The refereed proceedings of the International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing and Applications, ISPA 2003, held in Aizu, Japan in July 2003.

The 30 revised full papers and 9 revised short papers presented together with abstracts of 4 keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on applications on Web-based and intranet systems, compiler and optimization techniques, network routing, performance evaluation of parallel systems, wireless communication and mobile computing, parallel topology, data mining and evolutionary computing, image processing and modeling, network security, and database and multimedia systems.

"Brett Riley's COMANCHE is the best western-horror-thriller-ghost story-PI novel ever written."-Tod Goldberg, author of Gangsterland Like a cylinder in a six-shooter, what goes around, comes around. In 1887 near the tiny Texas town of Comanche, a posse finally ends the murderous career of The Piney Woods Kid in a hail of bullets. Still in the grip of blood-lust, the vigilantes hack the Kid's corpse to bits in the dead house behind the train depot. The people of Comanche rejoice. Justice has been done. A long bloody chapter in the town's history is over. The year is now 2016. Comanche police are stymied by a double murder at the train depot. Witnesses swear the killer was dressed like an old-time gunslinger. Rumors fly that it's the ghost of The Piney Woods Kid, back to wreak revenge on the descendants of the vigilantes who killed him. Help arrives in the form of a team of investigators from New Orleans. Shunned by the local community and haunted by their own pasts, they're nonetheless determined to unravel the mystery. They follow the evidence and soon find themselves in the crosshairs of the killer.

A mysterious stranger, looking for a change in scenery, discovers a small Mormon community where a grown-up Fay Larkin has been taken against her will. Like its predecessor, The Rainbow Trail highlights the oppression of women within their religion. Following the events of Riders of the Purple Sage, polygamy has become a hidden practice among fundamentalist Mormons. Instead of living publicly, they've built an isolated village of sealed wives reserved for church elders. Fay Larkin, the adopted daughter of heroine Jane Withersteen, suddenly falls victim to the secret practice. This coincides with the arrival of John Shefford, a failed minister who's hot on the trail of Fay and her captors. The Rainbow Trail is a romance western driven by social commentary. It's a compelling story with a beautiful setting and engaging characters. Grey delivers a worthy follow-up to his most celebrated and culturally relevant work. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Rainbow Trail is both modern and readable.

A unique cocktail of personal memoir, cultural criticism and Hollywood history by the one and only Quentin Tarantino. The long-awaited first work of nonfiction from the author of the number one New York Times bestselling Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: a deliriously entertaining, wickedly intelligent cinema book as unique and creative as anything by Quentin Tarantino. In addition to being among the most celebrated of contemporary filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive. For years he has touted in interviews his eventual turn to writing books about films. Now, with CINEMA SPECULATION, the time has come, and the results are everything his passionate fans - and all movie lovers - could have hoped for. Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT's and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest practitioners of the artform ever.

A nameless rider plods through the desert toward a dusty Western town shimmering on the horizon. In his latest novel, Robert Coover has taken the familiar form of the Western and turned it inside out. The lonesome stranger reaches the town -- or rather, it reaches him -- and he becomes part of its gunfights, saloon brawls, bawdy houses, train robberies, and, of course, the choice between the saloon chanteuse or the sweet-faced schoolmistress whom he loves. Throughout, Robert Coover reanimates the Western epics of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, infusing them with the Beckettian echoes, unique comic energy, and exuberant prose that have made him one of the most influential figures in contemporary American literature. It is, as The Washington Post Book World put it, "a fast-forward, ribald vision of the American West, a free-for-all that slides from surreal to ridiculous like a circus-goer's grin through a funhouse mirror ... a heady frisson, a salon entertainment, one helluva ride."

An old elk hunter has set up an isolated camp in the Big Horn Mountains of northeastern Wyoming a week ahead of the opening of rifle season for a little "quiet time" before the rest of his "family" shows up. Alois, Ace, Gronsky and his dog Dozer are sucked into events that swirl around their idyllic setting, as teams of suspicious strangers set up three camps in separate locations in the vicinity. Not only are the strangers unfriendly, they are downright hostile to anyone snooping around. Little wonder; they plan to shoot down Air Force One on its way back from Jackson Wyoming. Five Jihadists are broken out of the new prison in nearby Wesley Montana and given the equipment they believe will shoot down the president's plane. The jihadists are purposely set up for failure. Air Force One goes down. The "home grown" Wyoming Militia, with collusion from corrupt law enforcement, wipe out the Jihadists, and the government manipulated media tells the world that the POTUS (the President of the United States) and his family are dead while those responsible have been destroyed. Ace has rescued his kidnapped Indian friend from the Jihadists and they witness the shoot-down of Air Force One and two escort fighter jets. They also witness the deployment of the president's escape pod and the pilot ejected from one of the fighters. If things were not bad enough already, Ace, his friend, Billy Black Stone, and fighter pilot Melanie, Yaz, Yasulevicz, must protect the first family from the teams bent on finishing the job, and battle winter conditions in the mountains of northern Wyoming. Despite the snow, things really heat up during the climax of this tale.

Setting out to tell the story of a mysterious cowboy -- a stranger in town with a terrible secret -- Christine Montalbetti is continually sidetracked by the details that occur to her along the way, her CinemaScope camera focusing not on the gunslinger's grim and determined eyes, but on the insects crawling in the dust by his boots. A collection of the moments usually discarded in order to tell even the simplest and most familiar story, "Western" presents us with the world behind the clich?s, where the much-anticipated violence of the plot is continually, maddeningly delayed, and no moment is too insignificant not to be valued. Montalbetti's daring theft of movie technique and subversion of a genre where women are usually relegated to secondary roles -- victims, prostitutes, widows, schoolmarms -- makes Western a remarkable wake for the most basic of American mythologies.

A deadly disease Months after Inara leaves Serenity, Mal and the crew finally learn the reason for her sudden departure: she is dying of a terminal illness. It is Kiehl s Myeloma, a form of cancer that s supposedly incurable, and Inara has very little time left. A disreputable scientist Through their shock and despair, rumors of a cure reach the crew. Expert Esau Weng is said to have developed a means to treat Inara s condition, but he has been disgraced and incarcerated for life on a notorious Alliance prison planet. An infamous prison On the planet of Atata, inmates are abandoned with no guards and left to survive as best they can. What s more, terraforming the planet did not take properly, so the world is a frozen wasteland. To save Inara, the Serenity crew must infiltrate the prison .

Dark magic heats up the holiday season as two sizzling New York Times bestselling authors team up for a seductive Christmas collection! Magic is in the air this Christmas--but is it good or evil? In this sexy yuletide anthology from two of the hottest names in paranormal romance, animal instincts take over... In Christine Feehan's "Rocky Mountain Miracle," the sparks flying on a remote ranch could melt all the snow in Wyoming when an injured horse brings together a rugged womanizer with a dangerous reputation and an irresistible veterinarian rumored to cast spells. But does her magic touch work on animals and men? A small-town woman is shocked when the injured wolf she takes back to her kennel turns into a man in Susan Sizemore's "A Touch of Harry." The only thing more difficult to hide than his stunning escape is the burning desire she feels for this stranger who brings out her wild side.

Finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

'It's as if Herman Melville had navigated the American West, instead of the ocean.' The Nation

Håkan Söderström is a man who has become a legend. Giant in size, rumoured to be bloodthirsty and fearless, he is known simply as the Hawk .

But behind this myth is a tale of longing and survival. As a young man he is sent from Gothenburg with his brother Linus, to seek their fortunes in New York. In the chaos of the port, he is separated from Linus and finds himself instead on a ship bound for California. Determined to find Linus, Håkan sets out on a journey east, moving against the tide of history, experiencing the Gold Rush and its effects, encountering capitalists and colonialists, explorers and early scientists, and witnessing the formation of America and the betrayal of its dream.

This is the story of a stranger in a strange new land, looking out onto the vast landscape in confusion, fear and wonder. As Håkan confronts desert and mountains, heat and ice, he is thrown between the threat of violence and devastating loneliness - all the while keeping the image of his brother, and the hope of companionship, in the distance.

'A gritty, dreamy anti-western western... Surreal, cerebral, and affecting beyond what I thought possible.' LitHub

"One of the most captivating novels of the year." - Washington Post NATIONAL BESTSELLER A Best Book of the Year: Bloomberg Boston Globe Chicago Public Library Chicago Tribune Esquire Kirkus New York Public Library New York Times Book Review (Historical Fiction) NPR's Fresh Air O Magazine Washington Post Publishers Weekly Seattle Times USA Today A Library Reads Pick An Indie Next Pick From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins comes another "literary miracle" (NPR)--a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century. An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula. Dubious of Gig's idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war? Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, The Cold Millions is a tour de force from a "writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors" (Boston Globe).

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living-and whom he does it for.

With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters-losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life-and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.

Welcome to Unforgiven, New Mexico, a small western town filled with heart, cowboys, and second chances! Lorelei West has spent her whole life taking care of those she's loved--and after her sister is killed in a car accident, Lorelei steps up to raise the niece she never knew existed. Even though she has a full-time job and is taking care of her sick mother, Lorelei is more than happy to welcome Sawyer into her life. But things change when an unexpected cowboy shows up in Unforgiven wanting to claim custody of Sawyer. When cattleman Reese St. James learns he has an orphaned niece, he heads down to Unforgiven to bring Sawyer home. But the more time Reese spends with Lorelei and Sawyer, he longs for the close family ties he's always wanted. However, convincing independent Lorelai to take a chance on him won't be easy.