In just three years, CEO Robbie Case has grownCore Communications, a data technology company,from 30 people to over 5,000. Now a $20 billioncompany made legendary by its sudden success,Core is based on a technology no other companycan come close to copying, a revolutionarybreakthrough known as drawing blood from amainframe.” And Robbie, its 35-year-old CEO, isacclaimed worldwide for his vision, leadership andwealth.Exce...

In a near future where climate change has severely affected weather and agriculture, the North End of an unnamed city has long been abandoned in favor of the neighboring South End. Aside from the scavengers steadily stripping the empty city to its bones, only a few thousand people remain, content to live quietly among the crumbling metropolis. Many, like the narrator, are there to try to escape the demons of their past. He spends his time observing and recording the decay around him, attem...

In Tacoma, a circle of friends finds their leader in Will Wilson. Together, they drink, they get high, they take girls to the woods--but Will Wilson keeps pushing toward darker extremes. As the descent gets steeper, there is a way out: another friend's fishing boat off the coast of Alaska. There is life after Tacoma. But the choice has to be made, and some friendships feel more than inevitable. SOMETHING PRETTY, SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL is the new novel from Eric Barnes, author of SHIMMER. eric...

Ever since he was a little boy, Rusty Stratford always believed he was destined for great things. Now, with his 40th birthday fast approaching, Rusty is starting to suspect he might only be destined for mediocre things. A bachelor with few family members and fewer friends, life hasn't quite panned out the way Rusty hoped it would, and he's beginning to resign himself to being alone and unimportant. All that changes the night he meets the precocious ghosts of his unborn twin daughters, Isab...

Grandpa Steiner offends everyone. He doesn't mean to. It just happens. During his youth, his attitudes were commonplace and perfectly acceptable. As the conventions of society change around him, and more and more of his opinions become derided as obsolete, Grandpa Steiner decides to start a blog, to vent his frustrations upon the Internet. Little does Grandpa Steiner know, when a race of space aliens secretly decide to obliterate mankind, they regard his blog as the only redeeming quality ...

Legend has it, an ancient walking staff, known simply as "The Wand", first presented itself to old widow McCreadle, along with The Three Rules. 1. You may use the magic wand for 3 days. 2. You may only use it in your profession. 3. You must secretly bequeath it to an anonymous stranger. As the power of The Wand is entrusted from one Los Angeles resident to the next, randomly falling into the hands of noble and corrupt citizens alike, the city is brought to both bliss and ruin. But, when th...

InkShard is a compendium of articles and social commentary, written by author Eric Muss-Barnes, between 2004 and 2018. Revised and expanded, this volume assembles various topics culled from posts on social media websites to the scripts of video essays. Carefully compiled from the finest of his journalistic work, InkShard represents the definitive collection of Eric’s most compelling dissertations and beloved editorials.

Deep inside, every child knows, there is far more magic and enchantment, hidden in the corners of the earth, than adults are willing to admit. Somewhere out there, mysterious coastlines are plundered by cursed pirate ships, woodlands shroud kingdoms and castles you can’t find on any map, and deep in Old West mountain passes, gunfighters duel on forgotten stagecoach roads. All kids instinctively sense these wondrous places still exist, and if you muster the courage to venture over just the ...

Representing an innovative approach to the analysis of the economic geography of capitalism, this stimulating book develops an analytical political economic framework. Part 1 provides an introductory overvi9ew fo some of the fundamental debates about price, profits and value in economics which underlie the analytical political economy approach. Part 2 analyzes the special role of space and transportation in commodity production and the spatial organization of the economy that this implies....

"The biggest strength of the book is its pedagogic design, which will appeal to new entrants in the field but also leaves space for methodological debates... It is well suited for use on general courses but it also involves far more than an introduction and is full of theoretical insights for a more theoretically advanced audience."- Economic Geography Research GroupIn the last fifteen years economic geography has experienced a number of fundamental...

Three semi-autobiographical plays by Victor Pemberton telling the story of one family across the 20th centuryNovelist and playwright Victor Pemberton was best known for scripting Doctor Who and working on Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock. His many plays for BBC Radio included The Slide, Kill the Pharaoh. and this three-part family saga, a love story inspired by the lives of his own parents and starring Nerys Hughes, Nigel Anthony, Sheila...

Some years—1789, 1929, 1989—change the world suddenly. Or do they? In 2020, a pandemic converged with an economic collapse, inequalities exploded, and institutions weakened. Yet these crises sprang not from new risks but from known dangers. The world—like many patients—met 2020 with a host of preexisting conditions, which together tilted the odds toward disaster. Perhaps 2020 wasn’t the year the world changed; perhaps it was simply the moment the world finally understood its deadly diagnos...