Helfort's War Book 3: The Battle of Devastation Reef


Book Description

If he survives, hell just may freeze over. The savage Hammer Worlds are not only near invincible but almost certain to win their war to crush the Federated Worlds and control humanspace–unless the Feds can find and destroy their secret antimatter warhead facility. Only dreadnoughts, the lone Federated ships able to withstand antimatter missile attacks, can do the job, and only Lieutenant Michael Helfort has the skill to lead them. But skill may not be enough, because Helfort is more than the newly appointed captain: He’s a hero, and this means that his own senior officers want him to fail–and that the enemy’s kingpin wants him dead. Helfort’s early victories merely intensify everyone’s determination. No action is too low, no price too high, to bring him down–with treachery, or betrayal, or an offer he can’t refuse, even if it means selling out his own side.




Helfort's War Book 1: The Battle at the Moons of Hell


Book Description

“A planet-stomping space opera that bursts off the page like a tactical nuke.”—John Birmingham, author of Weapons of Choice The Hammer Worlds—the most brutal and oppressive interstellar government in the universe—have hijacked the Federated Worlds cruise ship Mumtaz, seizing its valuable terraforming cargo and damning its passengers to mining the moons of the prison planet known as Hell. For Junior Lieutenant Michael Helfort and the crew aboard deep space scout vessel 387, the mission is clear: infiltrate enemy territory, locate the Mumtaz, and rescue the prisoners. The odds are appalling, and the damage will probably be fatal, but victory is nonnegotiable–especially for Helfort, whose mother and sister were on the Mumtaz. And Michael Helfort will be damned if he’ll let his family rot on the moons of Hell.




Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet


Book Description

It was insane, it was suicidal, it was wrong— and by God he was going to do it. The Hammer Worlds have Helfort exactly where they want him. The ultimatum is brutal and precise. Unless the Federated hero surrenders, the Hammer World’s prisoner Anna Cheung—the only woman Helfort has ever loved—will be handed over to a bunch of depraved troopers to be violated, then executed by firing squad. Helfort can obey, or he can do what the crew proposes: sail his three frontline dreadnoughts into the Hammers’ stronghold Commitment Planet, liberate Anna and the rest of the POWs held captive there, and continue the fight in the jaws of the enemy. Helfort’s decision? Bring it on!




Helfort's War Book 2: The Battle of the Hammer Worlds


Book Description

He thought Hell was the worst they could throw at him. He was wrong. Back from tangling with the Hammer of Kraa, the most brutal, trigger-happy tyrants in humanspace, Junior Lieutenant Michael Helfort is assigned to the Federated Worlds heavy cruiser Ishaq, which is struggling to rise to the threat posed by a newly resurgent Hammer. Aboard the floundering ship, Helfort is coming to grips with a painful injury and the unpleasant truth that nobody likes a young hero–least of all senior officers. Without warning, the Ishaq and twenty-seven Fed merchant ships are blown apart in a horrific ambush, the first step in the Hammer’s master strategy to destroy the hated Federated Worlds. Michael and a pitiful remnant of the Ishaq’s crew escape the inferno. The Feds have no idea who’s behind the heinous attack, and the Hammer are determined to keep it that way, consigning the Ishaq’s survivors to a prison camp deep in the wilderness of the Hammer’s home planet. No one’s getting out alive to derail the Hammer’s lethal master plan–especially not the FedWorlds hero who so humiliated them on the battlefield. It’s payback time, and the Hammers intend to throw their entire space fleet into destroying Michael Helfort and the Federated Worlds. Too bad it won’t be enough.




The BetterPhoto Guide to Creative Digital Photography


Book Description

Master composition and design to take your photos from okay to wow You already own the most important photography tool—your creative eye. With this book, you’ll learn how classic design and composition principles can be applied to a wide range of photographic situations to create images with impact. Jim Miotke and Kerry Drager, both veteran photographers and experienced instructors, share time-tested design guidelines, composition techniques, even tips on when to break the rules, that will transform the way you make photographs.




Sebastian


Book Description

A rich new tapestry of worlds from the acclaimed author of the Black Jewels trilogy. Long ago, in a time that has faded from memory, a mother's tears forged the bridge that, ever after, connected the power of the living, ever-changing world to the human heart. A story set in the world of Ephemera, in which the link between the land and the human heart is unbreakable, and the world is nothing more or less than a reflection of the people's fears and desires. Once, the Eater of the World caused great destruction and horror until it was able to be contained; now that horror is about to be unleashed again. And those who create the landscapes may not be strong enough to resist the evil. Sebastian lives in the Den of Iniquity, a town for demons created by the most famous landscaper of all, Glorianna Belladonna. Sebastian is restless and yearning for more in his life, but until he comes to terms with his father's hate and with his own latent powers, Sebastian will be of no use to anyone. An emotionally powerful story about the difference between the heart's truth and one's expressed desires - sometimes the outcome of this difference is not at all what we want ...




Pawn in Frankincense


Book Description

In this fourth book in the legendary Lymond Chronicles, Francis Crawford of Lymond desperately searches the Ottoman empire for his kidnapped child. Somewhere within the bejeweled labyrinth of the Ottoman empire, a child is hidden. Now his father, Francis Crawford of Lymond, soldier of fortune and the exiled heir of Scottish nobility, is searching for him while ostensibly engaged on a mission to the Turkish Sultan. At stake is the political order of three continents, for Lymond's child is a pawn in a cutthroat game whose gambits include treason, enslavement, and murder. In that game's final move, which is played inside the harem of the Topkapi palace, Lymond will come face to face with his most implacable enemy and the dreadful ambiguities of his own nature. With a Foreword by the author.




Early Christian Lives


Book Description

Written between the mid-fourth and late sixth centuries to commemorate and glorify the achievements of early Christian saints, these six biographies depict men who devoted themselves to solitude, poverty and prayer. Athanasius records Antony's extreme seclusion in the Egyptian desert, despite temptation by the devil and visits from his followers. Jerome also shows those who fled persecution or withdrew from society to pursue lives of chastity and asceticism in his accounts of Paul of Thebes, Hilarion and Malchus. In his Life of Martin, Sulpicius Severus describes the achievements of a man who combined the roles of monk, bishop and missionary, while Gregory the Great tells of Benedict, whose Rule became the template for monastic life. Full of vivid incidents and astonishing miracles, these Lives have provided inspiration as models for centuries of Christian worship.




War and Turpentine


Book Description

Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017 A New York Times Top 10 Best Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year The life of Urbain Martien—artist, soldier, survivor of World War I—lies contained in two notebooks he left behind when he died in 1981. In War and Turpentine, his grandson, a writer, retells his grandfather’s story, the notebooks providing a key to the locked chambers of Urbain’s memory. With vivid detail, the grandson recounts a whole life: Urbain as the child of a lowly church painter, retouching his father’s work;dodging death in a foundry; fighting in the war that altered the course of history; marrying the sister of the woman he truly loved; being haunted by an ever-present reminder of the artist he had hoped to be and the soldier he was forced to become. Wrestling with this tale, the grandson straddles past and present, searching for a way to understand his own part in both. As artfully rendered as a Renaissance fresco, War and Turpentine paints an extraordinary portrait of one man’s life and reveals how that life echoed down through the generations. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout)




The Googlization of Everything


Book Description

In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling mission—"To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible"—and its much-quoted motto, "Don’t be evil." In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google—and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google’s global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the "evil" it pledged to avoid.