Two trillion of them are government employees. Ruling over this vast bureaucracy is the Imperial Council. It’s only check: The Empress, whose every decree is binding law.The uneasy balance of power between the Council and the Throne is eroding. The corruption of the bureaucracy has reached staggering proportions when a true reformer ascends to the Throne. She has a long-term plan to reform the Empire.What remains to be seen is whether the new Empress and her young allies can succeed, and at what cost.

    She breezed through college and moved to New York, ready for the world to fall at her feet. It didn’t. Now, six jobs later, Sylvie is living back at home in Michigan. She’s consumed with helping her sister plan an over-the-top wedding that is driving them both to the brink, and by the way, who is this guy her parents keep inviting over for dinner? Is he really such a jerk, and if so, why couldn’t he be less attractive?? Between vicious swans, unfortunate teeth veneers, bad dates and mean girls, bridesmaid dresses from hell, and sisters with problems of their own, how is Sylvie going to make all this work? Can she get herself back on track and also get the guy she never wanted, but now seems to need—and maybe love?

    Kotter shows with compelling evidence what leadership really means today, why it is rarely associated with larger-than-life charismatics, precisely how it is different from management, and yet why both good leadership and management are essential for business success, especially for complex organizations operating in changing environments.The critics who despair of the coming of imaginative, charismatic leaders to replace the so-called manipulative caretakers of American corporations don't tell us much about what leadership actually is, or, for that matter, what management is either. Leadership, Kotter clearly demonstrates, is for the most part not a god-like figure transforming subordinates into superhumans, but is in fact a process that creates change -- a process which often involves hundreds or even thousands of "little acts of leadership" orchestrated by people who have the profound insight to realize this. Building on his landmark study of 15 successful general managers, Kotter presents detailed accounts of how senior and middle managers in major corporations, in close concert with colleagues and subordinates, were able to create a leadership process that put into action hundreds of commonsense ideas and procedures that, in combination with competent management, produced extraordinary results. This leadership turned NCR from a loser to a big winner in automated teller machines, despite intense competition from IBM. The same process at American Express and SAS helped businesses grow dramatically despite the fact that they were "mature" and "commodity-like." Kotter also shows how leadership turned around operations at P&G and Kodak; produced huge business successes at PepsiCo, ARCO, and ConAgra; and made the impossible occasionally happen at Digital. Thousands of companies today are overmanaged and underled, John Kotter concludes, not because managers lack charisma, but because far too few executives have a clear understanding of what leadership is and what it can accomplish. Without such a vision, even the most capable people have great difficulty trying to lead effectively and to create the cultures which will help others to lead.

    Ben Harris is looking to find "the one" after his last girlfriend cheated on him. When they crash into each other, it appears they've both found exactly what they wanted. A year of firsts follows: first date, first kiss, first “I love you’s.” The first fight is inevitable, but neither of them saw a breakup coming. When Abigail is offered a job overseas, they’ll discover that no relationship is perfect and even true love sometimes finds itself separated by time and distance.

    In The Happy Cook, Daphne Oz makes cooking fun and relaxing, and shows anyone—newbie or seasoned expert—how to celebrate every day with delicious meals that are as easy to create as they are to enjoy.Like cooking with a good friend and a glass of wine, The Happy Cook is filled with friendly advice, expert tips, inspiring ideas, and best of all, 125 simple yet fabulous recipes, all using just a handful of ingredients, that will transform the most nervous or reluctant novice into a happy, confident home cook.Here are recipes for the whole day and the whole week, from Saturday dinner parties to quick-and-easy weeknight leftovers. With The Happy Cook, eating well is a breeze with delights such as:Breakfast—Crispy-Crunchy Honey-Thyme Granola, Chocolate Almond Breakfast Bars, and Coconut-Mango PancakesLunch—Kale and Plum Salad with Miso Vinaigrette, Warm Spring Pea Soup, Seared Garlic-Lime Shrimp Banh Mi and Philly Cheesesteak QuesadillasDinner—Truffle Salt Roast Chicken with Lentils and Squash, Cashew Soba Noodles with Fried Shallots, Sea Bass Roasted Over Citrus, and Apricot-Rosemary Glazed Lamb ChopsDessert—"Outlaw" Carrot Cake with Brown Sugar Buttercream, Better Brownies, Sour Apple Juice Pops, and Nutty Banana "Ice Cream"The Happy Cook is all about real-life application—and real-life success. Celebrate every occasion and every meal with mouthwatering, vibrant, easy food. It's not about perfection, as Daphne makes clear. It’s about the confidence to get into the kitchen, have fun, and become a happy cook!

    I was good to go in life. A job, house, car, and a great family standing behind me. However, my life up until this point could only be described as one thing. Toxic. Yes, my childhood was great. I have the best parents a girl could ask for and the greatest friends that would do almost anything for me. However, that’s not the toxic part. That part of my life began when I was sixteen years old. When Alex Pierce came to live next door in a small one-bedroom house. Just seeing all his muscled up sexiness had me in fits each time I saw him. After having our one night of fun where he took my virginity, he moved away. I thought I would never see him again, and it broke me. However, I should've known that all things are not that simple. Of course, it was fourteen years down the road when it happened; in the tattoo parlor (Get Inked) that I work at of all places. From the moment, his hazel eyes met mine I knew I was in trouble. I remembered him. The way his muscles bounced as he ran up the street late at night. The thin layer of sweat that always, always coated his hot-as-f#@k body, and the feel of his skin underneath my fingers as he took me for the first and only time. He is a walking wet dream. One that up until now had disappeared. Now I find myself between a rock and a hard place. The rock being our son and the hard place being him… What the hell am I going to do?

    . .. . . from the first jam tart Nigel made with his mum standing on a chair trying to reach the Aga, through to what he is cooking now. He writes about how his cooking has changed from discovering the trick to whipping cream perfectly, to the best way to roast a chicken. He gives the tales behind the recipes and recalls the first time he ate a baguette in Paris and his first slice of buttercream-topped chocolate cake.These are the favourite recipes Nigel Slater cooks at home every day; the heart and soul of his cooking. Chapters include: the solace of soup, everyday dinners, a feast of green and a slice of tart. Then there are, of course, the ultimate puddings and cakes with sections on the silence of cheesecake and biscuits, friands and the brownie. This is Nigel Slater at his finest.

    Marked by the Manson murders, rampant inflation, and recession, the decade seemed to usher in a gritty and unsightly reality. The city of glitz and glamour overnight became the city of smog and traffic, a cultural and environmental wasteland.Los Angeles in the 1970s was a complex and complicated city with local cultural touchstones that rarely made it near the silver screen. In Los Angeles in the 1970s, LA natives, transplants, and escapees talk about their personal lives intersecting with the city during a decade of struggle. From The Doors’ John Densmore seeing the titular L.A. Woman on a billboard on Sunset, to Deanne Stillman’s twisting path from Ohioan to New Yorker to finally finding her true home as an Angeleno, to Chip Jacobs’ thrilling retelling of the “snake in the mailbox” attempted murder, to Anthony Davis recounting his time as “Notre Dame Killer” and USC football hero, these are stories of the real Los Angeles—families trying to survive the closing of factories, teens cruising Van Nuys Boulevard, the Chicano Moratorium that killed three protestors, the making of a porn legend.Los Angeles in the 1970s is a love letter to the sprawling and complicatedfabric of a Los Angeles often forgotten and mostly overlooked. Welcome to the Gold Mine.

    But he’s a dinosaur who belongs to another age. Detective Carmen Dehan has such a bad attitude that nobody at the precinct can stomach her. Captain Jennifer Cuevas wants them both out of the way and thinks they make a perfect pair. So she gives them the Cold Cases file – the cases nobody gives a damn about.She has no idea just how hot a cold case can get.Ten years back Nelson Hernandez and his four cousins were playing poker in a dive at Hunts Point. Somebody came in, blew them away and beheaded and castrated Nelson, leaving his head and his balls on the table. There was no shortage of suspects, the Jersey Mob, the Triads from Manhattan, or the 43rds own bent cop, Mick Harragan. But nobody was ever charged, and the night of the murder Mick Harragan went missing with Nelson’s wife, Maria.Now Stone and Dehan plan to find him – whatever the consequences…Book 2: Two Bare ArmsIt was November in New York. It was raining, it was cold and the trees all looked like skeleton’s hands. And Detective John Stone was having a problem with habeas corpus, because all there was of the body, was two bare arms. Two bare arms that somebody, twelve years ago, had put in a lock up in the East Bronx. What they had done with the rest of the woman, nobody knew. But as Stone and Dehan start to investigate, two things become clear: whoever killed the woman, wanted her arms to be found, as a boast, as a challenge. And that meant they were dealing with a psychopath – a serial killer.But who –the biker with a taste for beating up women? Or his best pal the Satanist and devotee of Crowley? Or perhaps the neurotic IT freak who spent his leisure hours surfing the net for porn? Or maybe somebody else…?One thing Stone understands clearly, whoever it is, is a master of misdirection…Book 3: Garden of The DamnedWhen the body of a tramp was found in a dumpster on Lafayette and Bryant in the Bronx, with no papers and no ID, the case was filed as unsolved – another victim nobody cared about, shot by some punk nobody cared about.That was twelve years ago.Then Detective Stone notices that the ‘tramp’ had a hundred dollar haircut and manicured nails. That makes him curious. He wants to know, who dresses a murder victim up as a tramp, then leaves them in full view in a dumpster? But the answers he gets are not the ones he expects, and before long their investigation leads Stone and Dehan to St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, and the darkest recesses of the human soul. It also leads them to some of the most powerful men in New York. Some, like Conor Hagan, head of the Irish Mob, are known criminals. But others are not… Stone’s problem is deciding which of them are just criminals, and which are truly evil. That is, until ghosts start appearing from Dehan’s past. Then things get complicated…Book 4: Let Us PreyIt seemed to be a cold case like any other. So much so that Stone and Dehan hadn’t even considered reviewing it – until private investigator Karl Baxter requested a copy of the police file. Then Stone got curious. Why did a second rate PI in the Bronx want to look into the case of a low life petty criminal found tied to a chair in his apartment, beaten and shot through the heart? And that question led to other questions, like, whose was second pool of blood on the floor? If there was a second victim, where was the body? Unfortunately, a chat with Baxter only raises more questions that threaten to drive Stone crazy: who is the mysterious Tamara Gunthersen? And what was the gig she did for the even more mysterious Geronimo dos Santos, back in 2015? At every turn the questions get deeper, and the women more tempting - and more dangerous. Until the strain on Stone and Dehan’s partnership threatens to make it snap.

    A man wakes up in the body of his MMO character 200 years after her defeat during an player-made event in the game, Exgate Online. Now, he's stuck in her body. But this isn’t a game, it’s real. With her reign long over, and her legacy one of fear, Lufas must journey through the world of Exgate, looking for answers, possible comrades, and all the monsters her “death” unleashed upon the world...

    People used to say things like that all the time, but none of them realized how true that saying would turn out to be. Life was precious, indeed. Each person in the room had lost someone or everyone… Her life was simply about getting through each awful day of high school without being bullied or picked on. Jane Livingston had a full life, just not one that included friends, boyfriends, school clubs, sports, dating, or anything else the typical teenager experienced. She kept her head down, avoided people, tried to make it out of the war zone (the high school hallways) without any new battle scars. His life was status, cute girls, cool cars and being the guy everyone else wanted to be at his high school. But there was more to Roman Lockwood than met the eye. He led a miserable existence until he realized the shy, picked-on poor girl he’d known for four years was a lot more than she appeared to be at first glance. There was more to Jane Livingston than met the eye, too.Unfortunately, Roman and Jane’s lives were about to intersect in a way neither would’ve guessed. Life was delicate, and they’d realize just how much so as their worlds changed from one day being typical high school students to the next when they were merely trying to survive the end of the world together, the end of normalcy, the end of humanity, the end of life itself, when it became: Apokalypsis.

    The best team in Major League Baseball-indeed, one of the best teams ever-the Sox won 108 regular season games and then romped through the postseason, going 11-3 against the three next-strongest teams baseball had to offer.As Boston Globe baseball reporter Alex Speier reveals, the Sox' success wasn't a fluke-nor was it guaranteed. It was the result of careful, patient planning and shrewd decision-making that allowed the Boston to develop a golden generation of prospects-and then build upon that talented core to assemble a formidable champion. Speier has covered the key players-Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, Jackie Bradley, Matt Barnes, and many others-since the beginning of their professional careers, as they rose through the minor leagues and ultimately became the heart of this historic championship squad. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews and years of reporting, Homegrown is the definitive look at the construction and ascendency of an extraordinary team.It is a story that offers startling insights for baseball fans of any team, and anyone looking for the secret to building a successful organization. Why do many highly touted prospects fail, while others rise out of obscurity to become transcendent? How can franchises help young players reach their full potential? And why, when teams invest tens of millions of dollars in young talent, are they so poor at providing them with a framework to thrive?Illustrated with eight pages of color photographs, Homegrown is the fascinating inside account of one of the greatest baseball teams ever, and a meditation on how to build a winner.

    In an odd pilgrimage through the mountains, the townsfolk of Coalton—from the ski bum to the urbanite—embark on a bizarre adventure that walks the line between comedy and tragedy. As the rednecks mount their sleds and the hippies snowshoe through the cedar forest, we see rivals converge for the weekend. While readers follow the characters on their voyage up and over the mountain, stereotypes of ski-town culture fall away. Loco, the ski bum, is about to start his first real job; Alison, the urbanite, is forced to learn how to wield an avalanche shovel; and Michael, the real estate developer, is high on mushroom tea.In a blend of mordant humour and heartbreak, Angie Abdou chronicles a day in the life of these industrious few as they attempt to conquer the mountain. In an avalanche of action, Angie Abdou explores the way in which people treat their fellow citizens and the landscape they love.

    Howe's theme is the exile of the spirit in this world and the painfully exciting, tiny margin in which movement out of exile is imaginable and perhaps possible. Her best poems are simultaneously investigations of that possibility and protests against the difficulty of salvation. Boston is the setting of some of the early poems, and Ireland, the birthplace of Howe's mother, is the home of O'Clock, a spiritually piquant series of short poems included in Selected Poems. The metaphysics and the physics of this world play off each other in these poems, and there is a toughness to Howe's unique, fertile nervousness of spirit. Her spare style makes a nest for the soul: Zero built a nest in my navel. Incurable Longing. Blood too— From violent actions It's a nest belonging to one But zero uses it And its pleasure is its own—from The Quietist

    All of them very hot. And very deadly.Jason was a little short on creds so he decided to get his mind scanned. It seemed like a good idea at the time: get paid to license a copy of your mind for use in one of the numerous machines that run society. What could go wrong?Turns out, a lot.Jason wakes up in the middle of the radioactive wasteland that was created fifty years ago when aliens destroyed half the Earth. He has no idea why he's here, or what the hell he's supposed to do. Worst of all, he's no longer human: his consciousness has been installed into the AI core of a state-of-the-art war machine, a mech with enough firepower to raze a small city.One would think the military wouldn't want to misplace something like that. Whoops.Hunted by mutated alien bioweapons, Jason travels the wasteland in an attempt to piece together what happened. Along the way he encounters a few abandoned war machines that also have no memory of their mission, machines that can't decide whether they want to join him or kill him. It doesn't help that in VR they all look like super hot women.Sometimes it's tough being a machine.When Jason and his new companions discover what they're truly capable of, however, everything changes.And not necessarily for the better.Warning: This book contains bloodthirsty alien mutants, angry robots, violence, swearing, and a harem full of beautiful machine women.