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A winter sunrise over the great plains of Russia is no cause for celebration. The temperature barely rises above zero, and the guards at Penal Colony IK22 are determined to take their misery out on the prisoners—chief among them, one Zoya Zakharova. Once a master spy for Russian foreign intelligence, then the partner and lover of the Gray Man, she has information the Kremlin wants, and they don't care what they have to do to get it.

The galactic quadrant continues to tumble into chaos after to the collapse of the ConFed and new nations scramble for control in the power vacuum it left behind. It’s a dangerous and tumultuous time. Captain Jason Burke and his Omega Force crew are trying their best to stay clear of the trouble, but fate has other plans. What starts as mild curiosity about an incident involving a random stellar phenomena will quickly spiral out of control and puts them at odds with two competing superpowers, both after the same thing.

DI Rob Marshall is stuck in Gartcosh, leading the new Behavioural Sciences Unit – a staff of one and a third – where he’s executing a fruitless hunt, profiling every single murder in Scotland just in case they’re serial cases. But when a young Peebles woman’s body is discovered in Neidpath Tunnel, disused since the sixties, Marshall is called in to consult on a case on his old home turf. Paired up with his replacement, a cop who’s disinterested in the work, Marshall must tread a line between helping and not jumping to conclusions.

As organizations shift from monolithic applications to smaller, self-contained microservices, distributed systems have become more fine-grained. But developing these new systems brings its own host of problems. This expanded second edition takes a holistic view of topics that you need to consider when building, managing, and scaling microservices architectures. Through clear examples and practical advice, author Sam Newman gives everyone from architects and developers to testers and IT operators a firm grounding in the concepts.

England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events.

The brooding hero, gypsy Jake Lovell, under whose magic hands the most difficult horse or woman becomes biddable, is driven to the top by his loathing of the darling of the show ring, Rupert Campbell-Black. Having filched each other’s horses, and fought and fornicated their way around the capitals of Europe, the feud between the two men finally erupts with devastating consequences at the Los Angeles Olympics.

In this series of Boot Camp, Derren Brown is joined by top behavioural scientists and diverse experts to reveal how we can control these powerful and mysterious forces which often hijack our rational thinking and lead us seriously astray. By increasing our emotional intelligence we can improve our lives in every conceivable way.

Even as a girl Morgan has always been wild, like the seas which batter the cliffs beneath her home, Tintagel Castle. But she has always been safe, too. Then one day her father is called away to a war from which he does not return. In his place comes the High King, Uther Pendragon, with the sorcerer Merlin lurking in his wake. Uther claims Morgan’s mother, the Lady Igraine as his queen.

When FBI Agent Delilah Quinn survives an attempt on her life, she pretends to be dead in order to outwit her attacker. There is only one person she can turn to for help—a man she never wanted to see again…a man who abandoned her five years ago and left her heartbroken. A man definitely on the killer’s hit list. FBI Hostage Rescue Operator Cas Demarco lives with the burning regret of choosing to join HRT and leaving Delilah behind. News of her death devastates him. Then she calls him out of the blue and he can’t help but seize this one last chance to make things right.

With the portal to Elyndor a constant nagging worry in the back of Daryl's mind, as well as the fallout of his confrontation with Boulder looming over his head, life isn't as cozy as it could be. Thankfully, he has Koko, Poppi, Moppi, Katanica, and Susie to help him relieve some stress. But in volume two, the plot thickens, the lore deepens, and Daryl's world opens up to an adventure and a power struggle he never expected. Action, romance, magic, danger, and lots of greenskinned women—everything a man wants in a story...You'll find it all here.

Centuries before A Game of Thrones, an even greater game began, one that set the skies alight with dragon flame and saw the Seven Kingdoms turned to ash.

So began the Targaryens’ bloody rule, with fire and blood. Setting brother against brother, mother against daughter, and dragon against dragon.

Chronicled by a learned maester of the Citadel, this thrilling and bloody history of Westeros tells the story of where the battle for the Iron Throne began…

One of Dickens' early works, Nicholas Nickleby combines comedy and tragedy in a tale of triumph over adversity that is interspersed with Dickens' moving condemnation of society's mistreatment of children and the cruelty of the educational system. Young Nickleby struggles to seek his fortune in Victorian England, yet succeeds despite social injustice, in a story that mirrors Dickens' own rise from poverty to great success.

High school wasn’t a grand time for everyone, but when a group of friends decide to meet up at a B and B ahead of their 10-year reunion, old grudges resurface, and one of them ends up dead. Now the owners, a kindly older couple, are on the hook for the accidental death due to anaphylaxis, but they insist no mistakes were made on their part. Fortune is asked to look into the situation before the inept local sheriff railroads the couple or simply allows gossip to run them out of business, which will cost them their home. Swamp Team 3 heads to Voodoo Island to find a way to clear the couple.

The second instalment of Tolkien's epic tale, adapted from the original BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. Having fled the Shire in their escape from Sauron's Dark Riders, Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring have journeyed to Rivendell and beyond

Meet Reinhardt Blazkowicz. Orphan. Hero. Warrior. And now, the unlikely heir to the legendary Blue Star Duchy. Found by the Duke himself on a battlefield, surrounded by enemies, Reinhardt's life is about to change forever. Plucked from the ashes of war and thrust into a world of unimaginable wealth and privilege, he must now trade his battle-worn armor for the hallowed uniform of Aegis Crown Academy. There, in a world of magic, combat, and courtly intrigue, he'll need more than just his battle-honed instincts to survive.

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of 13 dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on a journey ‘there and back again’. They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon....

Aelin has risked everything to save her people - but at a tremendous cost. Locked within an iron coffin by the Queen of the Fae, Aelin must draw upon her fiery will as she endures months of torture. Aware that yielding to Maeve will doom those she loves keeps her from breaking, though her resolve begins to unravel with each passing day....With Aelin captured, Aedion and Lysandra remain the last line of defense to protect Terrasen from utter destruction. Yet they soon realize that the many allies they've gathered to battle Erawan's hordes might not be enough to save them.

Emma can be enjoyed as a charming love story, a detective story, and a comic and lively picture of English life 200 years ago. Austen's beautiful, clever, wilful but fallible heroine Emma Woodhouse believes she knows best. Perfectly content with her life she sees no need for either love or marriage, yet nothing pleases her more than meddling in the romantic lives of others.

In a sleepy village in the Shire, a young hobbit is entrusted with an immense task. He must make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ruling Ring of Power - the only thing that prevents the Dark Lord Sauron’s evil dominion. Thus begins J. R. R. Tolkien’s classic tale of adventure, which continues in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.