Lauren Brown has had it with being a "gal pal," and she's taking matters into her own hands. Slinky black lingerie and a complete makeover ought to wake up the apparently oblivious Jeff Wright to the fact that she's really a femme fatale. Her seduction is a runaway success. But there's one little problem–she arouses Jeff's identical twin instead! Dangerously attractive, Justin Wright is best known for his revolving-door relationships and uncanny ability to annoy Lauren, which he does every day as her overbearing boss. Unfortunately, Lauren isn't sure how to handle things when the wrong Mr. Wright turns up again–next to her Christmas tree with a tag that reads "Open me first."

They'd waited for their wedding night… the night that never happened. And five years later Sherry Boyd still held fast to her virginity. But it seemed her former fiance, Clint Grahan, had not–the "evidence" lay nestled against his broad chest. Now, the irresistible sheriff came to her–of all people–for help in caring for the beautiful baby who had been dropped in his lap. Well, the man had nerve! Sherry had locked bittersweet memories of Clint in a box with her engagement ring. But here they were, crashing back…and here she was, on her once-beloved's doorstep, taking the child in her arms, her heart fluttering the way it used to…

When Becca Reynolds heads for rural Georgia to investigate a suspected crop insurance scam, she's concerned about her career, not her heart. Chief among the suspects is handsome Ryan MacIntosh, who isn't telling everything he knows. Could his involvement possibly be deeper than his devotion to his grandmother and the small farm that's been in the family for generations? Becca can't be sure, even though she knows Ryan intimately–at least online. She's certain he's the charming stranger with whom she's exchanged countless e-mails–and fallen in love. But she can't admit the truth any more than Ryan can–nor predict what it will cost them in the end.

Could an expectant mother really forget who fathered her baby? When Caroline Adkins woke in a hospital bed with amnesia, she received startling news–she was pregnant! She couldn't remember one single night of passion…yet three different men were claiming paternity! Sexy stranger Max Daniels was the only man not previously acquainted with her powerful family. But one look into his eyes and Caroline started to fall for him, even though he was the least likely daddy-hopeful. Meantime, her family was arranging her marriage to a man with more proof…. Caroline was headed toward the altar with the seemingly right daddy–but the wrong man. Could she and Max prove his paternity– in time to stop her wedding?

The Other Twin Brother Marine Captain Luke Brand has come home with one mission on his mind: to make amends with his identical twin brother's widow. They've never gotten along, but for the wounded soldier, establishing a connection with his yet-to-be-born nephew is a top priority–and failure is not an option. Still, he has to make peace without revealing his secret–that he's madly, completely, head over heels in love with Sophia Lee Brand. The last person Sophia wants to see this Christmas is Luke! She is too vulnerable and, well, too pregnant for the disruption. So why does she blush when he smiles, or her heart quicken when they touch? His looks are all too familiar–but he stirs up emotions she has never felt before. Perhaps a kiss under the mistletoe will make both of their Christmas wishes come true?

Book 2 of The Making of a Gentleman series.

She Was Home For The Holidays… But jewelry designer Melissa Randall had no intention of staying in Rawhide, Wyoming. The sassy sophisticate had a life in Paris–one that didn't include a meddling, matchmaking family or the sexy, sloe-eyed deputy they had in mind for her. Down-home deputy Harry Gowan would never leave Rawhide; she'd never stay. He'd keep his bachelor heart out of her reach, memorize her pouty smile and practice kissing her goodbye. Harry held out hope, though; after all, the matchmaking Randalls were legend in these parts. But had they met their match in Melissa?

When the tall soldier entered the Christian bookstore, Kelly Logan nearly fell over. Could it be Mitch Dalton, the classmate she'd once had a crush on? Skinny Mitch had matured into a heart-stoppingly handsome man. And he wanted her to help him find a present for his mother. As they discovered the perfect gift, a friendship ignited. But friendship and a common faith was all it was. Mitch was leaving for the Middle East, and besides, after her tumultuous upbringing, Kelly felt relationships were hazardous. Yet, a lingering hope told her that perhaps God had special plans for them….

When Lillie Delaney's life in the big city didn't work out, she headed home to Gumption, Arkansas, longing for the peaceful predictability of the tiny town. Not to mention the proximity of the grandmother who'd raised her. Yet Lillie was in for a shock: her grandfather had taken off with a younger woman and her grandmother– running around in a pink shower cap– wasn't handling it very well. So Lillie turned to town pastor James Warner, only to find a very handsome motorcycle-riding rebel in a black leather jacket! But she was beginning to learn that the Lord did indeed work in very mysterious ways…

Betrayed by her handsome fiancé, girls' basketball coach Sunny Keegan knew for a fact that fairy tales faded. So when her rowdy team successfully challenged her to appear on Dream Date, Sunny gritted her teeth…and groaned when she "won" a date with blue-eyed, raven-haired Pete Maguire. Yet impossibly gorgeous carpenter Pete seemed a reluctant contestant, too, and Sunny sensed secrets behind his thousand-watt smile. Still, as he gently shepherded Sunny from hurt to hope, from loss to love, she began to wonder if she'd finally found Prince Charming. Or was Pete a heaven-sent angel in disguise?

The Coltons were in River James's blood, thrumming as fiercely as his Native American ancestors. Joe Colton had plucked the brooding loner out of the hell of his youth and given him a taste of Eden–a home, a family, a future. But with Eden came Eve: Joe's beloved daughter Sophie. River's attraction to her shook him down to his cowboy boots, and he'd done his best to avoid her. But now Sophie was back from her corporate kingdom, all grown-up and beautiful as ever…yet hiding a sadness River knew only too well. He could help her, as sure as he could calm the most skittish colt–but could he continue to protect her…from himself?

Austin Cahill had parlayed his business savvy to the point that he had everything he wanted out of life. Except, of course, a child. And Caroline Lamont had happily agreed to provide him with one. Event planner Anna Maitland was a pro at themed extravaganzas. Medieval knights and ivy-draped bowers were right up her alley. So Caroline Lamont had to have her orchestrate Texas's wedding of the year. Landing the account for the Cahill-Lamont nuptials had an unexpected fringe benefit. Anna's son, Will, got to meet his idol, Austin Cahill. The problem was, the charismatic Mr. Cahill was proving pretty irresistible to Will's mom, too, even though she was doing a bang-up job of arranging his wedding to another woman!

As famine overtakes the land, Simeon leads his brothers into Egypt to buy grain. He doesn't recognize the vengeful ruler he must bow before: Joseph, his long-lost brother. The very brother Simeon sold into slavery years ago. Now, it is the brash Simeon's turn to know imprisonment. Only Mandisa, the handmaid who interprets the ruler's language, is his saving grace. The beautiful widow and her young son see another side of Simeon, tenderness under the tough exterior. Yet he will never be free to love them until he unshackles the chains of his own heart.

People don't vanish into thin air. Yet that's what happened to Tom Whatley, the husband of one of Merry Kramer's coworkers at The News. And in his place? A strange corpse lay in the Whatleys' garage. As if a missing-person/murder case weren't challenging enough, a beautiful new rival was rattling Merry's faith in her blossoming romance with artist Curt Carlyle. And Merry's search for the scoop put her directly in the path of a killer…spelling potential doom for this spunky sleuth.

FBI Special Agent Lydia Wakefield had thought there was no room in her life for the opposite sex. Then she walked into Blair Memorial's emergency room with a bullet in her arm–and encountered the most compelling man she'd ever met. Lukas Graywolf was a brilliant surgeon who brought together the wonders of modern medicine and the wisdom of his Navaho heritage. And his strong, skilled healer's hands were awakening unsuspected desires within her. But it took a brutal hostage-taking–and the threat of losing Lukas forever–to make her see that she could never be complete without him.

Fifteen-year-old Indigo Summer's world finally seems to be going in the right direction: She hooks up with the star linebacker on the high-school football team, gets a date for homecoming and makes the high-school dance squad all in the same week. But sometimes things are just too good to be true. After football star Quincy Rawlins abruptly dumps her for a girl who is willing to put out, Indigo's popularity and self-esteem take a nosedive. When her perfect world falls apart, Indigo turns to the one person who seems to have his head on straight–her next-door neighbor, sixteen-year-old Marcus Carter. The problem is, now that Indigo realizes what a great guy Marcus really is, so does someone else.

Build robust and highly scalable web applications with Google App EngineAbout This BookGet an in-depth look at how Google App Engine works under the hoodDesign and model your application around Google's highly scalable distributed NoSQL datastore to unlock its full potentialA comprehensive guide to ensure your mastery of Google App Engine Who This Book Is For If you have been developing web applications in Python or any other dynamic language but have always wondered how to write highly scalable web applications without getting into system administration and other plumbing, then this is the book for you. No experience in writing scalable applications is required.What You Will LearnScale and develop your applications with Google App Engine's runtime environmentGet to grips with request handling mechanism and write request handlersDeep dive into Google's distributed NoSQL and highly scalable datastore and design your application around itImplement powerful search with scalable datastorePerform long-running tasks in the background using task queuesWrite compartmentalized apps using multi tenancy, memcache, and other Google App Engine runtime servicesHandle web requests using the CGI, WSGI, and multi-threaded configurationsDeploy, tweak, and manage apps in production on Google App Engine In Detail Developing web applications that serve millions of users is no easy task, as it involves a number of configurations and administrative tasks for the underlying software and hardware stack. This whole configuration requires not only expertise, but also a fair amount of time as well. Time that could have been spent on actual application functionality. Google App Engine allows you develop highly scalable web applications or backends for mobile applications without worrying about the system administration plumbing or hardware provisioning issues. Just focus writing on your business logic, the meat of the application, and let Google's powerful infrastructure scale it to thousands of requests per second and millions of users without any effort on your part. This book takes you from explaining how scalable applications work to designing and developing robust scalable web applications of your own, utilizing services available on Google App Engine. Starting with a walkthrough of scalability is and how scalable web applications work, this book introduces you to the environment under which your applications exist on Google App Engine. Next, you will learn about Google's datastore, which is a massively scalable distributed NoSQL solution built on top of BigTable. You will examine the BigTable concepts and operations in detail and reveal how it is used to build Google datastore. Armed with this knowledge, you will then advance towards how to best model your data and query that along with transactions. To augment the powerful distributed dataset, you will deep dive into search functionality offered on Google App Engine. With the search and storage sorted out, you will get a look into performing long running tasks in the background using Google App Engine task queues along with sending and receiving emails. You will also examine the memcache to boost web application performance, image processing for common image manipulation tasks. You will then explore uploading, storing, and serving large files using Blobstore and Cloud storage. Finally, you will be presented with the deployment and monitoring of your applications in production along with a detailed look at dividing applications into different working modules.Style and approach This book is an in-depth guide where you will examine the problems in the context of highly scalable web applications. This book will take you through the libraries, services, and required configuration and finally puts everything together into a small web application that showcases all the capabilities of Google App Engine.

Over 70 recipes to get you started with popular Python libraries based on the principal concepts of data visualization About This Book Learn how to set up an optimal Python environment for data visualization Understand how to import, clean and organize your data Determine different approaches to data visualization and how to choose the most appropriate for your needs Who This Book Is For If you already know about Python programming and want to understand data, data formats, data visualization, and how to use Python to visualize data then this book is for you. What You Will Learn Introduce yourself to the essential tooling to set up your working environment Explore your data using the capabilities of standard Python Data Library and Panda Library Draw your first chart and customize it Use the most popular data visualization Python libraries Make 3D visualizations mainly using mplot3d Create charts with images and maps Understand the most appropriate charts to describe your data Know the matplotlib hidden gems Use plot.ly to share your visualization online In Detail Python Data Visualization Cookbook will progress the reader from the point of installing and setting up a Python environment for data manipulation and visualization all the way to 3D animations using Python libraries. Readers will benefit from over 60 precise and reproducible recipes that will guide the reader towards a better understanding of data concepts and the building blocks for subsequent and sometimes more advanced concepts. Python Data Visualization Cookbook starts by showing how to set up matplotlib and the related libraries that are required for most parts of the book, before moving on to discuss some of the lesser-used diagrams and charts such as Gantt Charts or Sankey diagrams. Initially it uses simple plots and charts to more advanced ones, to make it easy to understand for readers. As the readers will go through the book, they will get to know about the 3D diagrams and animations. Maps are irreplaceable for displaying geo-spatial data, so this book will also show how to build them. In the last chapter, it includes explanation on how to incorporate matplotlib into different environments, such as a writing system, LaTeX, or how to create Gantt charts using Python. Style and approach A step-by-step recipe based approach to data visualization. The topics are explained sequentially as cookbook recipes consisting of a code snippet and the resulting visualization.

Over 80 hands-on recipes to unleash full potential for Xamarin in development and monetization of feature-packed, real-world Android apps About This Book Create a number of Android applications using the Xamarin Android platform Extensively integrate your Android devices with other Android devices to enhance your app creation experience A comprehensive guide packed with real-world scenarios and pro-level practices and techniques to help you build successful Android apps Who This Book Is For If you are a Xamarin developer who wants to create complete Android applications with Xamarin, then this book is ideal for you. No prior knowledge of Android development is needed, however a basic knowledge of C# and .NET would be useful. What You Will Learn Install and use Xamarin.Android with Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio Design an app’s user interface for multiple device configurations Store and protect data in databases, files, and on the cloud Utilize lists and collections to present data to the user Communicate across the network using NFC or Bluetooth Perform tasks in the background and update the user with notifications Capture and play multimedia, such as video and audio, with the camera Implement In-App Billing and Expansion Files and deploy to the store In Detail Xamarin is used by developers to write native iOS, Android, and Windows apps with native user interfaces and share code across multiple platforms not just on mobile devices, but on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Developing apps with Xamarin.Android allows you to use and re-use your code and your skills on different platforms, making you more productive in any development. Although it’s not a write-once-run-anywhere framework, Xamarin provides native platform integration and optimizations. There is no middleware; Xamarin.Android talks directly to the system, taking your C# and F# code directly to the low levels. This book will provide you with the necessary knowledge and skills to be part of the mobile development era using C#. Covering a wide range of recipes such as creating a simple application and using device features effectively, it will be your companion to the complete application development cycle. Starting with installing the necessary tools, you will be guided on everything you need to develop an application ready to be deployed. You will learn the best practices for interacting with the device hardware, such as GPS, NFC, and Bluetooth. Furthermore, you will be able to manage multimedia resources such as photos and videos captured with the device camera, and so much more! By the end of this book, you will be able to create Android apps as a result of learning and implementing pro-level practices, techniques, and solutions. This book will ascertain a seamless and successful app building experience. Style and approach This book employs a step-by-step approach to Android app creation, explained in a conversational and easy-to-follow style. A wide range of examples are listed to ensure a complete understanding of how to deploy competent apps on the Android market.

Create robust and scalable applications along with responsive UI using concurrency and the multi-threading infrastructure in .NET and C#About This BookLearn to combine your asynchronous operations with Task Parallel LibraryMaster C#’s asynchronous infrastructure and use asynchronous APIs effectively to achieve optimal responsiveness of the applicationAn easy-to-follow, example-based guide that helps you to build scalable applications using concurrency in C# Who This Book Is For If you are a C# developer who wants to develop modern applications in C# and wants to overcome problems by using asynchronous APIs and standard patterns, then this book is ideal for you. Reasonable development knowledge, an understanding of core elements and applications related to the .Net platform, and also the fundamentals of concurrency is assumed.What You Will LearnApply general multithreading concepts to your application’s designLeverage lock-free concurrency and learn about its pros and cons to achieve efficient synchronization between user threadsCombine your asynchronous operations with Task Parallel LibraryMake your code easier with C#’s asynchrony supportUse common concurrent collections and programming patternsWrite scalable and robust server-side asynchronous codeCreate fast and responsible client applicationsAvoid common problems and troubleshoot your multi-threaded and asynchronous applications In Detail Starting with the traditional approach to concurrency, you will learn how to write multithreaded concurrent programs and compose ways that won't require locking. You will explore the concepts of parallelism granularity, and fine-grained and coarse-grained parallel tasks by choosing a concurrent program structure and parallelizing the workload optimally. You will also learn how to use task parallel library, cancellations, timeouts, and how to handle errors. You will know how to choose the appropriate data structure for a specific parallel algorithm to achieve scalability and performance. Further, you'll learn about server scalability, asynchronous I/O, and thread pools, and write responsive traditional Windows and Windows Store applications. By the end of the book, you will be able to diagnose and resolve typical problems that could happen in multithreaded applications.Style and approach An easy-to-follow, example-based guide that will walk you through the core principles of concurrency and multithreading using C#.

Efficiently administer and maintain your development environment with Windows PowerShellAbout This BookExplore *ing and automation techniques with Windows PowerShellGain concrete knowledge of Windows PowerShell *ing to perform professional level *ingDiscover the benefits of the Configuration Management Platform with this step-by-step guide that includes real-world *ing examples Who This Book Is For If you are an IT professional or developer who has worked on the .Net platform and you want to learn automation using Windows PowerShell, then this book is for you. This self-start guide takes you from the basics and gradually moves to an intermediate level to show you how to perform professional *ing.What You Will LearnUnderstand the concepts of building PowerShell *s and the basics of programmingManage the LYNC, Exchange, and SharePoint platformsCreate a Pull server using a SMB file share and HTTP and HTTPSUse .NET classes in Windows PowerShell and C# to manage Exchange OnlineUse PowerShell in C# to manage Exchange Online and work with .NET classes in PowerShellAutomate LYNC clients, consuming Client Server Object Models to administrate SharePoint Online In Detail Windows PowerShell 5.0 for .NET Developers is your self-start guide to performing automation using Windows PowerShell. This book will help you to understand the PowerShell syntax and grammar and will also teach you techniques to remove the rough edges of manual deployments. Packed with PowerShell *s and sample C# codes to automate tasks, it also includes real-world scenarios such as administrating office servers to help you save time and perform deployments swiftly and efficiently. The book begins with the Windows PowerShell basics, explores the significant features of Windows Management Framework 5.0, covers the basic concepts of Desired State Configuration and the importance of idempotent deployments. By the end of the book, you will have a good understanding of Windows PowerShell’s features and will be able to automate your tasks and manage configuration effectively.Style and approach This is an easy-to-follow step-by-step guide with text-enabled screenshots. Each topic is explained with codes and examples. It also includes multiple approaches for a number of tasks to let you choose the best one for you depending on your scenario.