Three wonderfully original, linked novellas based on true stories from the winner of the Paris Review's Discovery Award. A new voice from Yorkshire, John Barlow has been compared to Michel Faber and T.C. Boyle. This is his first book. A winged cat wreaks havoc in a Yorkshire workhouse. An autumnal romance between two pork pie makers is celebrated with a donkey wedding. The strange career of Michael 'Cast Iron' Mulligan is revealed by his unlucky apprentice Captain Gusto, both men who eat – and eat anything – for a living. These are the stories that mark the debut of one of fiction's most original and assured new voices. And, remarkably, they all are based on fact. Gypsies, Victorian businessmen, servants, masters and unwise children come together in three gothic and moving novellas of magic and deception. Largely set in the nineteenth century, they combine the satisfactions of the finest novels with a playfulness that does not forfeit humanity. With the comic sensibility of Dickens and a taste for the macabre worthy of Irvine Welsh, John Barlow is a storyteller with a unique imagination who will continue to amaze and entertain us for many years to come.

The fifth and final breathtaking instalment in the darkly seductive and best-selling WICKED LOVELY series, about the collision of mortal and faery worlds… The Summer King is missing; the Dark Court is bleeding; and a stranger walks the streets of Huntsdale, his presence signifying the deaths of powerful fey. Torn between his new queen and his old love, Keenan left Huntsdale to wander aimlessly but after centuries of leading his court it was not long before the reality of being Summer King became too pressing. Violence seemed more inevitable by the day and the Summer Court was not yet strong enough to face conflict, so Keenan made a dangerous deal with the water fey. It is a desperate bargain he makes to strengthen his court against the coming war. Aislinn tends the Summer Court, searching for her absent king and yearning for Seth. She knows she must be a powerful queen to hold her court together, while Bananach becomes more and more dangerous, and she is losing faeries to her. Donia longs for fiery passion even as she coolly readies the Winter Court for battle. Her court is still powerful, but she must remain focused on keeping them that way and not get distracted by Keenan when he shows up at her door again. The Dark Court is thrown into chaos when they are rocked by tragedy. And Seth, sworn brother of the Dark King and heir to the High Queen, is about to make a mistake that could cost his life. They all know what Bananach seeks – the raven-faery is the embodiment of war and discord. She and her growing number of allies want mutiny and murder. Love, despair and betrayal ignite the Faeries Courts, and in the final conflict, some will win… and some will lose everything. The thrilling conclusion to Melissa Marr’s bestselling Wicked Lovely series will leave readers breathless.

Learn everything you need to build highly scalable, robust web applications using Angular release 4 About This Book ? Apply best practices and design patterns to achieve higher scalability in your Angular applications ? Understand the latest features of Angular and create your own components ? Get acquainted with powerful, advanced techniques in Angular to build professional web applications Who This Book Is For This book is for JavaScript developers with some prior exposure to Angular, at least through basic examples. We assume that you’ve got working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. What You Will Learn ? Implement asynchronous programming using Angular ? Beautify your application with the UI components built to the material design specification ? Secure your web application from unauthorized users ? Create complex forms, taking full advantage of 2-way data binding ? Test your Angular applications using the Jasmine and Protractor frameworks for better efficiency ? Learn how to integrate Angular with Bootstrap to create compelling web applications ? Use Angular built-in classes to apply animation in your app In Detail Got some experience of Angular under your belt? Want to learn everything about using advanced features for developing websites? This book is everything you need for the deep understanding of Angular that will set you apart from the developer crowd. Angular has introduced a new way to build applications. Creating complex and rich web applications, with a lighter resource footprint, has never been easier or faster. Angular is now at release 4, with significant changes through previous versions. This book has been written and tested for Angular release 4. Angular is a mature technology, and you'll likely have applications built with earlier versions. This book starts by showing you best practices and approaches to migrating your existing Angular applications so that you can be immediately up-to-date. You will take an in-depth look at components and see how to control the user journey in your applications by implementing routing and navigation. You will learn how to work with asynchronous programming by using Observables. To easily build applications that look great, you will learn all about template syntax and how to beautify applications with Material Design. Mastering forms and data binding will further speed up your application development time. Learning about managing services and animations will help you to progressively enhance your applications. Next you’ll use native directives to integrate Bootstrap with Angular. You will see the best ways to test your application with the leading options such as Jasmine and Protractor. At the end of the book, you’ll learn how to apply design patterns in Angular, and see the benefits they will bring to your development. Style and approach This book provides comprehensive coverage of all aspects of development with Angular. You will learn about all the most powerful Angular concepts, with examples and best practices. This book is everything you need for the deep understanding of Angular that will set you apart from the developer crowd.

Develop deep neural networks in Theano with practical code examples for image classification, machine translation, reinforcement agents, or generative models. About This Book ? Learn Theano basics and evaluate your mathematical expressions faster and in an efficient manner ? Learn the design patterns of deep neural architectures to build efficient and powerful networks on your datasets ? Apply your knowledge to concrete fields such as image classification, object detection, chatbots, machine translation, reinforcement agents, or generative models. Who This Book Is For This book is indented to provide a full overview of deep learning. From the beginner in deep learning and artificial intelligence, to the data scientist who wants to become familiar with Theano and its supporting libraries, or have an extended understanding of deep neural nets. Some basic skills in Python programming and computer science will help, as well as skills in elementary algebra and calculus. What You Will Learn ? Get familiar with Theano and deep learning ? Provide examples in supervised, unsupervised, generative, or reinforcement learning. ? Discover the main principles for designing efficient deep learning nets: convolutions, residual connections, and recurrent connections. ? Use Theano on real-world computer vision datasets, such as for digit classification and image classification. ? Extend the use of Theano to natural language processing tasks, for chatbots or machine translation ? Cover artificial intelligence-driven strategies to enable a robot to solve games or learn from an environment ? Generate synthetic data that looks real with generative modeling ? Become familiar with Lasagne and Keras, two frameworks built on top of Theano In Detail This book offers a complete overview of Deep Learning with Theano, a Python-based library that makes optimizing numerical expressions and deep learning models easy on CPU or GPU. The book provides some practical code examples that help the beginner understand how easy it is to build complex neural networks, while more experimented data scientists will appreciate the reach of the book, addressing supervised and unsupervised learning, generative models, reinforcement learning in the fields of image recognition, natural language processing, or game strategy. The book also discusses image recognition tasks that range from simple digit recognition, image classification, object localization, image segmentation, to image captioning. Natural language processing examples include text generation, chatbots, machine translation, and question answering. The last example deals with generating random data that looks real and solving games such as in the Open-AI gym. At the end, this book sums up the best -performing nets for each task. While early research results were based on deep stacks of neural layers, in particular, convolutional layers, the book presents the principles that improved the efficiency of these architectures, in order to help the reader build new custom nets. Style and approach It is an easy-to-follow example book that teaches you how to perform fast, efficient computations in Python. Starting with the very basics-NumPy, installing Theano, this book will take you to the smooth journey of implementing Theano for advanced computations for machine learning and deep learning.

This unique book provides you with a wealth of tips, tricks, best practices, and answers to the day-to-day questions that programmers face in their careers. It is split into three parts: Coder Skills, Freelancer Skills, and Career Skills, providing the knowledge you need to get ahead in programming. About This Book ? Over 50 essays with practical advice on improving your programming career ? Practical focus gives solutions to common problems, and methods to become a better coder ? Includes advice for existing programmers and those wanting to begin a career in programming Who This Book Is For This book is useful for programmers of any ability or discipline. It has advice for those thinking about beginning a career in programming, those already working as a fully employed programmer, and for those working as freelance developers. What You Will Learn ? Improve your soft skills to become a better and happier coder ? Learn to be a better developer ? Grow your freelance development business ? Improve your development career ? Learn the best approaches to breaking down complex topics ? Have the confidence to charge what you're worth as a freelancer ? Succeed in developer job interviews In Detail This is an all-purpose toolkit for your programming career. It has been built by Jordan Hudgens over a lifetime of coding and teaching coding. It helps you identify the key questions and stumbling blocks that programmers encounter, and gives you the answers to them! It is a comprehensive guide containing more than 50 insights that you can use to improve your work, and to give advice in your career. The book is split up into three topic areas: Coder Skills, Freelancer Skills, and Career Skills, each containing a wealth of practical advice. Coder Skills contains advice for people starting out, or those who are already working in a programming role but want to improve their skills. It includes such subjects as: how to study and understand complex topics, and getting past skill plateaus when learning new languages. Freelancer Skills contains advice for developers working as freelancers or with freelancers. It includes such subjects as: knowing when to fire a client, and tips for taking over legacy applications. Career Skills contains advice for building a successful career as a developer. It includes such subjects as: how to improve your programming techniques, and interview guides and developer salary negotiation strategies. Style and approach This unique book provides over 50 insightful essays full of practical advice for improving your programming career. The book is split into three broad sections covering different aspects of a developer's career. Each essay is self-contained and can be read individually, or in chunks.

A luminous and bewitching debut novel that is perfect for fans of Angela Carter. Set in Victorian London, it follows the fortunes of Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and Abel, the Flayed Man. A magical realism delight. Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She buys a penny twist of coloured sugar and settles down to watch the heart-stopping main attraction: a lion, billed as a monster from the savage heart of Africa, forged in the heat of a merciless sun. Mama swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps…and when Eve is born, the story goes, she didn’t cry – she meowed and licked her paws. When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, the mudlarks are sure he is long dead. As they search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But how has he survived a week in that thick stew of human waste? Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They will become The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner’s Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.

Two sisters. Two special agents. One War. Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice is the incredible true story of British special agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne, two sisters who risked everything to fight for our freedom during the Second World War. The death of an eccentric recluse is rarely an event to be given more than a few lines in a local newspaper. But when, in September 2010, police were called to a tiny, cluttered flat in Torquay and discovered the body of local ‘cat lady’ Eileen Nearne, they also found a small bundle of possessions that told an amazing story. For Eileen Nearne had been an agent for the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War, going undercover in Nazi-occupied France to send wireless messages of crucial importance to the Allies. Astonishingly, Eileen was not the only special agent in the family – her sister Jacqueline had also been an SOE. Rarely had two members of the same family sacrificed so much to such dangerous work. Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice pays tribute to these fiercely patriotic women with hearts of courage, who fought for freedom at much personal cost. While Jacqueline narrowly avoided capture several times, tirelessly couriering secret documents for the resistance, Eileen was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo before being incarcerated at Ravensbrück concentration camp. She was only 23. This is a true story of triumph and tragedy, of two sisters who sacrificed themselves to defend our freedom, who stood shoulder to shoulder during the darkest of days.

From the internationally bestselling author of the Sword of Truth series, comes a new Richard and Kahlan novel, sequel to The Omen Machine. The bloodthirsty Jit is dead, and against all odds Richard and Kahlan have survived. But a new menace has attacked them in the Dark Lands. Infected with the essence of death itself, robbed of his power as a war wizard, Richard must race against time to uncover and stop the infernal conspiracy assembling itself behind the wall far to the north. His friends and allies are already captives of this fell combination, and Kahlan, also touched by death's power, will die completely if Richard fails. Bereft of magic, Richard has only his sword, his wits, his capacity for insight – and an extraordinary companion, the young Samantha, a healer just coming into her powers. Compelling, fast-moving, and intense, The Third Kingdom is a powerful tale that welcomes new readers to Terry Goodkind's world, while opening up new vistas of worldbuilding for longtime readers of the adventures of Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell.

Springwatch British Wildlife is the perfect year-round countryside introduction to the much-loved wildlife of the popular BBC2 television series. The book guides you through Britain's rich and diverse natural heritage, allowing you to enjoy the nation's wildlife at its finest – learning how the animals live and where to find them, why they do what they do and how we can appreciate them. You will be introduced to the birds, mammals and plants that inhabit our gardens, cities and countryside, with detailed species de*ions and beautiful photographs allowing you to understand their appearance, behaviour and habitats. Discover the best-kept secrets about garden birds, fascinating fungi facts and what leaves and seeds tell us about our thriving plant life. Join the Springwatch team as they help you to explore the natural world and unlock the mysteries to British wildlife.

A complete celebration of Britain’s favourite architectural show. Grand Designs is broadcast in over 130 countries and regularly gleans 5 million viewers in the UK. Its success, says Kevin, is due to 'good old-fashioned story telling; of joy and sorrow, torment and triumph, expressed tangibly in the making of a building'. To celebrate fourteen glorious years of film-making, 100 editions of Grand Designs Magazine, 100 separate programmes and ten years of hosting the Stirling Prize, Kevin now delves into the archives to highlight his favourite projects. The Best of Grand Designs charts where domestic architecture has come from, and is moving to, in the first decade or so of a new millennium. And it places people at the centre of the stories of these buildings. Each project is supported by beautiful photography, building plans and Kevin’s own personal analysis, together with commentary from his long-time collaborator, Isabel Allen. From the off-grid ecological approach of woodsman Ben Law in Sussex to the quirky experimentalism of Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till’s straw bale house in London, Kevin demonstrates how Grand Designs continues to contribute to television history and why it provides an important legacy for good house design.

Two bloody brilliant short stories from No. 1 bestselling crime writer Stuart MacBride, featuring DS Logan McRae and his boss DI Steel STRAMASH: Something fishy is happening on the isle of Jura. DS Logan McRae gets a phone call from DI Steel ordering him to come to the island at once. One freezing night’s sleep in a hatchback and two storm-battered ferries later, Logan arrives – but there’s no sign of Steel. She's lumped him in the middle of a policing nightmare, with bodies, and bullets, and tiny wee boats. And a dangerous hard man who’s meant to be dead… DI STEEL’S BAD HEIR DAY: Why is DI Steel in an even worse mood than usual? Is it because it’s Christmas? Or maybe it's because the missing persons case she’s just caught looks like a hoax from a mile off? Or is it because she’s just been left a huge amount of money…? One thing’s for certain: Steel’s having a bad day, and she’s hell bent on making sure Constable Guthrie has one too.

The seventh animal in the hilarious AWESOME ANIMALS series – awesome adventures with the wildest wildlife. Lewie the llama and his flock of lambs are off to the County Fair! Farmer Palmer hopes that Lewie and the lambs will win Best in Show with their amazing acrobatic display! But then Lewie and his flock go missing… Have they run away? Have they been kidnapped? And can they be found in time to bring home a medal?

A full-blooded, pacy biography of one of the most charismatic writers of the century, whose life and work were to inspire Hemingway, Steinbeck, Kerouac and Mailer. ‘We cannot help but read on’: TLS. ‘The energy, dynamism and sheer bursting life-force of Jack London bowls you over’: Scotsman. ? Jack London’s life story (1876–1916) is as dramatic as any of the fiction he wrote. Born illegitimate in San Francisco, he was (in his teens) an oyster pirate, seal-hunter, hobo, Klondike goldminer – and spectacular drinker. ? On publication of The Call of the Wild in 1903, he became the most highly publicised writer in the world. Subsequent books, including Martin Eden, White Fang, The Iron Heel, The People of the Abyss, John Barleycorn, The Sea Wolf, continue in print as world classics in many languages. ? Apart from writing 50 books, he lectured for the Socialist Party in America; was a war correspondent in Korea and Mexico; introduced surfing to the West Coast; sailed the seven seas in his yacht, the Snark…

Even bugs can be heroes! Join the Bug Buddies on bug-tastic adventures, as they pit their wits against the dreaded spider Spinner, creepiest of all creepy crawlies… Spinner's Wood is full of sticky mud, tall trees and long grass. But most of all, it's full of bugs! Meet the Bug Buddies – four best friends called Zap, Buzz, Lurch and Crunch. Their life would be perfect if it weren't for Spinner, who has eight legs and one mission: to trap the whole wood in his evil web. But even bugs can be heroes… Spinner’s Wood is under attack! The Bug Buddies think a certain spider is up to his old tricks. But is a new enemy on the prowl?

The final novel from legendary Canadian author WP Kinsella. Butterfly Winter, W.P. Kinsella's first novel in 15 years, is the story of Julio and Esteban Pimental, twins born in the Caribbean country of Courteguay, an enchanted but impoverished enclave on the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic where time moves at its own pace and reality is open to question. The brothers are born to play baseball, they even played catch in the womb, and at the age of ten they leave home for the American Major Leagues. Julio proves to be a winning pitcher who, much to the frustration of any team that signs him, will only throw to his catcher brother, who is a very weak hitter.

Pies are the ultimate comfort food. Enjoy sweet and savoury pies, try traditional and modern recipes and discover new family favourites with The Mini Book of Pies. The perfect book for the beginner pie maker, it features 85 inventive and delicious recipes for the true British classic, the pie. This book also includes simple to follow guides on making pastry, pie dishes and pie decoration and also reveals a few secret baking tips, making sure your pies turn out perfect every time (and no soggy bottoms!). Whether you are looking for simple family suppers or pies to impress; a winter warmer or a summer picnic pie; a meaty pie, a veggie pie, a fish pie or a classic pudding pie, you will find it in The Mini Books of Pies. Recipes include; Beef and Beer Pie with Sweet Potato Mash Pie Moroccan Lamb with Apricots Pie Sausage and Caramelised Onion with Mash Pie Spanish Chicken Pie Smoked Trout and Almond Quick Pie Roasted Vegetable with Cumin Puff Pastry Pie Butternut Squash, Sage and Goat’s Cheese Pie Easy Peasy Plum and Blackberry Pie Features content first published in Pies by Sophie Conran, 2006

2020. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, Reid Malenfant ventures to the far edge of the solar system, where he discovers a strange artifact left behind by an alien civilization: A gateway that functions as a kind of quantum transporter, allowing virtually instantaneous travel over the vast distances of interstellar space. What lies on the other side of the gateway? Reid decides to find out. Yet he will soon be faced with an impossible choice that will push him beyond terror, beyond sanity, beyond humanity itself. Meanwhile on Earth the Japanese scientist Nemoto fears her worst nightmares are coming true. Startling discoveries reveal that the Moon, Venus, even Mars once thrived with life. Life that was snuffed out not just once but many times, in cycles of birth and destruction. And the next chilling cycle is set to begin again . . .

In this compelling collection of short stories, bestselling author Michael Chabon explores adolescent desire, love, friendship and fatherhood, moving subtly and incisively across this powerful emotional ground. Wry and whimsical, but also with intellectual depth, A MODEL WORLD is a collection of eleven wonderful stories about growing up and growing wise. In ‘S Angel’ a group of wedding guests is hijacked by a fast-talking real estate agent, but not before the bride herself disappears. ‘Smoke’ takes us to a baseball catcher’s funeral, where one of the mourners – a has-been pitcher – confronts the ruins of his career. In the hilarious title story, a graduate student plagiarizes a dissertation on the movement of clouds, only to find himself and his faculty advisor in a parlour game where each player must confess the worst thing he or she has ever done. The second part of the book, ‘The Lost World’, is a series of stories about a young boy, Nathan Shapiro, who must face the wrenching emotions caused by his parents’ bitter divorce. Serious, yet shot through with wit, humour and compassion, these are unforgettable stories from one of America’s most celebrated writers.

From the bestselling author of WARRIOR OF ROME comes the first book in a new series set in third century Rome, a dramatic era of murder, coup, counter-rebellions and civil war. In a single year six Emperors will lay claim to the Throne of the Caesars… SPRING AD235 Dawn on the Rhine. A surprise attack and the brutal murder of the Emperor Alexander and his mother ends the Severan dynasty and shatters four decades of Roman certainty. Military hero Maximinus Thrax is the first Caesar risen from the barracks. A simple man of steel and violence, he will fight for Rome. The Senators praise the new Emperor with elaborate oratory, but will any of them accept a Caesar who was once a shepherd boy? And in the streets of the eternal city, others merely pray to escape imperial notice. In the north, as the merciless war against the barbarians consumes men and treasure, rebellion and personal tragedy drive Maximinus to desperate extremes, bloody revenge and the borders of sanity. Iron & Rust, the first book in a major new series, creates a world both sophisticated and brutal, yet firmly rooted in history; a world of intrigue, murder, passion and war, a world where men will kill to sit on the Throne of the Caesars.

A tense and brilliantly dramatic 30-page short story from the bestselling author of The Throne of the Caesars Series. This thrilling short story opens at the end of BLOOD AND STEEL and is the perfect trailer for Harry Sidebottom’s new novel FIRE AND SWORD. AD 238. When Gordian the Younger is brutally cut down at the battle of Carthage, his ally Phillyrio and a centurion from his army must make for the hills of northern Africa, to escape Maximinus’s army. But their enemy, led by Capelianus, is determined to hunt them down.

The personal accounts of three young women who joined up in 1940. In the summer of 1940, Britain stood alone against Germany. The British Army stood at just over one and a half million men, while the Germans had three times that many, and a population almost twice the size of ours from which to draw new waves of soldiers. Clearly, in the fight against Hitler, manpower alone wasn’t going to be enough. Eighteen-year-old Jessie Ward defied her mother to join the ATS, Margery Pott signed up for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, and nanny Kathleen Skin the WRNS. They left quiet homes for the rigours of training, the camaraderie of the young women who worked together so closely and to face a war that would change their lives for ever. Overall, more than half a million women served in the armed forces during the Second World War. This book tells the story of just three of them – one from the Army, one from the Navy and one from the Air Force. But in their stories are reflected the lives of hundreds of thousands of others like them – ordinary girls who went to war, wearing their uniforms with pride.