for big data visualizations based upon industry-proven techniques. You will then learn how to integrate popular visualization tools with graphing databases to see how huge amounts of certain data. Finally, you will find out how to display the integration of visual big data with BI using Cognos BI. Style and approach With the help of insightful real-world use cases, we’ll tackle data in the world of big data. The scalability and hugeness of the data makes big data visualizations different from normal data visualizations, and this book addresses all the difficulties encountered by professionals while visualizing their big data.

Learn to solve challenging data science problems by building powerful machine learning models using Python About This Book Understand which algorithms to use in a given context with the help of this exciting recipe-based guide This practical tutorial tackles real-world computing problems through a rigorous and effective approach Build state-of-the-art models and develop personalized recommendations to perform machine learning at scale Who This Book Is For This Learning Path is for Python programmers who are looking to use machine learning algorithms to create real-world applications. It is ideal for Python professionals who want to work with large and complex datasets and Python developers and analysts or data scientists who are looking to add to their existing skills by accessing some of the most powerful recent trends in data science. Experience with Python, Jupyter Notebooks, and command-line execution together with a good level of mathematical knowledge to understand the concepts is expected. Machine learning basic knowledge is also expected. What You Will Learn Use predictive modeling and apply it to real-world problems Understand how to perform market segmentation using unsupervised learning Apply your new-found skills to solve real problems, through clearly-explained code for every technique and test Compete with top data scientists by gaining a practical and theoretical understanding of cutting-edge deep learning algorithms Increase predictive accuracy with deep learning and scalable data-handling techniques Work with modern state-of-the-art large-scale machine learning techniques Learn to use Python code to implement a range of machine learning algorithms and techniques In Detail Machine learning is increasingly spreading in the modern data-driven world. It is used extensively across many fields such as search engines, robotics, self-driving cars, and more. Machine learning is transforming the way we understand and interact with the world around us. In the first module, Python Machine Learning Cookbook, you will learn how to perform various machine learning tasks using a wide variety of machine learning algorithms to solve real-world problems and use Python to implement these algorithms. The second module, Advanced Machine Learning with Python, is designed to take you on a guided tour of the most relevant and powerful machine learning techniques and you’ll acquire a broad set of powerful skills in the area of feature selection and feature engineering. The third module in this learning path, Large Scale Machine Learning with Python, dives into scalable machine learning and the three forms of scalability. It covers the most effective machine learning techniques on a map reduce framework in Hadoop and Spark in Python. This Learning Path will teach you Python machine learning for the real world. The machine learning techniques covered in this Learning Path are at the forefront of commercial practice. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: Python Machine Learning Cookbook by Prateek Joshi Advanced Machine Learning with Python by John Hearty Large Scale Machine Learning with Python by Bastiaan Sjardin, Alberto Boschetti, Luca Massaron Style and approach This course is a smooth learning path that will teach you how to get started with Python machine learning for the real world, and develop solutions to real-world problems. Through this comprehensive course, you’ll learn to create the most effective machine learning techniques from scratch and more!

Samantha Connelly finally knows what it is to feel sexy, elegant– and desirable. Playboy Tommy King, the man she has secretly loved for years, is amazed at her transformation. Up to now, Sam and Tommy have clashed head-on. Suddenly the friction deepens into fiery sexual attraction. But is this just another game for Tommy to win… or will Sam be the woman he marries?