Showing results by narrator "Derek Shoales" in All Categories

Cornelius Scipio marched his outnumbered Legions south, and in a lightning assault, captured New Carthage. The ramifications rocked the confidence of the three Punic Generals in Iberia. They vowed to drive the Legions into the sea and kill Scipio just as they had his father and his uncle. Plus, the loss of a large commercial center hampered Hannibal's activities in the Republic. And throughout the government of Carthage, the young General's victory cast doubt on the future.

Niki Banks and her team from the DOD need Taylor's help, but he isn't at home. He is in New Orleans with her cousin, which has Niki more than a little curious. She needs to stop a potentially catastrophic release of cryptids into the Louisiana biome. But will Taylor be in jail by the time she arrives? If he isn't in jail, will he have committed yet another major heist to get even with those who have attacked him?

After reuniting with his old friend Kasim and solving Charlotte's problem, Belgrieve and company return to Turnera. Angeline immediately warms up to her new little brother Mit, and the growing family spends their days in peace. Their happy time together, however, is cut short when the forest near the village suddenly gains sentience and begins to attack people-worse yet, it seems to be after Mit and his demonic powers! As the situation grows dire, the Paladin Graham makes a stand! How will the father and daughter duo overcome the crisis threatening their home?

It's time. The gloves are coming off. The mob has disrespected Taylor's people, and he won't stand for it. However, DESK is more than willing to help everyone bet their bank account on the outcome. But will Taylor be able to take out two very large mob guys and take home the scratch? To get Niki's hand, will Taylor have to go through her DOD guys to get their permission? Perhaps, but perhaps they better not let Niki hear them say it that way.

The Cryptids have started to kill a large amount of humans in the Upper Midwest. Banks' bosses told her not to call in the Cryptid Assassin.... He's too expensive. Now, the showdown between Taylor and the creatures will stop when one or the other is dead...and it isn't looking good for Taylor.

Special Agent Niki Banks has called in a favor, and now Taylor has a young hacker with an attitude as an employee. Along with new monsters to kill, a business to get off the ground, a relationship with an annoying FBI handler to...deal with, Taylor is becoming a surrogate male figure for a role he didn't want. But he may be the best man for the job.

When businesses try to "do AI", they place an abstract solution before problems and customers without fully considering whether it is wise, whether the hype is true, or how AI will impact their organization in the long term. Often absent is sound reasoning for why they should go down this path in the first place. Doing AI explores AI for what it actually is - and what it is not - and the problems it can truly solve.

A bounty hunting survivor. A Galactic dark elf. A woman who has given up her humanity to become something more. These stories and more are available in the first short story anthology for the System Apocalypse, covering year one on Earth. When the world ends, humanity steps up, finding new ways to survive in a world with classes, magic, and monsters. The anthology features exciting, new stories by five new writers and a new, never publicly released short story by Tao Wong.

After arranging her parents' wedding at the spring festival, Angeline and her friends return to Orphen to resume their activities as adventurers. With all that they endured on the road, Marguerite is poised for a major promotion, and soon Angeline, Anessa, and Miriam's party will officially become a quartet. Back home, Belgrieve finds himself juggling the traditional demands of life in the countryside with all of his new responsibilities as a husband and soon-to-be guildmaster. Life in Turnera is on the precipice of major changes.

Thanks to a strange turn of fate, Angeline was able to reunite her father with one of his former adventurer comrades, the archmage Kasim. Now with spring approaching, Belgrieve intends to bring everyone back to Turnera with him, but the unbreakable bond between father and daughter has left the two so concerned for one another that they ironically can't seem to find common ground. Meanwhile, Charlotte and Byaku begin training in magic, only to encounter a certain problem. Where is this ever-growing little family headed, and what will become of the young magicians-in-training?

Niki is willing to do anything to protect her family. This time, she might have gone too far. In Italy, she got the job done, or did she? Her boss is asking pointed questions. Taylor has a new challenge with someone looking into his business, and this time it's a feisty reporter from a Cryptid-Inquirer magazine. Will she upset the balance between Marino and McFadden? Or will she uncover the whole truth and put it out for everyone to see? Will she even live to type up a report?

After rescuing Mit from the malice of the ancient woods, Belgrieve and Angeline set off on their first proper adventure together. Their goal: the long-awaited reunion of Belgrieve and an old comrade. Along the way, they happen to cross paths with an old acquaintance of Kasim's, a guild master. But as fate would have it, a disagreement leads Belgrieve to lock blades with her. Eventually, after so many long years, Belgrieve finally manages to find his former party member Percival. Their reunion, however, isn't entirely a happy one.

In a future where humanity has scattered itself across the stars and Earth itself is now a dimly remembered place of legend, two worlds of near-supernatural strangeness challenge two naive but courageous heroes.

It's the beginning of a new golden age of space exploration. Finally, humanity is taking the commercialization of space to the next level-mining asteroids. The new gold rush of the commercial space era has begun. Another commercial venture, an attempt to put a hotel on the Moon, is seeking the space tourism gold of the ultra wealthy. And it seems as if the dream of finally sending people to Mars is finally going to happen using a ship propelled by a powerful nuclear rocket. But space travel isn't cut and dry, and there is nothing routine about it.

Chen JieMin hypothesized the existence of hyperspace. The government of Arcadia put a project together to build a hyperspace probe. Chen ChaoLi managed the project to build a successful probe and transition it there and back.

They were on their own. In September 2245, the artificial intelligence known as Janice Quant dropped 100,000 colonists and their supplies in the subtropical zone of the planet they named Arcadia. One of the colonist groups was the Chen-Jasic group, composed of 31 American suburbanites and 31 Chinese peasants. They formed an alliance, then solidified it into a family, acting in the best interests of the group. The Chen-Jasic family would play a critical role in the first 150 years of the Arcadia colony. This is their story.

"I've heard Cretan archers are good bowmen but weak skirmishers," a Tribune offered. "It has something to do with the teeny, tiny shields they wear like jewelry on their left forearms." "They wear jewelry into combat," Tribune Scipio moaned. "What have I done?" Set in the desperate years of the Second Punic War, the series follows the exploits of Cretan archer Jace Kasia and Roman Legion Tribune Cornelius Scipio. One is a castaway searching for a home while the other seeks to step out of the shadow of a famous father.

China's growing role in the global economy is showing no sign of retreat. Indeed, recent events have only increased China's influence - to the point where China is poised to edge out the United States and take the lead. For investors like you, this tectonic shift poses difficult challenges - along with tremendous opportunities. In China's Rise and the New Age of Gold, one of the 21st century's top economic experts, Stephen Leeb, lays out his compelling argument that explosive gains in gold lie ahead.

SQL Essentials for Dummies is your quick reference to all the core concepts of SQL—a valuable common standard language used in relational databases. This useful guide is straightforward—with no excess review, wordy explanations, or fluff—so you get what you need, fast. Great for a brush-up on the basics or as an everyday desk reference, this book is one you can rely on.

Johnson provides an eminently practical framework for understanding how a business model actually works. Identifying its four fundamental building blocks, he lays out a structured and repeatable process for reinventing an existing business model or creating a new one and then incubating and scaling it into a profitable and thriving enterprise. In a new chapter on digital transformation, he shows how serial transformers like Amazon leverage business model innovation so successfully.