A Tunnel Too Far

A Tunnel Too Far
Author: Charles A. Turek
Publisher: Charles A. Turek dba Pagination Books
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2011-07-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1463654103

Deep under the bustling city, a dirty system of tunnels carries on the commerce of a booming economy. Living in this dark Hades by choice, a prideful young son of immigrants finds that his world is not what it seems to be. Inspired by some of the true facts and urban legends about those tunnels, this story is a tragedy about how we view ourselves and our place in society. The time is the very beginning of the Great Depression, and the place is in and around Chicago of that era. Electric streetcars still dodge horses, wagons and motorcars. The great railroads still operate steam-hauled trains into the city and serve its diverse population via fabled passenger stations. Prohibition is the law of the land, and crooks, criminals, and mobsters of all shapes and sizes are the law of the streets. Frank Cermak is a product of the ethnic neighborhoods, narrowly defined enclaves where narrow minds are common. He sits on the broad shoulders of the city, secure and smug, ready to grab his world by the tail and battle it to submission. The battlegrounds are the tunnels, streets, neighborhoods and canals of the great city, and the warriors are men and women like Frank, themselves caught in the battle without knowing which side they are on. Getting himself too deep into what he considers to be innocent mob activities, Frank is bent to the breaking point. With his stubborn pride ruined, his version of morality shaken, and his prejudices exposed, he must admit his defeat and suffer a horrible disgrace at the hands of cruel and ruthless men. Desperate, Frank struggles to right the world that he had figured all wrong.

A Wish Too Far

A Wish Too Far
Author: JL Merrow
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2013-06-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1626490228

Be careful what you wish for... There's a new drug on the streets called Wishes: little pink pills that bring you your heart's desire — but in a way that'll rival your worst nightmare. Lars Thornsson of the Paranormal Enforcement Agency isn't pleased to have to work the case with two of his most hated and incompetent colleagues. He's even less happy to come home one night to find that his sexy succubus lover Rael has summoned another demon. Rael thinks he knows who's supplying the drugs: an old friend of his with a penchant for cross-dressing. The one thing Rael doesn't understand is why a sweet demon like Shax would be so malicious. He's determined to get to Shax first and find out the truth, even if it means falling foul of the law — and his lover.

"This Time We Went Too Far"

Author: Norman G. Finkelstein
Publisher: OR Books
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 1935928449

For the Palestinians who live in the narrow coastal strip of Gaza, the Israeli invasion of December 2008 was a nightmare of unimaginable proportions: In the 22-day-long action 1,400 Gazans were killed, several hundred on the first day alone. And yet, while nothing should diminish Palestinian suffering through those frightful days, it is possible something redemptive is emerging from the tragedy of Gaza. For, as Norman Finkelstein details, in a concise work that melds cold anger with cool analysis, the profound injustice of the Israeli assault was widely recognized by bodies that it is impossible to brand as partial or extremist. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN investigation headed by Richard Goldstone, in documenting Israel’s use of indiscriminate and intentional force against the civilian population during the invasion (100 Palestinians died for every one Israeli), have had an impact on longstanding support for Israel. Jews in both the Unites States and the United Kingdom, for instance, have begun to voice dissent, and this trend is especially apparent among the young. Such a shift, Finkelstein contends, can create new pressure capable of moving the Middle East crisis towards a solution, one that embraces justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike. This new paperback edition has been revised throughout and includes an extensive afterword on the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which resulted in the deaths of nine activists and further strained the loyalty of many of Israel’s traditional allies around the world. It also contains a brand new appendix in which Finkelstein dissects the official Israeli investigation of the flotilla attack.

A Step Too Far

A Step Too Far
Author: Joanna North
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2020-05-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1728399939

Most stepchildren have ambivalent attitudes towards their step parents. But Freddie Bradshaw has to find a solution to the disturbance a new parent bring into his life and he resorts to a plan of alienation and ultimate disposal of his father’s second wife, taking his own unwitting mother and younger brother with him on the journey, resulting in the downfall of an entire family. A moral tale of the darkest human emotions interlaced with psychological twists and turns that ultimately pays tribute to the transformational power of human healing and feeling in the face of destructive and unresolvable states of mind.

Much Ado About Dragons

Much Ado About Dragons
Author: Graeme Smith
Publisher: BWL Publishing Inc.
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2021-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 022861970X

Segorian Anderson’s an Idiot. But that’s fine with him. It’s a well paying job with no heavy lifting. Nobody ever remembers Segorian. It isn’t magic—he just has the sort of face his own mother could forget, and she’s been trying to for years. But being forgettable is a job requirement for an Idiot. No, he's not the Court Jester. He doesn’t wear motley (whatever motley may be). That's a different union. He’s the Idiot. In a Queen’s castle, wine spilt down the wrong dress can lead to war, so someone unimportant has to be blamed for it. That’s the Idiot’s job. He’s the Idiot that did it, for any value of ‘it’. Of course, as soon as he’s exiled-for-life out of the castle gate, he uses his back-door key and sneaks back in. But that's not all. Someday, something really bad will happen. Really, really bad. Badder than a bad thing on a very bad day with extra badness. When the world’s about to end (or the washing up won’t get done—whichever comes first), who you gonna call? No, not them. They haven’t been invented yet. You call the Idiot, someone nobody will miss if things don’t work out. And now Peladon has a case of dragon. But the dragon may be the easy part. Segorian has woman trouble, and he’s the only person in the castle who doesn’t know it. Because to Segorian, women are an open book. The problem is, he never learned to read…

The Prodigal Sun

The Prodigal Sun
Author: Sean Williams
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1497611563

Morgan Roche, commander in the intelligence arm of the Commonwealth Empires, has been charged with protecting the AI known as The Box on a secret voyage across the galaxy. But en route her ship is ambushed by the Dato Bloc, and she is forced to crash-land on a nearby prison planet. MAROONED ON SCIACCA’S WORLD: Battling deadly inmates and treacherous guards, she fights her way through a hostile environment toward her only hope of escape, the mysterious Adoni Cane at her side. A genetically enhanced warrior with a past not even he can fathom, he could be the savior of the human race, or its downfall--but either way, Morgan Roche won’t survive without him… “THE PRODIGAL SUN is a close-knit personal story told on a galaxy-sized canvas. Filled with action as well as intriguing ideas.” --Kevin J Anderson “With echoes of vintage Jack Williamson and Poul Anderson, as well as Niven, Asimov and Vinge, Williams and Dix proudly continue a vital tradition, proving SF as diverse a field as ever.” --Asimov's “[A] very satisfying classic Golden Age-style yarn…. strongly recommended” --Locus “Space opera of the ambitious, galaxy-spanning sort... fast and furious action.” --New York Review of SF

Scenario-focused Engineering

Scenario-focused Engineering
Author: Austina De Bonte
Publisher: Pearson Education
Total Pages: 574
Release: 2014
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0735679339

Annotation Great technology alone is rarely sufficient today to ensure a products success. At Microsoft, scenario-focused engineering is a customer-centric, iterative approach used to design and deliver the deeper experiences and emotional engagement customers demand in new products. In this book, youll discover the proven practices and lessons learned from real-world implementations of this approach, including:Why design matters: Understand a competitive landscape where customers are no longer satisfied by products that are merely useful, but respond instead to products they crave using. What it means to be customer focused: Recognize that you are not the customer, understand customers can have difficulty articulating what they want, and apply techniques that uncover their unspoken needs. How to iterate effectively: Implement a development system that is flexible enough to respond to early and continuous feedback, and enables experimentation with multiple ideas and feedback loops simultaneously. How to bridge the culture gap: In an engineering environment traditionally rooted in strong analytics, the ideas and practices for scenario-focused engineering may not be intuitive. Learn how to change team mindset from deciding what a product, service, or device will do, to discovering what customers actually want and what will work for them in real-life scenarios. Connections with Lean and Agile approaches: See the connections, gaps, and overlaps among the Lean, Agile, and Scenario-Focused Engineering methodologies, and achieve a more holistic view of software development.

Ancient Perspectives

Ancient Perspectives
Author: Richard J. A. Talbert
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2014-02-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226789403

Ancient Perspectives encompasses a vast arc of space and time—Western Asia to North Africa and Europe from the third millennium BCE to the fifth century CE—to explore mapmaking and worldviews in the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In each society, maps served as critical economic, political, and personal tools, but there was little consistency in how and why they were made. Much like today, maps in antiquity meant very different things to different people. Ancient Perspectives presents an ambitious, fresh overview of cartography and its uses. The seven chapters range from broad-based analyses of mapping in Mesopotamia and Egypt to a close focus on Ptolemy’s ideas for drawing a world map based on the theories of his Greek predecessors at Alexandria. The remarkable accuracy of Mesopotamian city-plans is revealed, as is the creation of maps by Romans to support the proud claim that their emperor’s rule was global in its reach. By probing the instruments and techniques of both Greek and Roman surveyors, one chapter seeks to uncover how their extraordinary planning of roads, aqueducts, and tunnels was achieved. Even though none of these civilizations devised the means to measure time or distance with precision, they still conceptualized their surroundings, natural and man-made, near and far, and felt the urge to record them by inventive means that this absorbing volume reinterprets and compares.

Operative Techniques: Sports Medicine Surgery- E-BOOK

Operative Techniques: Sports Medicine Surgery- E-BOOK
Author: Bruce Reider
Publisher: Elsevier Health Sciences
Total Pages: 888
Release: 2009-12-11
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1455727210

Operative Techniques: Sports Medicine Surgery offers you all the how-to step-by-step guidance from experts Bruce Reider, Michael Terry, and Matthew Provencher that you need to perform the latest techniques in this specialty. Large full-color intraoperative photos, accompanied by detailed illustrations and a dedicated website demonstrate procedures, both arthroscopic and open. This concise, accessible multimedia resource shows you what you need to know and how to do it all—from ACL reconstruction and labral tear repair to loose body removal and treatment of turf toe. The result is a detailed, easy-to-use reference that no sports medicine surgeon should be without. This is a title in the Operative Techniques series. Please visit www.operativetechniques.com for more information. Includes full-text web access so you can search the text online, view surgical videos that let you see the experts perform the techniques and perfect your own, zoom in on illustrations and use reference links for further research on the procedures. Discusses pearls and pitfalls with an emphasis on optimizing outcomes to improve the quality of your technique and learn the expert’s approach to getting the best results. Outlines positioning, exposures, instrumentation, and implants to give you a step-by-step guide for every procedure. Provides discussions of post-operative care and expected outcomes, including potential complications and brief notes on controversies and supporting evidence to give you important details about patient-focused surgery. Highlights key anatomies with color photos and illustrations as well as diagrams that present cases as they appear in real life to help you see every detail with clarity.

Innocents Abroad...How Two Baby Boomers Experienced a Cultural Immersion, the History of Western Art and Excellent Food on Their Way to an Extraordinary Year in Europe

Innocents Abroad...How Two Baby Boomers Experienced a Cultural Immersion, the History of Western Art and Excellent Food on Their Way to an Extraordinary Year in Europe
Author: Joseph W. McGrath
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2019-04-15
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1532068549

Our dream was to live for a year in Europe. That could be every baby boomer’s dream. In pursuing this odyssey, and traveling through Italy, France, Spain and the Netherlands, Lisa and I found that we had accidentially traced the history of Western art from city to city, artist to artist, genre to genre. We had traveled from ancient Rome to the Middle Ages and on to the Gothic churches, the Renaissance, the Baroque, Neoclassicism, Impressionism, Cubism and Surrealism. We followed great writers through their cafés and restaurants. And along the way, we found ourselves, and rediscovered each other, through art, philosophy and literature. We became immersed in the culture, food and people of each country, and in doing so, we created a guide for your journey. We chronicled our breakthroughs and epiphanies as well as our screw-ups and humorous mistakes so you can take advantage of what we learned.