Collision - Free Preview (first 4 chapters)


Book Description

From New York Times bestselling author Jeff Abbott... Ben Forsberg is a successful corporate consultant who is mourning the murder of his new bride. "Pilgrim" is a former CIA agent who is weary from the long years of living in the shadows. When Ben's business card turns up in the pocket of a dead hit man, Ben and Pilgrim, two complete strangers, realize that they've been framed in an elaborate setup. Unsure who to trust--and pursued by a brutal and vengeful killer--the unlikely partners have no choice but to work together to discover who's targeted them for elimination--and why. But with everything at stake, Ben has no idea that Pilgrim is harboring some shocking secrets of his own--secrets that will soon force Ben to confront the blurred line between best friends and bitter enemies.




Fear - Free Preview (first 4 chapters)


Book Description

From New York Times bestselling author Jeff Abbott... Everyone has a memory they'd like to forget. For federal witness Miles Kendrick, it's the shootout that left his best friend dead--and Miles a hunted and haunted man. While helping his psychiatrist with a mysterious favor, Miles stumbles upon an illegal research program that could free him--and millions of others with post-traumatic stress disorder--from crippling memories. But when his doctor ends up dead, Miles must run for his life from a murderous conspiracy that gives new meaning to the word "fear."




The Rumor -- Free Preview -- The First 11 Chapters


Book Description

A friendship is tested in this irresistible page-turner from New York Times bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand. Nantucket writer Madeline King could not have picked a worse time to have writer's block. Her deadline is looming, her bills are piling up, and inspiration is in short supply. Madeline's best friend Grace, is hard at work transforming her garden into the envy of the island with the help of a ruggedly handsome landscape architect. Before she realizes it, Grace is on the verge of a decision that will irrevocably change her life. Could Grace's crisis be Madeline's salvation? As the gossip escalates, and the summer's explosive events come to a head, Grace and Madeline try desperately to set the record straight--but the truth might be even worse than rumor has it.




Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book One: The Lightning Thief


Book Description

The #1 New York Times Bestseller | Now a series on Disney+ 12-year-old Percy Jackson discovers he is the son of Poseidon in the opener to the hilarious, fast-paced adventure fantasy series for young readers ages 10 and up The eBook edition of the first book in Rick Riordan’s thrilling series, filled with magic, mythology, and plenty of monsters Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school again—he can't seem to stay out of trouble. Is he supposed to stand by while a bully picks on his scrawny best friend? Or not defend himself when his teacher turns into a monster and tries to kill him? Mythical creatures seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy's Greek mythology textbook and into his life. What’s worse, he's angered a few of them: Zeus's master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect. Percy and his friends Grover the satyr, and Annabeth, the demigod daughter of Athena, must find and return Zeus's stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. They travel cross country to the gates of the Underworld in Los Angeles, facing a host of enemies determined to stop them. Withmillions of copies and over 10 years spent on the New York Times bestseller list, Percy has also become a movie, a Broadway musical, and now a Disney+ series. He continues to find fans in classrooms and libraries across the world.




The Culture Code


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Talent Code unlocks the secrets of highly successful groups and provides tomorrow’s leaders with the tools to build a cohesive, motivated culture. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG AND LIBRARY JOURNAL Where does great culture come from? How do you build and sustain it in your group, or strengthen a culture that needs fixing? In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world’s most successful organizations—including the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six, IDEO, and the San Antonio Spurs—and reveals what makes them tick. He demystifies the culture-building process by identifying three key skills that generate cohesion and cooperation, and explains how diverse groups learn to function with a single mind. Drawing on examples that range from Internet retailer Zappos to the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade to a daring gang of jewel thieves, Coyle offers specific strategies that trigger learning, spark collaboration, build trust, and drive positive change. Coyle unearths helpful stories of failure that illustrate what not to do, troubleshoots common pitfalls, and shares advice about reforming a toxic culture. Combining leading-edge science, on-the-ground insights from world-class leaders, and practical ideas for action, The Culture Code offers a roadmap for creating an environment where innovation flourishes, problems get solved, and expectations are exceeded. Culture is not something you are—it’s something you do. The Culture Code puts the power in your hands. No matter the size of your group or your goal, this book can teach you the principles of cultural chemistry that transform individuals into teams that can accomplish amazing things together. Praise for The Culture Code “I’ve been waiting years for someone to write this book—I’ve built it up in my mind into something extraordinary. But it is even better than I imagined. Daniel Coyle has produced a truly brilliant, mesmerizing read that demystifies the magic of great groups. It blows all other books on culture right out of the water.”—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Option B, Originals, and Give and Take “If you want to understand how successful groups work—the signals they transmit, the language they speak, the cues that foster creativity—you won’t find a more essential guide than The Culture Code.”—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better




Flipped


Book Description

A classic he-said-she-said romantic comedy! This updated anniversary edition offers story-behind-the-story revelations from author Wendelin Van Draanen. The first time she saw him, she flipped. The first time he saw her, he ran. That was the second grade, but not much has changed by the seventh. Juli says: “My Bryce. Still walking around with my first kiss.” He says: “It’s been six years of strategic avoidance and social discomfort.” But in the eighth grade everything gets turned upside down: just as Bryce is thinking that there’s maybe more to Juli than meets the eye, she’s thinking that he’s not quite all he seemed. This is a classic romantic comedy of errors told in alternating chapters by two fresh, funny voices. The updated anniversary edition contains 32 pages of extra backmatter: essays from Wendelin Van Draanen on her sources of inspiration, on the making of the movie of Flipped, on why she’ll never write a sequel, and a selection of the amazing fan mail she’s received. Awards and accolades for Flipped: SLJ Top 100 Children’s Novels of all time IRA-CBC Children’s Choice IRA Teacher’s Choice Honor winner, Judy Lopez Memorial Award/WNBA Winner of the California Young Reader Medal “We flipped over this fantastic book, its gutsy girl Juli and its wise, wonderful ending.” — The Chicago Tribune “Van Draanen has another winner in this eighth-grade ‘he-said, she-said’ romance. A fast, funny, egg-cellent winner.” — SLJ, Starred review “With a charismatic leading lady kids will flip over, a compelling dynamic between the two narrators and a resonant ending, this novel is a great deal larger than the sum of its parts.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred review




Competing in the Age of AI


Book Description

"a provocative new book" — The New York Times AI-centric organizations exhibit a new operating architecture, redefining how they create, capture, share, and deliver value. Now with a new preface that explores how the coronavirus crisis compelled organizations such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Verizon, and IKEA to transform themselves with remarkable speed, Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani show how reinventing the firm around data, analytics, and AI removes traditional constraints on scale, scope, and learning that have restricted business growth for hundreds of years. From Airbnb to Ant Financial, Microsoft to Amazon, research shows how AI-driven processes are vastly more scalable than traditional processes, allow massive scope increase, enabling companies to straddle industry boundaries, and create powerful opportunities for learning—to drive ever more accurate, complex, and sophisticated predictions. When traditional operating constraints are removed, strategy becomes a whole new game, one whose rules and likely outcomes this book will make clear. Iansiti and Lakhani: Present a framework for rethinking business and operating models Explain how "collisions" between AI-driven/digital and traditional/analog firms are reshaping competition, altering the structure of our economy, and forcing traditional companies to rearchitect their operating models Explain the opportunities and risks created by digital firms Describe the new challenges and responsibilities for the leaders of both digital and traditional firms Packed with examples—including many from the most powerful and innovative global, AI-driven competitors—and based on research in hundreds of firms across many sectors, this is your essential guide for rethinking how your firm competes and operates in the era of AI.




Enlightenment Now


Book Description

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.




Real-Time Rendering


Book Description

Thoroughly revised, this third edition focuses on modern techniques used to generate synthetic three-dimensional images in a fraction of a second. With the advent of programmable shaders, a wide variety of new algorithms have arisen and evolved over the past few years. This edition discusses current, practical rendering methods used in games and other applications. It also presents a solid theoretical framework and relevant mathematics for the field of interactive computer graphics, all in an approachable style. The authors have made the figures used in the book available for download for fair use.:Download Figures. Reviews Rendering has been a required reference for professional graphics practitioners for nearly a decade. This latest edition is as relevant as ever, covering topics from essential mathematical foundations to advanced techniques used by today’s cutting edge games. -- Gabe Newell, President, Valve, May 2008 Rendering ... has been completely revised and revamped for its updated third edition, which focuses on modern techniques used to generate three-dimensional images in a fraction of the time old processes took. From practical rendering for games to math and details for better interactive applications, it's not to be missed. -- The Bookwatch, November 2008 You'll get brilliantly lucid explanations of concepts like vertex morphing and variance shadow mapping—as well as a new respect for the incredible craftsmanship that goes into today's PC games. -- Logan Decker, PC Gamer Magazine , February 2009




Modern Robotics


Book Description

A modern and unified treatment of the mechanics, planning, and control of robots, suitable for a first course in robotics.