They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. True, but bad decisions will get you there much faster. Isa Maxwell has both aplenty in this second installment of Isa Maxwell's Escapades. Having found her dreams of wealth and notoriety, she departs for India to play Good Samaritan to the orphans, the poor, and a wronged Indian prince. She makes two new friends before her plane even leaves the ground: the mysterious bejeweled Vivien and a bottle of Valium. Too bad she loses her new friend and the high at the airport, and her passport and wallet on her way to her hotel. Things go from bad to perilous as she launches on a madcap romp through Delhi. Will Isa survive, or will this be the last chapter in this Indiot's story?

A darkly luminous new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours Michael Cunningham's luminous novel begins with a vision. It's November 2004. Barrett Meeks, having lost love yet again, is walking through Central Park when he is inspired to look up at the sky; there he sees a pale, translucent light that seems to regard him in a distinctly godlike way. Barrett doesn't believe in visions—or in God—but he can't deny what he's seen. At the same time, in the not-quite-gentrified Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, Tyler, Barrett's older brother, a struggling musician, is trying—and failing—to write a wedding song for Beth, his wife-to-be, who is seriously ill. Tyler is determined to write a song that will be not merely a sentimental ballad but an enduring expression of love. Barrett, haunted by the light, turns unexpectedly to religion. Tyler grows increasingly convinced that only drugs can release his creative powers. Beth tries to face mortality with as much courage as she can summon. Cunningham follows the Meeks brothers as each travels down a different path in his search for transcendence. In subtle, lucid prose, he demonstrates a profound empathy for his conflicted characters and a singular understanding of what lies at the core of the human soul. The Snow Queen, beautiful and heartbreaking, comic and tragic, proves again that Cunningham is one of the great novelists of his generation.

A Nobel Laureate offers a dazzling new book about his native country India is a country with many distinct traditions, widely divergent customs, vastly different convictions, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. In The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen draws on a lifetime study of his country's history and culture to suggest the ways we must understand India today in the light of its rich, long argumentative tradition. The millenia-old texts and interpretations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, agnostic, and atheistic Indian thought demonstrate, Sen reminds us, ancient and well-respected rules for conducting debates and disputations, and for appreciating not only the richness of India's diversity but its need for toleration. Though Westerners have often perceived India as a place of endless spirituality and unreasoning mysticism, he underlines its long tradition of skepticism and reasoning, not to mention its secular contributions to mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, medicine, and political economy. Sen discusses many aspects of India's rich intellectual and political heritage, including philosophies of governance from Kautilya's and Ashoka's in the fourth and third centuries BCE to Akbar's in the 1590s; the history and continuing relevance of India's relations with China more than a millennium ago; its old and well-organized calendars; the films of Satyajit Ray and the debates between Gandhi and the visionary poet Tagore about India's past, present, and future. The success of India's democracy and defense of its secular politics depend, Sen argues, on understanding and using this rich argumentative tradition. It is also essential to removing the inequalities (whether of caste, gender, class, or community) that mar Indian life, to stabilizing the now precarious conditions of a nuclear-armed subcontinent, and to correcting what Sen calls the politics of deprivation. His invaluable book concludes with his meditations on pluralism, on dialogue and dialectics in the pursuit of social justice, and on the nature of the Indian identity.

Catalonia, located in Spain's far north-east corner and centred around the port of Barcelona, has its own cuisine and culture which has spread to encompass Valencia, the Balearic Islands (Majorca, Minorca and Ibiza), Andorra, the ancient region of France formerly known as Roussilon, and a single city on the Italian island of Sardinia. Colman Andrews explores this whole territory of Catalan cooking, from its French, Roman and Moorish roots to today's modern interpretation. Along the way he creates a portrait of the food, wine, history and culture of the region.

What is America? For renowned Croatian poet Dubravka Oraic Tolic, it is ""what is born from our dreams without our knowing."" As Columbus' dream of reaching India was interrupted by the discovery of a new land, we too discover unexpected lands in pursuit of our dreams. These new lands are the reality of our hopeful voyages. ""American Scream"" explores the tension between a nation's dream of freedom and the outworking of that dream. ""Palindrome Apocalypse"" explores the history of the twentieth century, beginning with the October Revolution of 1917 and ending with the bombing of Zagreb in 1991-a shadow of apocalypse. Here the exceptional poem is presented side-by-side with the Croatian so the reader can appreciate the amazing palindromic verse.

This book summarizes the research advances in star identification that the author’s team has made over the past 10 years, systematically introducing the principles of star identification, general methods, key techniques and practicable algorithms. It also offers examples of hardware implementation and performance evaluation for the star identification algorithms. Star identification is the key step for celestial navigation and greatly improves the performance of star sensors, and as such the book include the fundamentals of star sensors and celestial navigation, the processing of the star catalog and star images, star identification using modified triangle algorithms, star identification using star patterns and using neural networks, rapid star tracking using star matching between adjacent frames, as well as implementation hardware and using performance tests for star identification. It is not only valuable as a reference book for star sensor designers and researchers working in pattern recognition and other related research fields, but also as teaching resource for senior postgraduate and graduate students majoring in information processing, computer science, artificial intelligence, aeronautics and astronautics, automation and instrumentation. Dr. Guangjun Zhang is a professor at the School of Instrumentation Science and Opto-electronics Engineering, Beihang University, China and also the Vice President of Beihang University, China

Award-winning author Coleman Andrews explores a once undiscovered gem among Europe's great culinary traditions. The cooks of Catalonia use many of the same popular ingredients found in other Mediterranean cuisines, but they combine them in fresh and unexpectedly delicious ways. Try Paella Vallenciana, Tumbet (a Majorcan vegetable casserole), Canalons (the local spin on cannelloni), or the delightful Bunyols (fried pastries), to name just a few of the savory regional dishes. By learning their culinary secrets, you'll discover a fascinating history and culture of the Catalan people.