No good deed goes unpunished . . . When Artelo Sterling rode forth to rescue Argentia Dasani from the mad wizard Mouradian, he knew he would face grave danger on the Isle of Elsmywr. He never imagined he was leaving an even greater danger behind him. Returning home to find his daughter Aura kidnapped, the knight seeks aid from the Crown and her Archamagus. They discover that Aura’s captor is a demoness loosed from the Fel Pits. It has plans for the child it has taken—plans that Aura likely will not survive. Desperate, Artelo demands Argentia’s help. She has fought demons before. She had killed demons before. She is the best tracker he knows. But the bounty huntress, burned and broken by her ordeal on Elsmywr, is in no condition to help anyone. She will need to find herself before she can find Artelo’s daughter, and there may not be time for that...

Is it a rogue redhead? Someone is killing the wizards of Teranor, and all the evidence points to Argentia Dasani as the assassin. As the body count rises, Argentia’s friends rally to her defense. Chasing clues from the thieves’ guilds of Telarban to the invisible island of Elsmywr, the companions uncover an insidious plot hatched decades earlier by a madman named Mouradian—one that threatens not only the Order of the Magi but the crowndom itself. Can they unravel the machinations of the Great Maker in time, or will Teranor fall to an unspeakable foe and Argentia be left to face a fate worse than death?

A Blast from the Past... Bounty huntress Argentia Dasani thought she’d seen the last of Al’Atin Erkani when she locked him in the dungeons of Castle Aventar. Three years later, the thief has escaped and is on the run with a token of unspeakable power: a magic lamp that is a prison for an elemental monster whose sole desire is to raze the world to ruin. Tasked to recapture Erkani and recover the lamp, Argentia and her friends follow a trail of death and destruction the likes of which they have never seen before. Hope hinges on a scrap of prophecy and a mystical artifact created to counter the power of the lamp, but time is running short. As the hunt ranges from the docks of Harrowgate to the deserts of Makhara, it becomes clear to Argentia that her enemy is more powerful, callous, and insane than any she has ever faced. Will all her vaunted skill and luck be enough to stop Erkani, or will she and the rest of Acrevast burn in the fires of the aefryt’s lamp?

A modern-day historian finds her life intertwined with Annie Oakley's in an electrifying novel that explores female revenge and the allure of changing one's past. Ruth McClintock is obsessed with Annie Oakley. For nearly a decade, she has been studying the legendary sharpshooter, convinced that a scarring childhood event was the impetus for her crusade to arm every woman in America. This search has cost Ruth her doctorate, a book deal, and her fiancé—but finally it has borne fruit. She has managed to hunt down what may be a journal of Oakley’s midlife struggles, including secret visits to a psychoanalyst and the desire for vengeance against the “Wolves,” or those who have wronged her. With the help of Reece, a tech-savvy senior at the local high school, Ruth attempts to establish the journal’s provenance, but she’s begun to have jarring out-of-body episodes parallel to Annie’s own lived experiences. As she solves Annie’s mysteries, Ruth confronts her own truths, including the link between her teenage sister’s suicide and an impending tragedy in her Minnesota town that Ruth can still prevent.

Get up and running with Python 3.9 through concise tutorials and practical projects in this fully updated third edition. Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free eBook in PDF format. Key FeaturesExtensively revised with richer examples, Python 3.9 syntax, and new chapters on APIs and packaging and distributing Python codeDiscover how to think like a Python programmerLearn the fundamentals of Python through real-world projects in API development, GUI programming, and data scienceBook Description Learn Python Programming, Third Edition is both a theoretical and practical introduction to Python, an extremely flexible and powerful programming language that can be applied to many disciplines. This book will make learning Python easy and give you a thorough understanding of the language. You'll learn how to write programs, build modern APIs, and work with data by using renowned Python data science libraries. This revised edition covers the latest updates on API management, packaging applications, and testing. There is also broader coverage of context managers and an updated data science chapter. The book empowers you to take ownership of writing your software and become independent in fetching the resources you need. You will have a clear idea of where to go and how to build on what you have learned from the book. Through examples, the book explores a wide range of applications and concludes by building real-world Python projects based on the concepts you have learned. What you will learnGet Python up and running on Windows, Mac, and LinuxWrite elegant, reusable, and efficient code in any situationAvoid common pitfalls like duplication, complicated design, and over-engineeringUnderstand when to use the functional or object-oriented approach to programmingBuild a simple API with FastAPI and program GUI applications with TkinterGet an initial overview of more complex topics such as data persistence and cryptographyFetch, clean, and manipulate data, making efficient use of Python's built-in data structuresWho this book is for This book is for everyone who wants to learn Python from scratch, as well as experienced programmers looking for a reference book. Prior knowledge of basic programming concepts will help you follow along, but it's not a prerequisite.

A “riveting historical page-turner” about a cellist caught up in the tumult and passions of early twentieth-century Spain (Booklist). A Library Journal Best Book of the Year I was almost born Happy . . . So begins The Spanish Bow and the remarkable history of Feliu Delargo, who just misses being “Feliz” by a misunderstanding at his birth—which he barely survives. The bequest of a cello bow sets Feliu on the course of becoming a musician, an unlikely destiny given his beginnings in a dusty village in Catalonia. When he is compelled to flee to anarchist Barcelona, his education in music, life, and politics begins. But it isn’t until he arrives at the court of the embattled monarchy in Madrid that passion enters the composition, thanks to Aviva, a virtuoso violinist with a haunted past. As Feliu embarks on affairs, friendships, and rivalries, forces propelling the world toward a catastrophic crescendo sweep Feliu along in their wake—in this haunting fugue of music, politics, and passion set against a half century of Spanish history, from the tail end of the nineteenth century through the Spanish Civil War and World War II, by the acclaimed author of Behave and Plum Rains. “Expertly woven throughout the book are cameo appearances by Pablo Picasso, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, Bertolt Brecht, and others, but it is the fictional Feliu, Justo, and Aviva who will keep you mesmerized to the last page.” —The Christian Science Monitor “An impressive and richly atmospheric debut.” —The New York Times Book Review

In a tour-de-force tapestry of science fiction and historical fiction, Andromeda Romano-Lax presents a story set in Japan and Taiwan that spans a century of empire, conquest, progress, and destruction. 2029: In Japan, a historically mono-cultural nation, childbirth rates are at an all-time low and the elderly are living increasingly longer lives. This population crisis has precipitated the mass immigration of foreign medical workers from all over Asia, as well as the development of finely tuned artificial intelligence to step in where humans fall short. In Tokyo, Angelica Navarro, a Filipina nurse who has been in Japan for the last five years, works as caretaker for Sayoko Itou, a moody, secretive woman about to turn 100 years old. One day, Sayoko receives a present: a cutting-edge robot “friend” that will teach itself to anticipate Sayoko’s every need. Angelica wonders if she is about to be forced out of her much-needed job by an inanimate object—one with a preternatural ability to uncover the most deeply buried secrets of the humans around it. Meanwhile, Sayoko becomes attached to the machine. The old woman has been hiding secrets of her own for almost a century—and she’s too old to want to keep them anymore. What she reveals is a hundred-year saga of forbidden love, hidden identities, and the horrific legacy of WWII and Japanese colonialism—a confession that will tear apart her own life and Angelica’s. Is the helper robot the worst thing that could have happened to the two women—or is it forcing the changes they both desperately needed?

Ernst Vogler is twenty-six years old in 1938 when he is sent to Rome by his employer—the Third Reich's Sonderprojekte, which is collecting the great art of Europe and bringing it to Germany for the Führer. Vogler is to collect a famous Classical Roman marble statue, The Discus Thrower, and get it to the German border, where it will be turned over to Gestapo custody. It is a simple, three-day job. Things start to go wrong almost immediately. The Italian twin brothers who have been hired to escort Vogler to the border seem to have priorities besides the task at hand—wild romances, perhaps even criminal jobs on the side—and Vogler quickly loses control of the assignment. The twins set off on a dangerous detour and Vogler realizes he will be lucky to escape this venture with his life, let alone his job. With nothing left to lose, the young German gives himself up to the Italian adventure, to the surprising love and inevitable losses along the way. The Detour is a bittersweet novel about artistic obsession, misplaced idealism, detours, and second chances, set along the beautiful back-roads of northern Italy on the eve of war.