Ambitious and contemporary, this groundbreaking collection offers new short fiction by exciting, fresh talents and established authors from around the world. Covering a myriad of topics--love, sex, death, war, crime, and the environment--each tale boasts a unique perspective and voice, with settings that move from India to New York to Cyberspace. With vibrant characters--including drug smugglers, call-center workers, and tourists--each of the 26 stories tackles personal and social issues in funny, poignant, and often dark ways.

When master warrior Shulien learns of the death of her family's patron, she abandons retirement and returns to the capital to protect Green Legend, a sword renowned for its historic triumphs. But much has happened in the years she has been in seclusion, and she finds herself beset on all sides with hidden enemies, and the tragic past which she had hoped to forget returns to haunts her. In her hour of need arrives a beautiful young warrior, Snow Vase, who is seeking a master. But the new apprentice is not all that she seems. When she falls in love with the bandit Wei-fang, a secret is revealed that makes all of them question who is friend and who is foe. In an age of thwarted love, can these two youths find happiness? Based on the original novels by Wang Du Lu, this is a beautiful love story set in the fading years of nineteenth century Imperial China.

This textbook introduces the basic notions of group theory by a thorough treatment of important examples, including complex numbers, modular arithmetic, symmetries, and permutations. Practical examples to cryptography and coding theory are also included.

Volume 2 of a 2-volume elementary introduction to Abstract Algebra. This textbook introduces the basic notions of group theory by a thorough treatment of important examples, including complex numbers, modular arithmetic, symmetries, and permutations. Also included are applications to communications, cryptography, and coding theory.

Attacks on federal facilities in the U.S. have highlighted the need to identify lessons learned from prior security incidents and apply that knowledge to security procedures government-wide. Dozens of federal law enforcement agencies provide physical security services for domestic non-military federal facilities. The Interagency Security Committee (ISC) is responsible for developing government-wide physical security standards and co-ordinating agencies to improve the protection of federal facilities. This book examines the practices used to identify and apply lessons learned and how agencies have used these practices; the actions the ISC has taken to identify and apply lessons learned from attacks on federal facilities; and the challenges to developing a government-wide lessons learned process and the strategies agencies have used to mitigate those challenges. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reviewed documents and interviewed officials from 35 security and law enforcement agencies with experience protecting selected tourist sites in cities in Greece, Israel, Italy and the United States.

A Sunday Times Book of the Year 'Justin Hill's Shieldwall . . . superbly evoked the wordplay of the period's poetry as it unfolds a compelling story of Earl Godwin's battles against the Norse' The year is 1016 and England burns while the Viking armies blockade the great city of London. King Ethelred lies dying and the England he knew dies with him; the warring kingdoms of Mercia, Wessex and Northymbria tremble on the brink of great change. One man lives to bear witness to the upheaval: Godwin, barely out of boyhood and destined to become one of his country's great warriors. When Ethelred's son Edmund takes the throne, determined to succeed where his father failed, he plucks Godwin from domestic peace to be right-hand man in his loyal shield wall. Godwin must traverse the meadows, wintry forests and fogbound marshes of Saxon England, raising armies of monks, ploughmen and shepherds against the Viking invader. With epic courage and ferocity, Godwin and Edmund repel the butchering Danes in three great battles. But an old enemy, the treacherous Earl Eadric, dogs Godwin's footsteps, and as the final battle approaches, around the valiant English the trap begins to close.

A Times Book of the Year 'A literary, intelligent read from a masterful storyteller' In 1035, a young fifteen year old Viking is dragged wounded from the battle. Left for dead, for the next twenty years his adventures lead him over mountains, down the length of Russia and ultimately to Constantinople and the Holy City of Jerusalem. Drawn into political intrigue he will be the lover of Empresses, the murderer of an emperor; he will hold the balance of power in the Byzantine Empire in his hands, and then give it all up for a Russian princess and the chance to return home and lead his own people, where he must fight the demons of his past, his family and his countrymen in a long and bitter war for revenge and power. Told in his own voice, this is the astonishing true story of the most famous warrior in all Christendom: Harald Hardrada, the last Viking.

In the last years of the Tang Dynasty, a beautiful girl is born in a fort along the Great Wall of China, and is set to become the most famous and celebrated courtesan of her age. Set in the 9th century, Passing Under Heaven tells the tragic love story of Lily, a Chinese poet and documents a time when Chinese women enjoyed a window of unprecedented personal freedom - including the freedom to fall in love. But when Lily pushes that freedom to its limits disaster ensues, leaving her child and husband to forever mourn her loss.;Based on historical fact, Passing Under Heaven is more than the story of the end of a love affair, this book also chronicles the passing of the Chinese golden age into civil war and ruin.