A brilliantly funny story of what happens when a galactic princess moves in next door and almost brings about the end of the world. Exciting new fiction from the bestselling, award-winning author of My Brother is a Superhero. Gavin's got a new neighbour and she's really annoying. Niki follows him everywhere, bosses him about, and doesn't care that her parents will obliterate Earth with their galactic warships if she doesn't stop running away from them. Can Niki and Gavin sort out the alien despots (aka Mum and Dad) and save the planet? Possibly. Will they become friends along the way? Doubtful... 'David Solomons represents the best in contemporary comic writing for children' -- Guardian A hilarious new story from the author of My Brother Is a Superhero, winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the British Book Industry Awards Children's Book of the Year. Perfect for fans of David Baddiel and David Walliams. Read the My Brother is a Superhero series: My Brother Is a Superhero My Gym Teacher is an Alien Overlord My Evil Twin is a Supervillain My Arch-Enemy is a Brain in a Jar My Cousin is a Time-Traveller

Luke is a comic-mad eleven-year old who shares a treehouse with his geeky older brother, Zack. Luke' s only mistake is to go for a wee right at the wrong time. While he' s gone, an alien gives his undeserving, never-read-a-comic-in-his-life brother superpowers and then tells him to save the universe. Luke is massively annoyed about this, but when Zack is kidnapped by his arch-nemesis, Luke and his friends have only five days to find him and save the world...My Brother Is a Superhero was the winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2016.

Luke and his brother have swapped bodies by accident. Zack's got Luke's weird feet while Luke has Zack's SUPERPOWERS! Now he needs another world-threatening adventure to try them out. Could a family mini-break at Great Minds Leisure Park be his chance? Probably, because that's where his super-clever arch-enemy lurks, fermenting dastardly plans and bubbling gently...

'My Arch-Enemy Is a Brain In a Jar' is the fourth instalment of Luke's laugh-out-loud adventures. From the author of 'My Brother Is a Superhero', winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the British Book Industry Awards Children's Book of the Year, and 'My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord', winner of a Lollies Laugh Out Loud 2017 Book Award.

Luke is surprised to learn that his cousin is a time traveller. He s even more surprised when she tells him that the machines are becoming intelligent and he must help her stop them taking over the world. It couldn t come at a worse time Zack has decided to give up his superpowers and live life as a normal teenage nerd. So Luke must swallow his irritation and rise to the challenge yet again ...

My Cousin is a Time Traveller is the fifth instalment of Luke's laugh-out-loud adventures. From the author of My Brother Is a Superhero, winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the British Book Industry Awards Children's Book of the Year.

When Luke is confronted with Stellar, his superpowered twin from another dimension, he is highly suspicious. No one travels through time and space without a plan, and that plan is usually EVIL. So what does Stellar want? And why is he so UNBELIEVABLY IRRITATING? From his superhero hair to his rocket-powered shoes, Stellar is up to no good, and Luke must BRING HIM DOWN! My Evil Twin Is a Supervillain is the third instalment of Luke's laugh-out-loud adventures. From the author of My Brother Is a Superhero, winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the British Book Industry Awards Children's Book of the Year. Books don't come much funnier than these! Packed with heart and soul, this series is perfect for fans of David Baddiel and David Walliams. My Brother Is a Superhero My Gym Teacher is an Alien Overlord My Evil Twin is a Supervillain My Arch-Enemy is a Brain in a Jar My Cousin is a Time-Traveller

The definitive guide to modern Windows internals: new coverage of virtualization, file systems, boot, security, and more. For advanced computing professionals, this is the definitive up-to-date guide to how Windows core components behave "under the hood." Using it, experienced developers can build more powerful and scalable software, administrators can debug complex system and performance problems, and security researchers can harden their systems. This Seventh Edition is fully updated through the May 2021 (21H1/2104) updates to Windows 10 and Windows Server (2022, 2019, and 2016). It adds extensive content on Hyper-V, plus fully rewritten chapters on the boot process, new storage technologies, and Windows system and management mechanisms. As always, it delivers unparalleled insight based on insider access to Microsoft source code, with hands-on experiments using the latest debugging tools to show you Windows' internal behaviors firsthand. With Windows 11 introducing new user interface design elements that build upon the same core technologies as Windows 10, readers will be well-prepared for this new chapter of computing. Leading Windows insiders help you: * Discover system mechanisms for serving device drivers and applications, including ALPC, Object Manager, synchronization, WNF, WoW64, and the processor execution model * Explore underlying hardware architecture, including trap processing, segmentation, and side channel vulnerabilities * Understand Windows virtualization, and how virtualization-based security (VBS) protects against OS vulnerabilities * Delve into key management and configuration mechanisms, including the Registry, Windows services, WMI, and Task Scheduling * Explore diagnostic services such as Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) and DTrace * Learn how the cache manager and file system drivers interact to provide reliable support for files, directories, and disks, including on Persistent Memory (NVDIMM) DAX devices. * Understand NTFS, ReFS, and other Windows file systems * Review Windows startup/shutdown operations, and OS components involved in boot flow * Analyze UEFI-based Secure Boot, Measured Boot, and Secure Launch About This Book * For experienced programmers, architects, software quality and performance specialists, administrators, security practitioners, and support professionals * Assumes you are a Windows power user

Islamic law has traditionally prohibited women from being prayer leaders and heads of state. A small number of Muslims today are beginning to challenge this stance, but they face considerable opposition from the broader Muslim community. 'Women and Leadership in Islamic Law' examines the assumption within much existing feminist scholarship that the patriarchal nature of pre-Islamic and early Muslim Near Eastern Society is the primary reason for the development of Islamic legal rulings prohibiting women from leadership positions. It claims that the evolution of Islamic law was a complex process, shaped by numerous cultural, historical, political and social factors, as well as scriptural sources whose importance cannot be dismissed. Therefore, the book critically examines a broad survey of legal works from the four canonical Sunni schools of law to determine the factors that influenced the development of the legal rulings prohibiting women from assuming various leadership roles. The passages that elaborate rulings about women's leadership are presented in translation as an appendix to the research, and are then subjected to a variety of critical analyses to identify the reasons, influences, and assumptions underlying those rulings. This is the first time works of all four schools of law have been subjected to this kind of analysis for the express purpose of determining the extent to which gender attitudes have influenced and determined the rulings. This book will therefore be a vital resource for students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Religious Studies and Gender Studies.

Islamic law has traditionally prohibited women from being prayer leaders and heads of state. A small number of Muslims today are beginning to challenge this stance, but they face considerable opposition from the broader Muslim community. 'Women and Leadership in Islamic Law' examines the assumption within much existing feminist scholarship that the patriarchal nature of pre-Islamic and early Muslim Near Eastern Society is the primary reason for the development of Islamic legal rulings prohibiting women from leadership positions. It claims that the evolution of Islamic law was a complex process, shaped by numerous cultural, historical, political and social factors, as well as scriptural sources whose importance cannot be dismissed. Therefore, the book critically examines a broad survey of legal works from the four canonical Sunni schools of law to determine the factors that influenced the development of the legal rulings prohibiting women from assuming various leadership roles. The passages that elaborate rulings about women's leadership are presented in translation as an appendix to the research, and are then subjected to a variety of critical analyses to identify the reasons, influences, and assumptions underlying those rulings. This is the first time works of all four schools of law have been subjected to this kind of analysis for the express purpose of determining the extent to which gender attitudes have influenced and determined the rulings. This book will therefore be a vital resource for students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Religious Studies and Gender Studies.

Zack and Lara have superpowers. Luke has new school shoes and a burning sense of resentment. He KNOWS that aliens disguised as gym teachers are about to attack Earth but will anyone listen? No. So one dodgy pact with a self-styled supervillain later, and Luke is ready to save the world. He just needs to find his trainers. My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord is the action-packed sequel to the bestselling My Brother Is a Superhero, winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the British Book Industry Awards Children's Book of the Year. Books don't come much funnier than these! Packed with heart and soul, this series is perfect for fans of David Baddiel and David Walliams. My Brother Is a Superhero My Gym Teacher is an Alien Overlord My Evil Twin is a Supervillain My Arch-Enemy is a Brain in a Jar My Cousin is a Time-Traveller

The definitive guide-fully updated for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 Delve inside Windows architecture and internals, and see how core components work behind the scenes. Led by a team of internals experts, this classic guide has been fully updated for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. Whether you are a developer or an IT professional, you'll get critical, insider perspectives on how Windows operates. And through hands-on experiments, you'll experience its internal behavior firsthand-knowledge you can apply to improve application design, debugging, system performance, and support. This book will help you: * Understand the Window system architecture and its most important entities, such as processes and threads * Examine how processes manage resources and threads scheduled for execution inside processes * Observe how Windows manages virtual and physical memory * Dig into the Windows I/O system and see how device drivers work and integrate with the rest of the system * Go inside the Windows security model to see how it manages access, auditing, and authorization, and learn about the new mechanisms in Windows 10 and Server 2016

Sometimes love needs a rewrite With her debut novel, Happy Ending, JANE LOCKHART pulled off that rare double - critical acclaim and mainstream success. But now, with just the last chapter of the follow-up book to write, she encounters crippling writer's block. She has no idea how her story ends... This is not good news for her publisher, TOM DUVAL. His company is up against the wall financially and the only thing that will save him is a massive hit, in the form of Jane's next novel. When he discovers that his most important author is blocked, Tom realises that he has to unblock her or he's finished. Everyone knows that you have to be unhappy to be really creative, so Tom decides that the only way he's going to get her to complete the novel is to make her life a misery... Set within the Scottish publishing industry, and filmed against a stunning backdrop of both romantic and hip Glasgow locations, Not Another Happy Ending is perfect for fans of One Day. "Engagingly watchable" - Mark Adams, Screen Daily The stunning romantic comedy from David Solomans, Winner of the 2016 Waterstones Children's Book Prize "...has more heart than most Hollywood rom-coms...an entertaining diversion and an example of mainstream Scottish cinema that easily holds its own" - Rob Dickie, Sight On Sound About the author David Solomons is the BAFTA-shortlisted screen screenwriter of The Great Ghost Rescue, The Fabulous Bagel Boys and Five Children and It. He lives in Dorset with his wife, Natasha Solomons, and their young son. Not Another Happy Ending is his first novel.

In the twentieth century, in both China and the West, ritual became marginalized in the face of the growth of secularism and individualism.In China, Confucianism and its essentially ritualistic comportment to the world were vigorously suppressed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) under Mao Zedong. But de-ritualization already took place as a result of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 under Sun Yat-Sen. In the West, while the process of de-ritualization has been generally more gradual, it has been nonetheless drastic. In contrast to this situation, this volume investigates the crucial role ritual plays in constituting the human understanding of their place in the cosmos, the purpose of their lives, and imbues human existence with a more complete sense of meaningfulness.

This volume presents the work of philosophers from both China and the West as they reflect upon the constitutive role that ritual plays in human life. They reflect not only on ritual in general but also on specific Confucian and Christian appreciations of ritual.

"This provocative volume is a beacon of warning to Western philosophers, who think they have graduated from the trappings of ritual, and a beacon of hope for Eastern thinkers, who wish to avoid cultural fragmentation. The Editors, both Eastern and Western, have together created a seamless work that not only introduces ritual, but advances an argument for the contribution that ritual makes to cultural renewal. This volume is a work of philosophical thinking about ritual doing, but challenges those who think to realize that the salvation of philosophical thinking rests in the particularity and contingency of ritual doing. Let us hope this volume is widely read, for it points to that which might renew the West."

- Jeffrey P. Bishop, Saint Louis University

"

This book addresses the Confucian philosophy of common good and deals with the comparative philosophy on eastern and western understandings of common good.   The common good is an essentially contested concept in contemporary moral and political discussions.  Although the notion of the common good has a slightly antique air, especially in the North Atlantic discussion, it has figured prominently in both the sophisticated theoretical accounts of moral and political theory in recent years and also in the popular arguments brought for particular political policies and for more general orientations toward policy. It has been at home both in the political arsenal of the left and the right and has had special significance in ethical and political debates in modern and modernizing cultures.   This text will be of interest to philosophers interested in Chinese philosophy and issues related to individualism and communitarianism, ethicists and political philosophers, comparative philosophers, and those in religious studies working on Chinese religion. ​

In the twentieth century, in both China and the West, ritual became marginalized in the face of the growth of secularism and individualism.In China, Confucianism and its essentially ritualistic comportment to the world were vigorously suppressed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) under Mao Zedong. But de-ritualization already took place as a result of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 under Sun Yat-Sen. In the West, while the process of de-ritualization has been generally more gradual, it has been nonetheless drastic. In contrast to this situation, this volume investigates the crucial role ritual plays in constituting the human understanding of their place in the cosmos, the purpose of their lives, and imbues human existence with a more complete sense of meaningfulness.

This volume presents the work of philosophers from both China and the West as they reflect upon the constitutive role that ritual plays in human life. They reflect not only on ritual in general but also on specific Confucian and Christian appreciations of ritual.

"This provocative volume is a beacon of warning to Western philosophers, who think they have graduated from the trappings of ritual, and a beacon of hope for Eastern thinkers, who wish to avoid cultural fragmentation. The Editors, both Eastern and Western, have together created a seamless work that not only introduces ritual, but advances an argument for the contribution that ritual makes to cultural renewal. This volume is a work of philosophical thinking about ritual doing, but challenges those who think to realize that the salvation of philosophical thinking rests in the particularity and contingency of ritual doing. Let us hope this volume is widely read, for it points to that which might renew the West."

- Jeffrey P. Bishop, Saint Louis University

"

This book addresses the Confucian philosophy of common good and deals with the comparative philosophy on eastern and western understandings of common good. The common good is an essentially contested concept in contemporary moral and political discussions. Although the notion of the common good has a slightly antique air, especially in the North Atlantic discussion, it has figured prominently in both the sophisticated theoretical accounts of moral and political theory in recent years and also in the popular arguments brought for particular political policies and for more general orientations toward policy. It has been at home both in the political arsenal of the left and the right and has had special significance in ethical and political debates in modern and modernizing cultures. This text will be of interest to philosophers interested in Chinese philosophy and issues related to individualism and communitarianism, ethicists and political philosophers, comparative philosophers, and those in religious studies working on Chinese religion. "

Variety is what's in store for you with the six stories inside! So, grab a Kleenex, grab your zipper, then forget the Kleenex and grab a towel! Here are stories about first timers, cross-dressing, old on young, military, and some bisexual fun. You'll find something here to maybe get you to thinking, and certainly get your blood circulating and work the muscles in your right hand! There's a bisexual romp when a middle-aged couple vacation in Florida, looking for some sexual adventures, and find more than that in a young rent boy and his girlfriend. A virgin grocery bagger finally gets what he wants from an older man - with a surprise! Another virgin gets what he's looking for, and more! Two 20 something long-time buddies stumble into the drag life, and a shy, young military guy gets way over his shyness!