The remarkable and inspirational story of Oksana Masters, who was born with radiation-induced birth defects and suffered appalling abuse as an orphan, before being adopted and moving to the US, where she went on to triumph over her challenges to win ten Paralympic medals in four different sports. Oksana Masters was born in the shadow of Chernobyl, with one kidney, a partial stomach, six toes on each foot, webbed fingers, no right bicep and no thumbs. Her left leg was six inches shorter than her right, and she was missing both tibias. Relinquished to the orphanage system by birth parents daunted by the staggering cost of their child’s medical care, Oksana encountered numerous abuses, some horrifying. Salvation came at the age of seven when Gay Masters, an unmarried American professor who saw a photo of the little girl and became haunted by her eyes, waged a two-year war against stubborn adoption authorities to rescue Oksana from her circumstances. In America, Oksana endured years of operations that included a double leg amputation. Still, how could she hope to fit in when there were so many things making her different? As it turned out, she would do much more than fit in. Determined to prove herself and fuelled by a drive to succeed that still smouldered from childhood, Oksana triumphed in not just one sport but four - winning against the world’s best in rowing, biathlon, cross-country skiing and road cycling competitions. This is Oksana’s astonishing story of journeying through a series of dark tunnels - and how, with her mother’s love, she finally found her way into the light. Her message to anyone who doesn’t fit in: you can find a place where you excel and where you have worth.

There are no easy decisions in software architecture. Instead, there are many hard parts--difficult problems or issues with no best practices--that force you to choose among various compromises. With this book, you'll learn how to think critically about the trade-offs involved with distributed architectures. Architecture veterans and practicing consultants Neal Ford, Mark Richards, Pramod Sadalage, and Zhamak Dehghani discuss strategies for choosing an appropriate architecture. By interweaving a story about a fictional group of technology professionals--the Sysops Squad--they examine everything from how to determine service granularity, manage workflows and orchestration, manage and decouple contracts, and manage distributed transactions to how to optimize operational characteristics, such as scalability, elasticity, and performance. By focusing on commonly asked questions, this book provides techniques to help you discover and weigh the trade-offs as you confront the issues you face as an architect. Analyze trade-offs and effectively document your decisions Make better decisions regarding service granularity Understand the complexities of breaking apart monolithic applications Manage and decouple contracts between services Handle data in a highly distributed architecture Learn patterns to manage workflow and transactions when breaking apart applications

"Hayden refuses to give up, however, and after years of struggling, he experiences a moment of insight that enables him to understand why he has been tested so harshly by a seemingly unfeeling deity."--BOOK JACKET.

This latest in Wilcock’s The Hawk and the Dove series takes readers into the world of a fourteenth-century monastery struggling to forgive an old enemy seeking refuge. The first of three sequels to the celebrated The Hawk and the Dove trilogy takes place one year after the end of the third book, in the early fourteenth century. A peaceful monastery is enjoying its new abbot, who is taking the place of Father Peregrine, when an old enemy arrives seeking refuge. Reluctantly taking in Prior William, the upended community must address old fears and bitterness while warily seeking reconciliation. But can they really trust Prior William? In her fourth book in the series, Penelope Wilcock wrestles with the difficulties of forgiveness and the cautions of building trust. Taking the form of journal entries, her story will delight the imaginations of readers captivated by a time and place far distant from our current world. Her timeless themes, however, will challenge our prejudices today as we, along with her characters, are forced to ask ourselves, “What is the hardest thing to do?”

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in. Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz's personal and often humbling experiences.

Empower Your Writing Through Craft and Community! Writing can be a lonely profession plagued by blind stumbles, writer's block, and despair--but it doesn't have to be. Written by members of the popular Writer Unboxed website, Author in Progress is filled with practical, candid essays to help you reach the next rung on the publishing ladder. By tracking your creative journey from first draft to completion and beyond, you can improve your craft, find your community, and overcome the mental barriers that stand in the way of success. Author in Progress is the perfect no-nonsense guide for excelling at every step of the novel-writing process, from setting goals, researching, and drafting to giving and receiving critiques, polishing prose, and seeking publication. You'll love Author in Progress if... • You're an aspiring novelist working on your first book. • You're an experienced veteran looking for ways to enhance your career and connect with your writing community. • You've finished your first draft and want to know the next steps. • You're seeking clear, effective advice about publication-from professionals who are "down in the trenches" every day. What's Inside Author in Progress features: • More than 50 essays from best-selling authors, editors, and industry leaders on a variety of writing and publishing topics. • Advice on writing first drafts, conducting research, building and fostering community, seeking critique, revising, and getting published. • An encouraging approach to the writing and publishing process, from authors who've walked this path.

Fifteen-year-old Molly Biden has always been studious, dependable, some might even say saintly. And she?s sick of herself. So when she spots mysterious bad boy Grady Dillon, she devises a plan to make herself over into someone new, someone who will attract Grady?s attention. She succeeds?but a little too well. When Molly discovers she?s pregnant, she?s forced to make the hardest choice of her life. This addictively readable portrayal of Molly?s struggle to accept her pregnancy and the fact that her life will never be the same is told entirely in poetry, from sonnets to haiku.

Not loaded with theory, Skip's invaluable book contains concise, easily understood and applied advice for both writing and marketing any kind of book, article, story, play, screen-play, report, proposal or anything else you can think of.How to Write What You Want and Sell What You Write is for every writer or wannabe who needs to sort out his or her desires, capabilities and strengths and, even more importantly, learn the particular formats for the kind of writing in which he or she is interested.

Stark, moving but with glimmers of humour amongst the wreckage, "The Hardest Part" asks perhaps the hardest question of all when faced with the horrors of the 1st World War - where was God to be found in the carnage of the western front? Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy's answer, that through the cross God shares in human suffering rather than being a ‘passionate potentate’ looking down unmoved by death, injury and destruction on an immense scale, was, and still is, revolutionary. Marking the centenary both of the end of the First World War and the original publication of The Hardest Part, this new critical edition contains a contextual introduction, a brief biography of Studdert Kennedy, annotated bibliography and the full text of the first edition of the book, with explanatory notes.