Building distributed applications is difficult enough without having to coordinate the actions that make them work. This practical guide shows how Apache ZooKeeper helps you manage distributed systems, so you can focus mainly on application logic. Even with ZooKeeper, implementing coordination tasks is not trivial, but this book provides good practices to give you a head start, and points out caveats that developers and administrators alike need to watch for along the way....

The second spellbinding adventure in Benjamin Read and Laura Trinder's magical Midnight Hour series!'A fantastic magical adventure featuring a cast of Ghibli-esque characters, a feisty heroine and a hedgehog. I loved it.' M.G. LEONARD, author of BEETLE BOY on book 1'Fans of Nevermoor will love this' THE BOOKSELLER on book 1'I haven't enjoyed this kind of caper so much since

More than a decade has passed since the events of Porcelain: A Gothic Fairy Tale, and Child has become Lady. Inheritor of all of Uncle’s secrets and wealth, she has continued his work, becoming equally as isolated in her quest to refine the Porcelain and put right past mistakes. With the Porcelain more sought after than ever, Lady comes to the attention of a ruthlessly ambitious General who desires inhuman soldiers for the war effort and won’t take no for an answer. Other, more human, prob...

Set within a time of myth and fairy tale, Briar follows the story of Princess Layka, who seeks an end to the curse that keeps her shut off from the world. Trapped for years behind the enchanted barrier of the briar, she awaits her one true knight, who has been tasked with the quest to break the curse and set her free. By Benjamin Read & Chris Wildgoose, creators of the acclaimed Porcelain: A Gothic Fairy Tale, Briar is inspired by European myth and folklore. It subverts the fairy tale trad...

The first spellbinding adventure in Benjamin Read and Laura Trinder's magical Midnight Hour series!'A fantastic magical adventure featuring a cast of Ghibli-esque characters, a feisty heroine and a hedgehog. I loved it.' M.G. LEONARD, author of BEETLE BOY'Fans of Nevermoor will love this' THE BOOKSELLER'I haven't enjoyed this kind of caper so much since Harry Potter*'* ...

A Brother and Sister leave our world and its rules behind, journeying into legend through the Butterfly Gate, where every step they take will come at a price. Butterfly Gate follows the story of two siblings who, after throwing themselves headlong into another world, must face the brutal reality that lies beyond and find their place amidst an empire built after a revolution against the Gods. An ongoing, episodic, SF odyssey, Butterfly Gate is also a silent comic, conveying the story purely...

Most social science studies of local organizations tend to focus on "civil society" associations, voluntary associations independent from state control, whereas government-sponsored organizations tend to be theorized in totalitarian terms as "mass organizations" or manifestations of state corporatism. Roots of the State examines neighborhood associations in Beijing and Taipei that occupy a unique space that exists between these concepts.Benjamin L. Read views the work of t...

The third and final adventure in Benjamin Read and Laura Trinder's magical Midnight Hour series!'A fantastic magical adventure featuring a cast of Ghibli-esque characters, a feisty heroine and a hedgehog. I loved it.' M.G. LEONARD, author of BEETLE BOY on book 1'Fans of Nevermoor will love this' THE BOOKSELLER on book 1'I haven't enjoyed this kind of caper so much ...

Set within a world that’s a magical echo of our own, Porcelain is the story of Child, an urchin, who leaves behind the cold streets of a snowy city when she climbs the high wall into the Porcelain Maker’s garden. The Porcelain Maker discovers Child trespassing but, amused by her audacity, he offers her the chance to stay. He’s a lonely man, kept company only by his alchemically-powered automata, and he and Child form an unlikely friendship. Shut off from the world beyond the wall, Child wa...

The third and final adventure in Benjamin Read and Laura Trinder's magical Midnight Hour series!Emily and Tarkus are back again in one last adventure to save the Midnight Hour. Their old adversary the Nocturne is determined to destroy their beloved magical world and everyone in it. With the added peril of the villainous Hunt, whose mission it is to Make Britain Dark Again, the barrier between worlds begins to glitch and fade. Emily might just have a plan to save all worlds, but she...

Emily needs to work out why magic is leaking from the Midnight Hour - but her shape-shifting Pooka relatives and a terrifying haunting aren't making things easy, not to mention the fact that she's supposed to be grounded. Officer-in-training Tarkus and pet hedgehog Hoggins are on hand to help - but if they can't work out what's going wrong, it will be the end of the midnight world ...

Field research - leaving one's home institution in order to acquire data, information or insights that significantly inform one's research - remains indispensable, even in a digitally networked era. This book, the first of its kind in political science, reconsiders the design and execution of field research and explores its role in producing knowledge. First, it offers an empirical overview of fieldwork in the discipline based on a large-scale survey and extensive interviews. Good fieldwor...