What if your plus one could be the one...? Cara has officially run out of men. Her most recent dates have gone from bad to worse, and when her dating app informs her there is no one left in her area to choose from, she is at a dead end. But with a summer of events ahead of her, she needs to find a solution, fast; someone to keep her company at the never-ending weddings, family gatherings and gender reveal parties that she can't face going to alone. So when she meets handsome, confident, Millsy on a night out she may be in luck. They could not be more different in personality, but he too has a summer of events ahead and is desperate to get his family off his back about finding a 'nice girl'. What if they made a pact to help each other out and be a plus one for the summer? Just as friends, of course...? A brand new romantic comedy from bestseller Portia MacIntosh, perfect for fans of Zara Stoneley, Sophie Ranald and Mhairi McFarlane. Praise for Portia MacIntosh: 'A hilarious, roaringly fun, feel good, sexy read. I LOVED it!' Holly Martin 'A feel good, funny and well written book. I read it in 2 days and enjoyed every second!' A.L. Michael 'This is a heartwarming fun story, perfect for several hours of pure escapism.' Jessica Redland 'A perfect summer escape sort of a book, it transported me to San Valentino, to some excellent Italian food, a large number of porn star martinis, and some simply wonderful scenes. I enjoyed every last moment of this book.' Rachel Gilbey What readers are saying about The Plus One Pact: 'This is a fantastic book and one that I simply adored from beginning to end.' 'Such a fun, witty, uplifting and relatable romantic read.' 'Once again Portia delivers a story that leaves you wanting more, I always feel as if I know the characters just as if they were my own friends. Lots of laughs along the way and a few twists and turns make this an ideal read.' 'Highly recommend and a must addition to your bookshelf!' 'The pages turned themselves and I found myself wanting more and more once I got to the end. This is a perfect romance novel to sit and escape into but I warn you - you'll not want to put it down until it's finished.' 'Honestly this book was so lovely and from a different angle and I love it when stories change it up and become so original!'

In Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming, Kishonna L. Gray interrogates blackness in gaming at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability. Situating her argument within the context of the concurrent, seemingly unrelated events of Gamergate and the Black Lives Matter movement, Gray highlights the inescapable chains that bind marginalized populations to stereotypical frames and limited narratives in video games. Intersectional Tech explores the ways that the multiple identities of black gamers some obvious within the context of games, some more easily concealed affect their experiences of gaming. The normalization of whiteness and masculinity in digital culture inevitably leads to isolation, exclusion, and punishment of marginalized people. Yet, Gray argues, we must also examine the individual struggles of prejudice, discrimination, and microaggressions within larger institutional practices that sustain the oppression. These ""new"" racisms and a complementary colorblind ideology are a kind of digital Jim Crow, a new mode of the same strategies of oppression that have targeted black communities throughout American history. Drawing on extensive interviews that engage critically with identity development and justice issues in gaming, Gray explores the capacity for gaming culture to foster critical consciousness, aid in participatory democracy, and effect social change. Intersectional Tech is rooted in concrete situations of marginalized members within gaming culture. It reveals that despite the truths articulated by those who expose the sexism, racism, misogyny, and homophobia that are commonplace within gaming communities, hegemonic narratives continue to be privileged. This text, in contrast, centers the perspectives that are often ignored and provides a critical corrective to notions of gaming as a predominantly white and male space.

What if your plus one could be the one...? Cara has officially run out of men. Her most recent dates have gone from bad to worse, and when her dating app informs her there is no one left in her area to choose from, she is at a dead end. But with a summer of events ahead of her, she needs to find a solution, fast; someone to keep her company at the never-ending weddings, family gatherings and gender reveal parties that she can't face going to alone. So when she meets handsome, confident, Millsy on a night out she may be in luck. They could not be more different in personality, but he too has a summer of events ahead and is desperate to get his family off his back about finding a 'nice girl'. What if they made a pact to help each other out and be a plus one for the summer? Just as friends, of course...? A brand new romantic comedy from bestseller Portia MacIntosh, perfect for fans of Zara Stoneley, Sophie Ranald and Mhairi McFarlane. Praise for Portia MacIntosh: 'A hilarious, roaringly fun, feel good, sexy read. I LOVED it!' Holly Martin 'A feel good, funny and well written book. I read it in 2 days and enjoyed every second!' A.L. Michael 'This is a heartwarming fun story, perfect for several hours of pure escapism.' Jessica Redland 'A perfect summer escape sort of a book, it transported me to San Valentino, to some excellent Italian food, a large number of porn star martinis, and some simply wonderful scenes. I enjoyed every last moment of this book.' Rachel Gilbey What readers are saying about The Plus One Pact: 'This is a fantastic book and one that I simply adored from beginning to end.' 'Such a fun, witty, uplifting and relatable romantic read.' 'Once again Portia delivers a story that leaves you wanting more, I always feel as if I know the characters just as if they were my own friends. Lots of laughs along the way and a few twists and turns make this an ideal read.' 'Highly recommend and a must addition to your bookshelf!' 'The pages turned themselves and I found myself wanting more and more once I got to the end. This is a perfect romance novel to sit and escape into but I warn you - you'll not want to put it down until it's finished.' 'Honestly this book was so lovely and from a different angle and I love it when stories change it up and become so original!'

Learn to develop, test, and deploy your Spring Boot distributed application and explore various best practices. Key Features Build and deploy your microservices architecture in the cloud Build event-driven resilient systems using Hystrix and Turbine Explore API management tools such as KONG and API documentation tools such as Swagger Book DescriptionSpring is one of the best frameworks on the market for developing web, enterprise, and cloud ready software. Spring Boot simplifies the building of complex software dramatically by reducing the amount of boilerplate code, and by providing production-ready features and a simple deployment model. This book will address the challenges related to power that come with Spring Boot's great configurability and flexibility. You will understand how Spring Boot configuration works under the hood, how to overwrite default configurations, and how to use advanced techniques to prepare Spring Boot applications to work in production. This book will also introduce readers to a relatively new topic in the Spring ecosystem - cloud native patterns, reactive programming, and applications. Get up to speed with microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud. Each chapter aims to solve a specific problem or teach you a useful skillset. By the end of this book, you will be proficient in building and deploying your Spring Boot application. What you will learn Build logically structured and highly maintainable Spring Boot applications Configure RESTful microservices using Spring Boot Make the application production and operation-friendly with Spring Actuator Build modern, high-performance distributed applications using cloud patterns Manage and deploy your Spring Boot application to the cloud (AWS) Monitor distributed applications using log aggregation and ELK Who this book is forThe book is targeted at experienced Spring and Java developers who have a basic knowledge of working with Spring Boot. The reader should be familiar with Spring Boot basics, and aware of its benefits over traditional Spring Framework-based applications.

This book examines how cloud-based services challenge the current application of antitrust and privacy laws in the EU and the US. The author looks at the elements of data centers, the way information is organized, and how antitrust, competition and privacy laws in the US and the EU regulate cloud-based services and their market practices. She discusses how platform interoperability can be a driver of incremental innovation and the consequences of not promoting radical innovation. She evaluates applications of predictive analysis based on big data as well as deriving privacy-invasive conduct. She looks at the way antitrust and privacy laws approach consumer protection and how lawmakers can reach more balanced outcomes by understanding the technical background of cloud-based services.

Social media and new social facilities have made it necessary to develop new media design processes with different communication strategies in order to promote sustainable communication. Visual communication emphasizes messages that are transmitted through visual materials in order to effectively communicate emotions, thoughts, and concepts using symbols instead of words. Social networks present an ideal environment for utilizing this communication technique. New Media and Visual Communication in Social Networks is a pivotal scholarly publication that examines communication strategies in the context of social media and new digital media platforms and explores the effects of visual communication on social networks, visual identity, television, magazines, newspapers, and more. Highlighting a range of topics such as consumer behavior, visual identity, and digital pollution, this book is essential for researchers, practitioners, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and educators.