In 1999, "Refactoring" revolutionized design by introducing an effective process for improving code. With the highly anticipated " Refactoring to Patterns ," Joshua Kerievsky has changed our approach to design by forever uniting patterns with the evolutionary process of refactoring.This book introduces the theory and practice of pattern-directed refactorings: sequences of low-level refactorings that allow designers to safely move designs to, towards, or away from pattern implementations. Using code from real-world projects, Kerievsky documents the thinking and steps underlying over two dozen pattern-based design transformations. Along the way he offers insights into pattern differences and how to implement patterns in the simplest possible ways.Coverage includes: A catalog of twenty-seven pattern-directed refactorings, featuring real-world code examples Descriptions of twelve design smells that indicate the need for this book s refactorings General information and new insights about patterns and refactoringDetailed implementation mechanics: how low-level refactorings are combined to implement high-level patterns Multiple ways to implement the same pattern and when to use each Practical ways to get started even if you have little experience with patterns or refactoring"Refactoring to Patterns" reflects three years of refinement and the insights of more than sixty software engineering thought leaders in the global patterns, refactoring, and agile development communities. Whether you re focused on legacy or greenfield development, this book will make you a better software designer by helping you learn how to make important design changes safely and effectively. "

    While equipping you with the minimum of theory, GUI expert Jeff Johnson presents the reality of interface design in an entertaining, anecdotal, and instructive way. * Updated to reflect the bloopers that are common today, incorporating many comments and suggestions from first edition readers. * Takes a learn-by-example approach that teaches how to avoid common errors. * Covers bloopers in a wide range of categories: GUI controls, graphic design and layout, text messages, interaction strategies, Web site design -- including search, link, and navigation, responsiveness issues, and management decision-making. * Organized and formatted so information needed is quickly found, the new edition features call-outs for the examples and informative captions to enhance quick knowledge building. * Hundreds of illustrations: both the DOs and the DON'Ts for each topic covered, with checklists and additional bloopers on www.gui-bloopers.com.

    

     It includes easily applicable design thinking techniques, such as - HMW questions, - personas, - mind mapping - empathy mapping, - affinity diagram, - value-proposition canvas, - storyboard, - cause-and-effect diagram, - brainstorming, - brain dumps, - reverse brainstorming, - benchmarking, - journey map, and - prototyping. A real-life case study is used to introduce design thinking methodology and techniques in a more practical way to a broad range of practitioners, including - project managers and IT specialists, - innovation teams, - marketing professionals and brand managers, - product managers, - designers, - consultants, - strategic planning experts, - entrepreneurs, - C-level executives, and architects. The book explains how artful thinking perspectives can be applied to enhance design thinking skills, such as - creativity, - thinking out of the box, - empathy, - visual thinking, - observation, - asking the right questions, and - pattern recognition. It also describes how to apply design thinking and lean and agile methodologies together.

    Grab a blanket and curl up with your new favorite big cats.SCORCH Drew Maddox has to find his fated mate.Drew Maddox has been given orders by the king of the jaguar tribe. It’s time to start building the Maddox empire. There is only one name on his list, a woman betrothed to him at birth. It's time to find her. Francesca March has no idea about her heritage or where she came from. Adopted by humans, she has lived a lonely existence as the only she-panther she knows. Long ago she gave up on happy endings, heroes, and trust. She’s never let anyone get close enough to learn her secret. That is until she meets a stranger on the side of the road. Drew knows time is running out. He has to convince Francesca to marry him in less than five days. But with his own secrets haunting him he struggles with how much to tell her without losing her. Can Francesca face the reality of what it truly means to be a she-panther, or will Drew keep her in the dark to fulfill his duty? Sparks fly. The sheets burn down. And every time they touch a flame ignites. Will fate keep them together, or tear them apart? SACRIFICE The chase is on.Josh Bauer expects his mate to be excited to see him, but when he shows up in her small town, she slams the door in his face.Tessa Cunningham has been an independent she-panther, running her own business and taking care of her mother. The last thing she wants is to let go of the control she has over her life.The more Josh chases her, the more she resists his sexy charm.Josh has an obligation to fulfill, but he learns that being a mate is worth sacrificing everything—even if that means losing Tessa.SEIZE Sometimes you have to take what you want.Donovan may come from a royal line of jaguar shifters, but he’s serving another king now. His mission is to uncover the plot for a shifter war. He never imagined guarding his tribe’s territory would put him in the path of she-panther, Caroline Addison. Caroline knows she only has a few weeks until her fated mate surfaces, so she takes a last minute vacation to escape. Only, she never knew she would find the one man she’d always been looking for.When Donovan and Caroline decide nothing can keep them apart, not even a shifter war, they realize there is a cost. And the price may be too high to pay. SHIFT Loyalties are tested, a war is upon them, and love knows no bounds.Case Maddox has finally found his mate.But the shifter war keeps brewing.Can he save his Tribe, and the woman he loves?Cadence is trying to find her place as a human in a world of shifters and as the mate of the jaguar king, but she's struggling. One night her world comes crashing down around her and she has to decide if she can even go on.Captured and held hostage. The only way for Cadence to survive may be to pledge herself to Case's ultimate rival.But Cadence has a secret that may be the key to her survival.

    Download both ebooks for a special low price. Birdman Five bodies, all young women, all ritualistically murdered and dumped near the Millennium Dome in southeast London. A post-mortem examination tells the police they’re dealing with a sexual serial killer. Detective Inspector Jack Caffery knows he has only limited time before the sadistic killer strikes again. The Treatment In a residential neighbourhood in south London, a husband and wife are found tied up and imprisoned in their house. Their young son is missing. Detective Jack Caffery is called in to investigate. When the child’s body is found, he attempts to unravel the motive and sequence of events, especially when he discovers that a tragedy in his own past is indirectly connected to the murder.

    Reveals True Story of Kill Or Be Killed Shootouts In The Real Wild West.Recently discovered memoir by one of the Old West's most feared (but virtually unknown today) gunfighter's and lawmen puts you behind a pair of Colt .45 six-guns and immerses you in the real life man-on-man fast draw shootouts, hell-bent-for-leather outlaw chases and lead dodgin' narrow escape in the Real Old West.If you've ever wondered what it was like to strap on a six-gun and have a face-off-in-the-street gunfight where only the fastest gunslinger walks away - - then rare eyewitness account of what it was like to live and die in the Real Old West is a must read.

    Five are connected to a series of old unsolved disappearances. But the sixth is fresh. What’s worse, two of the victims—including the most recent—were killed with Cork’s gun. As Cork searches for answers, he must dig into his own past and that of his father, a well-respected man who harbored a ghastly truth. Northwest Angle: Amid the wreckage of a violent storm, Cork O’Connor and his daughter Jenny discover a body. Nearby, a baby boy lies hungry and dehydrated but still very much alive. Powerful forces in pursuit of the child follow them to the isolated Northwest Angle, where it’s impossible to tell who is friend or foe. Trickster’s Point: Cork O’Connor sits deep in the wilderness with his good friend Jubal Little—favored to become Minnesota’s first Native American elected governor—who is slowly dying with an arrow through his heart. But this is no hunting accident. The arrow is one of Cork’s. As he works to clear his name and track the killer who set him up, only Cork knows that his complex, passionate, ambitious friend was also capable of murder.

    These are the Savage North Chronicles. Over 2,000 pages of superhuman abilities, harrowing adventures, and heartwarming moments that will give you all the feels. Savage North Chronicles Reading Order:1. THE DARKEST WINTERElle - Haunting shadows are nothing new to Elle St. James, she’s been running from them all her life. But since the outbreak spread from the lower forty-eight, new monsters lurk in the darkness. After Elle wakes from the fever, capable of horrific deeds, she fears she’s one of them.Jackson - After the world goes mad and takes his family with it, Jackson Mitchell tosses aside his badge and decides a bottle of bourbon and the depths of despair are preferable to any semblance of living. All of that changes, however, when a group of young survivors are in dire need of his help and Jackson sacrifices his blissful oblivion in order to keep them safe.Brought together under the worst possible circumstances, Elle and Jackson must face the inexplicable realities of the new world. Their past lives are over, and the arctic isn’t all that’s savage anymore.1.5 THE LONGEST NIGHT, prequel novellaLife seemed complicated for Sophie when she had teen pregnancy and her squeaky-clean reputation as the mayor’s daughter to worry about. Now, everything is changed. Bloodcurdling screams pierce the night air and lurid memories haunt feverish dreams.Alex is the new kid from the wrong side of the tracks, and it’s all he can do to keep his head down until his eighteenth birthday when he can leave his life in foster care behind him. But Alex doesn’t realize he and the quiet girl from class with lonely, blue eyes are fated in the most impossible way imaginable.2. MIDNIGHT SUNThe six of them survived the Alaskan winter after the Virus devastated the North, but summer in the land of the midnight sun is fraught with a brutality of its own—long, grueling days, mosquito-ridden evenings, and woods with lurking shadows more dangerous than grizzlies.2.5. FADING SHADOWSCrazed survivors and Ability-hungry madmen aren’t the only repercussions of the Virus, and when a new, unforeseen danger threatens the townspeople, Kat must embrace her unharnessed Ability she’s been trying for years to avoid.3. UNTAMEDBeau has learned to embrace his Ability, but when he loses his best friend, Beau’s world crumbles all over again. Brokenhearted, he embarks on a transformative journey of self-discovery, fraught with danger and adventure, and most unexpectedly, love. But the scars left in the wake of the Virus run deeper than Beau can possibly imagine.4. UNBROKENThea fears the moment she’ll have to use her telekinesis again. After all, the mere flick of her wrist in the heat of the moment could prove fatal for someone she loves, and she already has enough blood on her hands to last her a lifetime. So, Thea jumps at the chance to shrug off the shadows of her youth and prove to herself she’s unbroken.Hunter and Thea have never gotten along, and three weeks together could be Hunter’s undoing...just not in the way he’s expecting.

    The authors draw upon extensive industry and classroom experience to explain modern practices of chip design. The introductory chapter covers transistor operation, CMOS gate design, fabrication, and layout at a level accessible to anyone with an elementary knowledge of digital electornics. Later chapters beuild up an in-depth discussion of the design of complex, high performance, low power CMOS Systems-on-Chip.

    Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic.These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner

    Instead of black bag drops in Bangkok, she now spends her time leading a young Girl Scout troop. But Merry's new simple life turns not-so-simple when an enemy agent shows up dead at scout camp. Suddenly Merry is forced to deal with her former life in order to preserve her future one. It doesn't help matters that the CIA sends in her former, sexy handler to investigate…or that the hot new neighbor across the street turns out to be the local detective in charge of her case. And when Merry is forced to take on a roommate in the voluptuous form of a turned KGB agent/bimbo, things become trickier than wet work in Waukegan or cookie sales in the spring. Nothing in the CIA or Girl Scouts' training manuals has prepared her for what comes next… Mint Cookie Murder (book #2) Ex-CIA agent turned suburban scout leader, Merry Wrath, is just trying to live a normal, quiet life. But all that goes out the window when a convicted traitor (who’s inconveniently not in his prison cell) dies on her doorstep, and an obese cat, who bears a disturbing resemblance to Hitler, decides to move in. To make things worse, it’s time for the annual troop cookie sale, her new boyfriend’s old college flame shows up to win him back, and someone’s shooting at Merry in the frozen foods section of the grocery store. Is the assassin after her or the cat? Is Riley, her hot former CIA handler, hitting on her? Is Rex, her boyfriend, going to dump her? Will she sell enough cookies to take her troop to Winter Sniper Camp? If Merry doesn't find answer to these questions soon, it may be too late! Marshmallow S'More Murder (book #3) What could be better for former CIA agent turned Girl Scout leader Merry Wrath than taking twelve little girls to Washington DC for a bit of summer fun? Almost anything. Unfortunately, between her girls terrorizing the Secret Service and "accidentally" destroying the hotel pool, Merry has her hands full with this troop. And when her former handler, Riley, is kidnapped Merry has to turn to an old friend from her spy days and her parents, Senator and Mrs. Czrgy, to help her wrangle the troop and rescue the man she once briefly called her boyfriend. Armed only with a perpetually AWOL parent, stalked by a runaway King Vulture, and plagued by a mysterious death from her past, Merry's mayhem weaves a wacky trail from moonshiners in the Blue Ridge Mountains, to the bowels of the Japanese Embassy, to the ductwork of the International Spy Museum. With things heating up with current boyfriend, Detective Rex Ferguson, can Merry decipher clues from her past to find ex¬-boyfriend Riley and finally solve the murder of Yakuza boss, Midori Ito, before the target on her back is filled with lead?

    This winner of the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award features Stanley Yelnats, a kid who is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnats. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the warden makes the boys "build character" by spending all day, every day, digging holes five feet wide and five feet deep. It doesn't take long for Stanley to realize there's more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake: the warden is looking for something. Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment-and redemption..

    DavenheimThe Adventure of the “Western Star”The Tragedy at Marsdon ManorThe Million Dollar Bond RobberyThe Adventure of the Cheap FlatThe Mystery of the Hunter’s LodgeThe Kidnapped Prime MinisterThe Adventure of the Egyptian TombThe Adventure of the Italian NoblemanThe Case of the Missing WillThe Chocolate BoxThe Veiled LadyThe Lost MineThe Affair at the Victory BallThe Adventure of the Clapham CookThe Cornish MysteryThe Adventure of Johnnie WaverlyThe Double ClueThe King of ClubsThe Lemesurier InheritanceThe Plymouth ExpressThe Submarine PlansThe Market Basing MysteryThe Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

    But Trey knows his duty, protect the female at all cost. Then he meets Gabby and finds she is his mate. Now he has to find out where she came from, what she is running from and then convince her to stay. That may be easier said than done when he finds she has no knowledge of the shifter world.Gabby found a place to stay. Something deep inside her insists the area is safe, but Gabby has been on the run for five years, she knows no place is safe for long. They always find her. She doesn't know how, she doesn't know who, or even why, she just knows, they will find her. On top of that worry, she is sure she is going crazy, she has no explanation for the events occurring around her. And the wolves, they keep showing up around her cabin. Are they hungry?Can Trey convince Gabby he is her mate, and she is not going crazy? Can they find out who is chasing Gabby? Join Gabby and Trey as they search for answers and find more than anyone expects. TRINA Trina is done hiding. Jaden is done hunting. Desperate to find a mate, but longing to track down her sister, Trina's journey begins. She had no idea the turn her life would take once her twin left home. The events that led up to her family going into hiding haven't changed. Because female shifters are rare, to be procured at all cost, Trina and her family remain on the run from those who would detain her. However, she is determined that her freedom is her own. She belongs to no one until she and her wolf both agree upon a mate. But the list of people after her has just gotten larger.Jaden has no doubt the woman in saw in the dojo that day is his mate. For months now his wolf has been tearing up his insides in a need to claim her. The problem is, all traces of the girl disappeared the day they met. After exhausting every possible resource he has to find her, a glimmer of hope appears in the news in the form of wedding photos. Enraged to find his mate married to another he vows to make her a widow.Will Jaden cross the wrong people in his journey to get his mate?Can Trina stay free long enough to find Gabby?Will their journeys bring them together or destroy any chance of them finding each other? KATE They call her a guest. She knows she’s a prisoner. With females being so scarce some feel they should be collected and parceled out to males who deserve them. Others think they should be protected and given the choice of who they will call mate.Kate watched as her guardians were murdered. The killers don’t know she saw them. Claiming to rescue her they take her to a guarded location. They made one serious error, Kate isn’t what she seems. She is so much more.The only thing saving her from an unwelcome mating bond is her scent. The rogues believe her to be still underage. She isn’t.Now, in a desperate race against time, Kate must find a way to free herself and the others before anyone finds out her secret. She will have all the help she needs- if they can only locate her.But one male could change everything when he stumbles upon the prison where Kate is being held.