Mira Toombs has fled Midnight City, leaving behind her home and the people she loves in a desperate gamble to repair the damage her Tone enhancing artifact has caused. It is a journey that will lead her to Winterbay, an infamous, frozen city built in the middle of Lake Michigan. A place of secrets and conspiracies – and the one place more dangerous for Mira than Midnight City. Winterbay is the last bastion of the World Before, a place that has shunned the power of the Strange Lands, and where being a Freebooter means the death sentence. To get what she needs, Mira must take a desperate bargain. One that will lead her into the city's icy depths, where its greatest and most dangerous secret lies guarded by a massive, deadly machine that rumor and myth say only one person can disarm. The one person not allowed inside the city walls. A Freebooter. Winterbay is a 14,000 word short story, part of J. Barton Mitchell's CONQUERED EARTH series, set directly before the events of Midnight City and The Severed Tower, showing how Mira Toombs came to be set on a path not only to Clinton Station, but to the two people who would change her life forever. Holt and Zoey.

How do you hold on to hope when you’re being repeatedly wrenched between worlds? College student Bailey Jones is plucked from his world by a mysterious and unpredictable force known as the Rift, which appears to move people at random from one world to another. Stranded on an alien planet, he is relieved when he meets a fellow human, the self-styled Riftmaster, who is prepared to assist him. Although curious about his new companion’s real identity, Bailey hopes that, with years of experience of the Rift, this cosmic traveller can help him find a way to return to Earth. But first, as the two of them are ripped without warning from one hostile planet to another, Bailey must rely on the Riftmaster to show him how to survive. Riftmaster, an adventure, an exploration, is concerned with loss, and letting go, while still holding onto your humanity and identity, even when life seems hopeless. Cover art: Miles Nelson

The changing focus and approach of geomorphic research suggests that the time is opportune for a summary of the state of discipline. The number of peer-reviewed papers published in geomorphic journals has grown steadily for more than two decades and, more importantly, the diversity of authors with respect to geographic location and disciplinary background (geography, geology, ecology, civil engineering, computer science, geographic information science, and others) has expanded dramatically. As more good minds are drawn to geomorphology, and the breadth of the peer-reviewed literature grows, an effective summary of contemporary geomorphic knowledge becomes increasingly difficult. The fourteen volumes of this Treatise on Geomorphology will provide an important reference for users from undergraduate students looking for term paper topics, to graduate students starting a literature review for their thesis work, and professionals seeking a concise summary of a particular topic. Information on the historical development of diverse topics within geomorphology provides context for ongoing research; discussion of research strategies, equipment, and field methods, laboratory experiments, and numerical simulations reflect the multiple approaches to understanding Earth’s surfaces; and summaries of outstanding research questions highlight future challenges and suggest productive new avenues for research. Our future ability to adapt to geomorphic changes in the critical zone very much hinges upon how well landform scientists comprehend the dynamics of Earth’s diverse surfaces. This Treatise on Geomorphology provides a useful synthesis of the state of the discipline, as well as highlighting productive research directions, that Educators and students/researchers will find useful. Geomorphology has advanced greatly in the last 10 years to become a very interdisciplinary field. Undergraduate students looking for term paper topics, to graduate students starting a literature review for their thesis work, and professionals seeking a concise summary of a particular topic will find the answers they need in this broad reference work which has been designed and written to accommodate their diverse backgrounds and levels of understanding Editor-in-Chief, Prof. J. F. Shroder of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, is past president of the QG&G section of the Geological Society of America and present Trustee of the GSA Foundation, while being well respected in the geomorphology research community and having won numerous awards in the field. A host of noted international geomorphologists have contributed state-of-the-art chapters to the work. Readers can be guaranteed that every chapter in this extensive work has been critically reviewed for consistency and accuracy by the World expert Volume Editors and by the Editor-in-Chief himself No other reference work exists in the area of Geomorphology that offers the breadth and depth of information contained in this 14-volume masterpiece. From the foundations and history of geomorphology through to geomorphological innovations and computer modelling, and the past and future states of landform science, no "stone" has been left unturned!

His developers had also hidden all the shortcuts in human evolution into the game. In order to obtain the so-called "Life Code", a group of strong men were running amok, they were willing to do anything they could to get their hands on. National forces and large financial groups were all in place to engage in fierce battles, and the fate of the human race had changed because of this game. Ye Wei, a college student who had just graduated, would he be able to carve out a path of blood for himself?

J. Barton Mitchell's sci-fi tour de force Conquered Earth series concludes as the characters try and unite Earth's disparate survivors to overthrow its alien invaders once and for all. The Severed Tower is no more. Zoey has been taken by the Assembly, and time is running out. Just as their feelings are finally out in the open, Holt Hawkins and Mira Toombs are forced apart onto individual quests to try and unite Earth's survivors against their alien invaders. Mira ventures west, holding together a fragile coalition of Wind Traders, White Helix, and rebel Assembly, a mix of groups that do not trust the other. The voices of the Assembly in Mira's head threaten to drive her mad, and she soon learns a grim reality: that the one resource they have on their side, the Strange Lands artifacts, are dying, and soon the world will be a very different place. Meanwhile, Holt travels with Ravan and Avril to Faust, the dangerous desert city of the Menagerie pirate guild. He goes not only to resolve his issues with Tiberius, its tyrannical leader, but to enlist the Menagerie in the fight to save Zoey. Except Tiberius has his own problems. The Menagerie is splintering, word of rebellion is spreading. If Holt wants their help, he might have to side with his greatest enemy in exchange. Valley of Fires is the final installment in J. Barton Mitchell's Conquered Earth series, following Midnight City and The Severed Tower, and it brings the genre-bending series to an utterly unforgettable close.

The pruning of young trees in sparsely and unevenly stocked stands will greatly improve the resulting lumber grades. In northern white and red pines, even in fully stocked stands, artificial pruning is essential for the production of any of the best grades of lumber in a reasonable time.

Including recent research findings from terrestrial satellite imagery, the study of planetary landscapes, and advances in laboratory work, this also covers the environmental processes involved in desertification and the solution of planning and