The American Congress provides the most current treatment of congressional politics available in an undergraduate text. Informed by the authors' Capitol Hill experience and scholarship, this book presents a crisp introduction to major features of Congress: parties and committee systems, leadership, voting and floor activity. This text contains discussions of the importance of presidents, courts and interest groups in congressional policy making. Recent developments are also discussed within the context of congressional political history. The seventh edition includes complete coverage of the first Congress of the Obama presidency, the 2010 midterm elections, healthcare reform and an early perspective on the 112th Congress with a Republican majority.

The American Congress Reader provides a supplement to the popular and newly updated American Congress undergraduate textbook. By the same authors who drew upon Capitol Hill experience and nationally recognized scholarship to present a crisp introduction and analysis of Congress's inner mechanics, the Reader compiles the best relevant scholarship on party and committee systems, leadership, voting, and floor activity to broaden and illuminate the key features of the text.

The city of Seattle burned down in 1889. When it was rebuilt, much of the old city remained, buried beneath the modern streets. Nobody really knows what's down there any more... Now a suspected psycho and the eight-year-old girl he has taken hostage during a bungled heist are about to find out, when they crash through the floor of an abandoned warehouse into a street no one has walked down for a hundred years. Pursued by an ex-Vietnam Tunnel Rat brought in by the Seattle PD - a man with one or two mental problems of his own - Hilton Badcock has no choice but to drag young Ali further into the underground maze in search of a way out. But the deeper they go into this strange, secret world, the weirder and more dangerous things get...

The skies above London hum with danger. And in the Channel enemies lie in wait... Autumn, 1917. London is not the city that Dr John Watson and Sherlock Holmes once bestrode like giants. Terror has come from the sky and Londoners are scurrying underground in fear. Then a twin tragedy strikes Watson. An old friend, Staff Nurse Jennings, is on a boat-ambulance torpedoed in the Channel with no survivors. And his concert-going companion, Sir Gilbert Hardy, is kidnapped. Then comes the gruesome ransom demand, for Sir Gilbert and four others, which will involve terrible mutilation unless the demands are met. Help comes from an unlikely source when Watson finds himself face-to-face with his old ruthless adversary, the "She Wolf" Miss Pillbody. She makes him a remarkable offer and so an unlikely partnership is formed - the enemy spy and Sherlock Holmes's faithful companion, a detective duo which will eventually uncover a shocking case of state-sponsored murder and find Watson on board a German bomber, with a crew intent on setting London ablaze.

Jim Barry is a family man and proud of it. He's already begun educating his five-year-old son Tommy on the finer points of ball games. But when a tragic accident at a kids' practice session leaves another boy dead, the bereaved father decides to seek his own special brand of restitution. Unless Jim and his wife Belle hand over Tommy as a replacement, Stefan Sebastyen swears he will kill them all. And pretty soon they realise that this is a guy who's more than capable of keeping his word. With their backs to the wall, it's Belle who comes up with a desperate plan to save her family...

Feisty plantation owner Gwen Moore (Barbara Stanwyck) is surprised by the arrival of Jim Brecan (Robert Ryan) on her property. Brecan is a fugitive on the run, accused of murder. Pursued by both the police and the Sawbwa of Sakar, he manages to convince Gwen of his innocence before disappearing into the jungle in an attempt to evade his would-be captors.

"Demands comparison with the very best books of our century . . . A truly important writer . . . His people, his places are masterly." New York Times Book Review Durrell's masterpiece is onne of the world's greatest romances, rich in political and sexual intrigue. This seductive tale of four tangled lovers in wartime Egypt is set in the city of Alexandria once home to the world's greatest library, attracting scholars dedicated solely to the pursuit of knowledge. But on the eve of World War II, the obsessed characters in this mesmerizing novel find that their pursuits lead only to bedrooms in which each seeks to know-and possess-the other.

Some parks, preserves, and other natural areas serve people well; others are disappointing. Successful design and management requires knowledge of both people and environments."With People in Mind" explores how to design and manage areas of "everyday nature" -- parks and open spaces, corporate grounds, vacant lots and backyard gardens, fields and forests -- in ways that are beneficial to and appreciated by humans. Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan, leading researchers in the field of environmental psychology, along with Robert Ryan, a landscape architect and urban planner, provide a conceptual framework for considering the human dimensions of natural areas and offer a fresh perspective on the subject. The authors examine.physical aspects of natural settings that enhance preference and reduce fear ways to facilitate way-finding how to create restorative settings that allow people to recover from the stress of daily demands landscape elements that are particularly important to human needs techniques for obtaining useful public input

For gamblers and fun-seekers, Atlantic City is a place to chase your dreams. But for taxi driver Ed Behr, it's where his personal nightmare is all too real. He is haunted by violent flashbacks to his time in prison and sustained only by his obsession with finding Honey, the girl who promised him everything. Then he recognises one of the old gang from the days before the bad things happened that got them all sent down. Except for Billy Moon, that is, who went on to bigger and better things while they were left to rot. And now Ed has a plan that's going to reunite the gang, make enough dough, and sort out Billy Moon once and for all. Maybe even get Honey back too. That's if he doesn't get them all killed first...