Eleven-year-old Vasya Gergiev suffers at the hands of monsters both in the house where he is held prisoner and on the streets of Prague. Taken from a Polish orphanage by Tomek Markovic, a minor player in a major child prostitution operation across Europe, Vasya undergoes the physical and mental anguish of sexual abuse.Undercover police officer Yuri Seminkov has managed to infiltrate the child smuggling organization headed by Markovic, his task being to arrange the purchase and sale of ‘mer...

For Alex and Carolyn, a simple swimming getaway after football trials turns into a parents’ worst nightmare, when their younger son, nine-year-old Jordan, disappears.Within hours, they realise he’s become the victim of some bizarre kidnapping plot, one without a ransom demand, just a strange note apologizing for the boy being taken.When Jordan is not quickly found, Alex and Carolyn’s family begins to disintegrate. Most of the blame is placed on their twelve-year-old son, Joshua, who was su...

Alexei has a secret—a secret that makes him different from every other boy in his class. Very different, in fact, from any child he has ever seen—boy or girl. So far, nobody else knows his secret. Not even his foster parents or his sisters.While he has managed to keep it that way for more than a year, it is starting to get more and more difficult to keep his secret with each passing day. More especially now that he is into a new school year at a new and very strict school, a school where h...

Although there are as many answers to the question of how organizations can gain competitive advantage in today's global economy as there are books and experts, one lesson seems very clear: traditional answers and resources are no longer sufficient. This seminal book offers not only an answer regarding how to gain competitive advantage through people, but also a brand new, untapped human resource--psychological capital, or simply PsyCap. Generated from both the positive-psychology movement...

"The one [and only] book on implementing microservices with a real-world, cover-to-cover example you can relate to." - Christian Bach, Swiss ReMicroservices in Action is a practical book about building and deploying microservice-based applications. Written for developers and architects with a solid grasp of service-oriented development, it tackles the challenge of putting microservices into production.Purchase of the print book includes a ...

"An indispensable reference work for anyone studying either the U-boat campaign or WW2 at sea . . . copiously illustrated, fascinating—and harrowing."—Navy NewsDuring the Second World War over 250 Allied warships from a dozen navies were sent to the bottom by German U-boats. This ground-breaking study provides a detailed analysis of every sinking for which source material survives from both the Allied and the German sides, resulting in detailed treatment of the fat...

This unique textbook provides an introduction to statistical inference with network data. The authors present a self-contained derivation and mathematical formulation of methods, review examples, and real-world applications, as well as provide data and code in the R environment that can be customised. Inferential network analysis transcends fields, and examples from across the social sciences are discussed (from management to electoral politics), which can be adapted and applied to a panor...

Clean Break is a British theatre company set up in 1979 by two women in prison. It exists to tell the stories of women with experience of the criminal justice system and to transform women's lives through theatre.Over 40 years, Clean Break has commissioned some of the most progressive and brilliant women writers to write ground-breaking plays, alongside developing the writing skills of the women they work with in its London studios and in prisons. This is a collection of monologues...

What is it like to be an Enneagram Five?Instagram poet and artist Morgan Harper Nichols reflects on this question in a spirit of honest self-assessment and with a desire for personal and spiritual growth. She draws wisdom from the deep wells of counseling and spirituality using illustrations from both Scripture and life. Each of these forty readings concludes with an opportunity for further engagement such as a prayer, a spiritual practice, or a reflection question...

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:-More than two thirds of Americans are overweight, over one third are obese.-43% of Americans are projected to be obese in 10 years time.-Nearly one third of children and adolescents are overweight, 17% are obese.-Since 1980, obesity prevalence among children and adolescents has almost tripled.-Between 1988 and 2008 the prevalence of obesity among adults increased at all income and education...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.Portland Power Couple Jed and Lexi Miller, rabid birders, hatch a scheme that turns wealthy friends into a crime syndicate known as the Cardinal 14, illegally importing endangered bird species for their private aviaries. For her 50th birthday, Lexi wants a Cherry-Throated Tanager, a bird she saw as a kid on a trip to a remote Brazilian rainforest with her anthropologist father. The cost for one of only 25 in existence is $1 million. Jed...

Since the early 2000s, Disney Channel has been dominated by original live-action programming popular among tween girls. The shows’ successes rely not only on their popularity among girl audiences, but also on the development of star personae by girl performers, such as Raven-Symoné, Miley Cyrus, and Selena Gomez. In addition, these programs and their performers have spawned lucrative media and merchandising franchises for the Walt Disney Company. This book includes analyses of this Disney ...