Titles in this growing series for middle school and high school students analyze novels and plays that are included in most schools' English Lit. curricula. Literature Made Easy books are more than plot summaries. They analyze characters, explain themes, and point out details that make each author's writing style unique. Each book also features "Mind Maps"--diagrams that summarize the work's most important details and serve as stimuli to help students focus their ideas for exams and term papers.

    Especially in Winter. Especially at Christmas.Edith Atkinson lives hand to mouth on the streets of London with her friends James and his sister Donna Walsh, selling songs, flowers and Christmas wreaths.But survival is never guaranteed for street rats, even at Christmas. Relying on their wits, their meagre sales and the kindness of strangers, the trio manage to keep body and soul together until a terrible circumstance forces a harsh decision. Now Edie finds herself alone facing dangers that she never knew of when she had James to protect her.When desperation drives Edie to try to find James and Donna again, she is dealt a further terrible blow. Everyone Edie has ever loved is lost to her and she is truly alone. On Christmas day, Edie loses all hope and is propelled towards a dreadful fate.Will this be Edith’s last Christmas? And what of James and Donna? Are they lost to her forever, or will fate step in and reveal a miracle that Edie could never have imagined?This heart warming clean and sweet historical romance from Nell Harte brings you to the wintery London streets of the Victorian era. For fans of Dilly Court, Rosie Goodwin and Tania Crosse.

    But what if you could have your computer do them for you?In "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python," you'll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand no prior programming experience required. Once you've mastered the basics of programming, you'll create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation to: Search for text in a file or across multiple filesCreate, update, move, and rename files and foldersSearch the Web and download online contentUpdate and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any sizeSplit, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFsSend reminder emails and text notificationsFill out online formsStep-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks.Don't spend your time doing work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you've never written a line of code, you can make your computer do the grunt work. Learn how in "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.""

    It provides comprehensive coverage of the subject from basic principles to state-of-art concepts and applications. The objective is to give the reader a sound understanding of the principles and the basis for applying them in a variety of both product and nonproduct situations. While statistical techniques are emphasized throughout, the book has a strong engineering and management orientation. Guidelines are given throughout the book for selecting the proper type of statistical technique to use in a wide variety of product and nonproduct situations. By presenting theory, and supporting the theory with clear and relevant examples, Montgomery helps the reader to understand the big picture of important concepts. Updated to reflect contemporary practice and provide more information on management aspects of quality improvement.

    What you need to learn to pass a Cisco certification exam such as CCNA and what you need to know to survive in the real world are two very different things. The strategies that this book offers weren 't on the exam, but they 're exactly what you need to do your job well.Network Warrior takes you step by step through the world of hubs, switches, firewalls, and more, including ways to troubleshoot a congested network, and when to upgrade and why. Along the way, you 'll gain an historical perspective of various networking features, such as the way Ethernet evolved. Based on the author 's own experience as well as those he worked for and with, Network Warrior is a Cisco-centric book, focused primarily on the TCP/IP protocol and Ethernet networks -- the realm that Cisco Systems now dominates. The book covers: The type of networks now in use, from LANs, WANs and MANs to CANsThe OSI Model and the layers involved in sending data Hubs, repeaters, switches, and trunks in practice Auto negotiation and why it 's a common problem in network slowdowns Route maps, routing protocols, and switching algorithms in Cisco routers The resilient Ethernet -- how to make things truly redundant Cisco 6500 multi-layer switches and the Catalyst 3750 switch Telecom nomenclature -- why it 's different from the data world T1 and DS3 Firewall theory, designing access lists, authentication in Cisco devices Server load balancing technology Content switch module in action Designing QOS and what QOS does not do IP design and subnetting made easy The book also explains how to sell your ideas to management, how networks become a mess as a company grows, and why change control is your friend. Network Warrior will help network administrators and engineers win the complex battles they face every day.

    The gold standard for attaining security is cryptography because it provides the most reliable tools for storing or transmitting digital information. Written by Niels Ferguson, lead cryptographer for Counterpane, Bruce Schneier's security company, and Bruce Schneier himself, this is the much anticipated follow-up book to Schneier's seminal encyclopedic reference, Applied Cryptography, Second Edition (0-471-11709-9), which has sold more than 150,000 copies. Niels Ferguson (Amsterdam, Netherlands) is a cryptographic engineer and consultant at Counterpane Internet Security. He has extensive experience in the creation and design of security algorithms, protocols, and multinational security infrastructures. Previously, Ferguson was a cryptographer for DigiCash and CWI. At CWI he developed the first generation of off-line payment protocols. He has published numerous scientific papers. Bruce Schneier (Minneapolis, MN) is Founder and Chief Technical Officer at Counterpane Internet Security, a managed-security monitoring company. He is also the author of Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World (0-471-25311-1).

    But as anyone who has ever opened up a spreadsheet packed with seemingly infinite lines of data knows, numbers aren't enough: we need to know how to make those numbers talk. In The Model Thinker, social scientist Scott E. Page shows us the mathematical, statistical, and computational models—from linear regression to random walks and far beyond—that can turn anyone into a genius. At the core of the book is Page's "many-model paradigm," which shows the reader how to apply multiple models to organize the data, leading to wiser choices, more accurate predictions, and more robust designs. The Model Thinker provides a toolkit for business people, students, scientists, pollsters, and bloggers to make them better, clearer thinkers, able to leverage data and information to their advantage.

    It is the first C++ book that actually demonstrates how to design large systems, and one of the few books on object-oriented design specifically geared to practical aspects of the C++ programming language. In this book, Lakos explains the process of decomposing large systems into physical (not inheritance) hierarchies of smaller, more manageable components. Such systems with their acyclic physical dependencies are fundamentally easier and more economical to maintain, test, and reuse than tightly interdependent systems. In addition to explaining the motivation for following good physical as well as logical design practices, Lakos provides you with a catalog of specific techniques designed to eliminate cyclic, compile-time, and link-time (physical) dependencies. He then extends these concepts from large to very large systems. The book concludes with a comprehensive top-down approach to the logical design of individual components. Appendices include a valuable design pattern Protocol Hierarchy designed to avoid fat inte

    Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner.In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.

    With an almost unlimited range of input and output add-ons, sensors, indicators, displays, motors, and more, the Arduino offers you countless ways to create devices that interact with the world around you.In Arduino Workshop, you'll learn how these add-ons work and how to integrate them into your own projects. You'll start off with an overview of the Arduino system but quickly move on to coverage of various electronic components and concepts. Hands-on projects throughout the book reinforce what you've learned and show you how to apply that knowledge. As your understanding grows, the projects increase in complexity and sophistication.Among the book's 65 projects are useful devices like:A digital thermometer that charts temperature changes on an LCD A GPS logger that records data from your travels, which can be displayed on Google Maps A handy tester that lets you check the voltage of any single-cell battery A keypad-controlled lock that requires a secret code to open You'll also learn to build Arduino toys and games like:An electronic version of the classic six-sided die A binary quiz game that challenges your number conversion skills A motorized remote control tank with collision detection to keep it from crashingArduino Workshop will teach you the tricks and design principles of a master craftsman. Whatever your skill level, you'll have fun as you learn to harness the power of the Arduino for your own DIY projects.

    You d be up to your neck in normal forms before you even had a chance to wade. When Michael J. Hernandez needed a database design book to teach mere mortals like himself, there were none. So he began a personal quest to learn enough to write one. And he did.Now in its Second Edition, Database Design for Mere Mortals is a miracle for today s generation of database users who don t have the background -- or the time -- to learn database design the hard way. It s also a secret pleasure for working pros who are occasionally still trying to figure out what they were taught.Drawing on 13 years of database teaching experience, Hernandez has organized database design into several key principles that are surprisingly easy to understand and remember. He illuminates those principles using examples that are generic enough to help you with virtually any application.Hernandez s goals are simple. You ll learn how to create a sound database structure as easily as possible. You ll learn how to optimize your structure for efficiency and data integrity. You ll learn how to avoid problems like missing, incorrect, mismatched, or inaccurate data. You ll learn how to relate tables together to make it possible to get whatever answers you need in the future -- even if you haven t thought of the questions yet.If -- as is often the case -- you already have a database, Hernandez explains how to analyze it -- and leverage it. You ll learn how to identify new information requirements, determine new business rules that need to be applied, and apply them.Hernandez starts with an introduction to databases, relational databases, and the idea and objectives of database design. Next, you ll walk through the key elements of the database design process: establishing table structures and relationships, assigning primary keys, setting field specifications, and setting up views. Hernandez s extensive coverage of data integrity includes a full chapter on establishing business rules and using validation tables.Hernandez surveys bad design techniques in a chapter on what not to do -- and finally, helps you identify those rare instances when it makes sense to bend or even break the conventional rules of database design.There s plenty that s new in this edition. Hernandez has gone over his text and illustrations with a fine-tooth comb to improve their already impressive clarity. You ll find updates to reflect new advances in technology, including web database applications. There are expanded and improved discussions of nulls and many-to-many relationships; multivalued fields; primary keys; and SQL data type fields. There s a new Quick Reference database design flowchart. A new glossary. New review questions at the end of every chapter.Finally, it s worth mentioning what this book isn t. It isn t a guide to any specific database platform -- so you can use it whether you re running Access, SQL Server, or Oracle, MySQL or PostgreSQL. And it isn t an SQL guide. (If that s what you need, Michael J. Hernandez has also coauthored the superb SQL Queries for Mere Mortals). But if database design is what you need to learn, this book s worth its weight in gold. Bill CamardaBill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.

    

    His wife, his best friends… all have died, leaving him to care for four grieving children. From the ruins of the past, he’s built a loving, tight-knit family – one he would die to protect. Paige Hall arrives in town, fleeing her own demons. With hardly a penny to her name, she struggles to build a future for herself and her son Jake. Babysitting the unruly Fairburn clan brings in her some much needed extra cash. Her new boss's rugged good looks don’t make it the worst job in the world either… But when he discovers a lost ruin deep in the desert, he uncovers a threat that may destroy every Shifter in the Southwest, setting the stage for a gathering of strong Alpha allies, the likes of which the Shifter world has rarely seen. Can this unlikely pair overcome their own fears to make a new start together, and to form the core of this new team? As they struggle to navigate their growing passion they are propelled down a dangerous path that will pull in not only the First Flight of Dragons, but also a strange mix of Alpha Shifter Wolves and Dragon and more, as well as their potential Mates. Will these Alphas and the ladies that are drawn to them be able to overcome their differences and each find a love that binds? Can they come together as a team and learn the secrets of the mysterious Aegis relic in time to save everything - and everyone - they hold dear, before it's too late...? This collection contains: Damaged Daddy Bear Alpha Protector Dragon Damaged Lost Wolf Captive to the Chimera Alpha Dragon Reborn There is also a short preview of the first story from the Burning Falls Shifters series... This shifter romance collection which contains no cheating, no cliffhangers and of course an HEA ; ). If you enjoy Terry Bolyryder, Harmony Raines, T.S. Joyce and Zoe Chant, well we think you will enjoy this ; )! Warning: This ebook contains mature themes and language and is meant for 18+ readers only.

    Danger. Destiny. Little did Renee know that this is what she would find at Gottfried Academy. Then she meets Dante, and discovers that the school has more than one dark secret. Intelligent, elusive and devastatingly gorgeous, most people can't decide whether they love, hate or fear him. All Renee know is that when they're together, she's never felt more alive - or more afraid. Life and death collide in this ebook bundle containing the first two books in Yvonne Woon's bestselling Dead Beautiful romance trilogy. "Raises gothic romance to dizzy new heights; a dazzling debut." - Pocklington Post on Dead Beautiful "If you loved Twilight you'll love this book...A welcome addition to the paranormal romance genre." - The Overflowing Library on Dead Beautiful "A fantastic and unique story with plenty of mystery, intrigue and romance." - Secret Lives of Fiction Lovers on Dead Beautiful "Romantic, suspenseful and...will leave readers wanting more." - Kirkus Reviews on Life Eternal "I would suggest holding onto your seat because you're about to fly off. Amazing." - Dark Readers on Life Eternal