Global Shell Games


Book Description

Every year a staggering number of corporate service providers mask perpetrators of terrorist financing, corruption and illegal arms trades, but the degree to which firms flout global identification standards remains unknown. This book sheds new light on the sordid world of anonymous shell corporations through a series of field experiments.




Shell Games


Book Description

Masters of crime fiction immediately hailed Shell Games, which introduced a dynamic new hero and an exciting new author. Michael Connelly: "You know when you read this one that you are on to something good. Kirk Russell comes out of the gate with a story brimming with fresh characters and artful prose." John Lescroart: "Excellent...a compelling plot, fully realized characters, white-knuckle suspense, and unusual yet accessible settings." Ridley Pearson: "...a wonderfully unpredictable plot that holds the reader hostage to the very last page." And Jan Burke: "...a great read...it's hard to believe it's a first novel." Hero John Marquez runs an undercover unit of the California Department of Fish and Game and is taking on international abalone poachers, when he discovers that he's not finished with the ghosts and threats from his past as a drug agent. A completely original and entertaining eco-thriller and crime novel, now in paperback.




The Art of Game Design


Book Description

Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design - no technological expertise is necessary. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses - one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer - and will understand how to do it.




Shell Games


Book Description

In Shell Games, journalist Craig Welch delves into our nation's waters and wildlands in search of America's most unusual criminals. The resulting detective story is filled with butterfly thieves, bear poachers, shark-trafficking pastors—and a rogues' gallery of double-crossing crooks who get rich smuggling bizarre marine creatures. Puget Sound is home to the geoduck (pronounced "gooey duck"), the world's largest burrowing clam—a seafood delicacy worth millions on the international black market. Outlaw scuba divers pursue this prize while dodging cops, committing arson, and hiring hit men to eliminate their rivals. Detective Ed Volz has spent decades chasing fish and wildlife smugglers. Now, he and a team of federal agents are desperate to take down the most remarkable thief they've ever hunted: a darkly charming con man who works both sides of the law and calls himself the "Geoduck Gotti."




The Art of Game Design


Book Description

Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspectives as possible. Written by one of the world's top game designers, The Art of Game Design presents 100+ sets of questions, or different lenses, for viewing a game’s design, encompassing diverse fields such as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, puzzle design, and anthropology. This Second Edition of a Game Developer Front Line Award winner: Describes the deepest and most fundamental principles of game design Demonstrates how tactics used in board, card, and athletic games also work in top-quality video games Contains valuable insight from Jesse Schell, the former chair of the International Game Developers Association and award-winning designer of Disney online games The Art of Game Design, Second Edition gives readers useful perspectives on how to make better game designs faster. It provides practical instruction on creating world-class games that will be played again and again.




Shell Game


Book Description

She hit the New York Times list with Bone by Bone. Now her repackaged backlist will fly off the shelves. When a legendary magic trick goes horribly awry on national TV, detective Kathleen Mallory knows the gruesome death won't be the last. For misdirection is the heart of all magic-and perfect crimes.




The Shell Game


Book Description

Within the recent explosion of creative nonfiction, a new type of form is quietly emerging, what Brenda Miller calls "hermit crab essays." The Shell Game is an anthology of these intriguing essays that borrow their structures from ordinary, everyday sources: a recipe, a crossword puzzle, a Craig's List ad. Like their zoological namesake, these essays do not simply wear their borrowed "shells" but inhabit them so perfectly that the borrowed structures are wholly integral rather than contrived, both shaping the work and illuminating and exemplifying its subject. The Shell Game contains a carefully chosen selection of beautifully written, thought-provoking hybrid essays tackling a broad range of subjects, including the secrets of the human genome, the intractable pain of growing up black in America, and the gorgeous glow residing at the edges of the autism spectrum. Surprising, delightful, and lyric, these essays are destined to become classics of this new and increasingly popular hybrid form.




The Shell Game


Book Description

September Eleventh . . . war in Iraq . . . turmoil in the Middle East . . . an impending war with Iran. They have one thing in common: oil. And the world is running out. The Shell Game is a thrilling novel that faces the end of oil and the next big attack on American soil. This fictional tale resonates with chilling facts from real-life informants in the oil industry and the U.S. government, piecing together the terrifying truth about a nation addicted to oil. The tale opens in 2007 as the CIA plans a nuclear attack on an American city, blaming the deaths of millions of Americans on Iran and inciting a retaliatory strike that will place the U.S. in control of Iran's oil resources. Five years later, petroleum geologist Ashley "Ace" Futrell discovers that the world's oil supply is rapidly nearing its end. When his wife - a former national security advisor - is suddenly murdered, Ace finds himself hurtling down a rabbit's hole that leads to the brink of World War III.




Shell Games


Book Description

Set against a backdrop of murder, intrigue, and industrial labor conflict in the early twentieth century pearl button industry, Shell Games graphically portrays one of the most important battles in the fight for safe and humane working conditions. Filtered through the thoughts and emotions of Pearl McGill, a woman who stood heroically against the injustices destroying the lives of so many around her in the shops and factories, this conflict vividly comes to life and underscores many of the concerns contemporary workers still encounter.




BattleTech: Shell Games


Book Description

STRENGTH VS. HONOR For more than a decade, the Republic of the Sphere’s army hid in silence behind the mysterious, impregnable Wall of Fortress Republic. But now the Wall has come down, and Paladin Max Ergen, commander of Operation Eruptio, has his sights set on an invaluable prize. His target: Dieron, a Draconis Combine military district capital, a former Republic world harboring secrets from past wars. His troops have spent years training in isolation behind the Wall, and they are hungry for battle, ready to remind the Inner Sphere that the wounded Republic is still a force to be reckoned with. But Dieron is also the fortress of Warlord Kambei Okamoto, one of the Combine’s top military officials, and he and his Dieron Regulars are committed to holding the line and defending their home against Republic aggression, no matter the cost. Although the Republic may have surprise and numbers on their side, the Combine troops boast the strength of an impregnable redoubt—and the keen edge of their own unimpeachable honor. And when these two forces clash, the battle for Dieron will be a titanic one indeed…