The Cruise is OverHaylee was more confident designing starships than raising an autistic child. Now she just wants a relaxing vacation with her family. But when Earth falls to an alien armada, she knows life will never be the same again.Les was just a cruise ship captain. Now, he must rise up and become something greater, if he is to keep his crew and passengers alive.Braxton never wanted to leave the space navy, but now, taking a cruise is the only ...

A blind spaceship pilot.Cops and maintenance personnel in wheelchairs.Taking on bad guys with only one leg or no arms.It's not what you are that makes you something special. It's who you choose to be.Seventeen stories about people who rise above anything that tries to stop them, even their own limitations.With stories by Stephanie Barr, Misha Burnett, J. A. Busick, Adam David Collings, Steve Curry, Scott G. Gibson, Joyce Hertzoff, Jane Jago, Clarence Jen...

A Christmas Cruise in SpaceThis is newly-promoted Glen Price's first time as cruise director. He wants to make his mark and do something special for the passengers. But his plan to project a giant Christmas star above the ship turns disastrous when the ship suddenly loses power. Can Glen salvage what's left of the event and still make it a meaningful Christmas?A science-fiction Christmas short story set in the "Jewel of The Stars" universe.

We’re not on a cruise, anymoreAvaline just wanted a perfect honeymoon, but when an alien invasion of Earth forced her ship into unexplored space, she fights with everything she has to hold onto her dream. So why isn’t her new husband fighting with her?A series of lootings turn violent, prompting security chief Jaylen Banks to investigate organised crime on the ship, while first officer Maya Rice leads a supply mission to a mysterious earth colony that shoul...

Tourists on a cruise. Stranded in an alien battlegroundWhen their warp drive mysteriously stops working, the luxury cruise ship Jewel of The Stars becomes easy pickings for humanity’s enemy – the Dracnor. And there may be an enemy agent on board.Before the fall of Earth, a madman made doomsday predictions on Captain Les Miller’s doorstop. How did he know the invasion was coming? Now that same man has been spotted walking the promenade. Les must sto...

What if you couldn't save someone you cared about?Flynn Porter is a teenage boy with the ability to rewind time. His opportunity for infinite retries in life makes him feel like a god. So when his friend and crush Carissa dies unexpectedly, he is convinced he can save her.But life is more complicated than he realises.

A strange alien world offers respite to tourists turned refugees, but will they destroy this sanctuary?Two weeks into their exile, the crew of Jewel of the Stars detect an unexplored habitable planet. Captain Les Miller seizes the chance to let the passengers walk under an open sky.When the local inhabitants—a winged humanoid species called the Rippesh—fall critically ill in large numbers, Doctor Rashona Clarke must find a cure. Chief Engineer Sarah McLaugh...

Bridges and Sustainability: Best practice for design, maintenance, and replacement provides a comprehensive evaluation of sustainability topics related to the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of bridges. It addresses critical challenges of achieving sustainability in bridge engineering, offering valuable insights and practical guidance.Given their longevity, achieving sustainability for bridges involves tackling climate change, ensuring resilience, and cutti...

Certain moments in British Romantic poetry and art depict a state from which the attributes of existence – time and space, subject and object, language and visuality – have fallen away, leaving a domain prior to the world and to thought, the condition of mere existence. As Blank Splendour demonstrates, poems by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Clare as well as paintings by Turner evoke a condition that transpires in a time without time, a life without life.David Collings ...

Some pursue heroism, others are thrust into it.Superheroes. They live among us, some hidden in plain sight, others as well-known celebrities. All carry a burden and a purpose: to destroy the evils of this world and keep the common man safe from harm.But evil is a strong thread that refuses to be cut. How much sacrifice will be demanded to destroy that which seeks to destroy us, and are there enough heroes to do the job?Experience a collection of sho...

This book contains an Open Access chapter.Over the past two decades, the field of talent management has established itself as a key area of management practice and research. Emerging from the practitioner literature in the 1990s, the research evidence bases truly materialised in the late 2000s onwards. The launch of the EIASM Workshop on Talent Management in 2012 coincided with this surge in research interest, and we are now in a critical time in the evolution of o...

It is a winter's evening in the historic university town of Cambridge at the end of the nineteenth century. In college rooms, a group of friends gathers. A fire flickers in the grate and, silently, Montague Rhodes James places a lighted candle by his chair, shuffles his papers, and begins to read... So the classic ghost stories of M. R. James were presented to the world. Now, in this definitive 4-part recording, are collected all of James's published tales of 'pleasing terror'. The 6 stori...