For One Who Chose to Die interrogates the most fundamental question of existence: what is life’s purpose? Written by Kevin O’Keefe in the 1970s and 80s, these poems explore feelings about change and death, love and loss, beauty and pain, and grief for a lost childhood. This collection interweaves structured and free verse poetry in playful variety. The resulting posthumous collection reveals a man both grappling with depression and possessed of an abundant literary imagination:I co...

Fancy a trip to Pluto? Or how about a fearful drive along a stretch of country road, or a long, hot, dusty walk to Nairobi? Unless you prefer to go to church with a strange woman in green tights, her hair alive with electricity. Here you have 34 stories, each one a journey, whether planned or unexpected, funny or frightening, real or figurative, shared or dreadfully alone. ‘They had a long journey ahead of them’ was the prompt: the writers here, from award-winning authors to exciting new t...

An essential guide on the latest version of Microsoft's server management toolMicrosoft's powerful Mastering System Center 2012 Operations Manager introduces many exciting new and enhanced feature sets that allow for large-scale management of mission-critical servers. This comprehensive guide provides invaluable coverage to help organizations monitor their environments across computers, network, and storage infrastructures while maintaining efficient and e...

122 fantastic stories from Britain's best crime writersFor ten years the Mammoth Best British Crime series has been publishing an annual volume of the most outstanding crime and mystery short fiction published in the UK. Over 400 stories by the very best writers in the field have been published. Contributors have included, among many others, Mark Billingham, Liza Cody, Roger Jon Ellory, Reginald Hill, Peter James, Simon Kernick, Alexander McCall Smith, Val McDermid...

A complete guide to Pentaho Kettle, the Pentaho Data lntegration toolset for ETLThis practical book is a complete guide to installing, configuring, and managing Pentaho Kettle. If you’re a database administrator or developer, you’ll first get up to speed on Kettle basics and how to apply Kettle to create ETL solutions—before progressing to specialized concepts such as clustering, extensibility, and data vault models. Learn how to design and build every phase of an ...

This is the comprehensive reference and technical guide to Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012. A team of expert authors offers step-by-step coverage of related topics in every feature area, organized to help IT professionals rapidly optimize Configuration Manager 2012 for their requirements, and then deploy and use it successfully. The authors begin by introducing Configuration Manager 2012 and its goals, and explaining how it fits into the broader System Center pr...

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 doesn’t just add dozens of new features: It integrates multiple technologies into a common, unified communications system that can add value in many new ways. Now, five leading Exchange Server consultants help you deploy Exchange Server 2013 quickly and smoothly--and then efficiently manage, troubleshoot, and support it for years to come. More than a comprehensive, authoritative reference, Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Unleashed presents hundreds of...

Heart-warming short stories for cold winter nights…Featuring short stories from Sunday Times bestselling authors Miranda Dickinson and Claudia Carroll and highly anticipated debuts from Mhairi McFarlane and Liz Trenow, this collection is the ultimate treat.Each short story is followed up by exclusive extracts of each of the authors upcoming titles.Love, Loss and Coffee Cake: Through tears, heartbreak and the undying hope of love, a tale of a pair of star-crossed lov...

The most comprehensive, realistic, and useful guide to Microsoft Lync Server 2013, today’s leading Unified Communications system. Four expert Lync consultants and implementers bring together in-the-trenches guidance for all facets of planning, integration, deployment, and administration. The authors introduce Microsoft Lync Server 2013, outline what it can do, and review the key improvements Microsoft has made in this version. They cover every...

Featuring:Sarah Hall, Lucy Wood, Lisa Blower, Lavinia Greenlaw and Lionel Shriver.Edgar Allan Poe once claimed the greatest literary works were those that could be read ’in one sitting’. ‘Brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effect,’ he argued, once the effect has been established, of course.The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2013 all use brevity with striking results, whether presenting a comp...

Fill the gap between planning and doing with SSIS 2014The 2014 release of Microsoft's SQL Server Integration Services provides enhancements for managing extraction, transformation, and load operations, plus expanded in-memory capabilities, improved disaster recovery, increased scalability, and much more. The increased functionality will streamline your ETL processes and smooth out your workflow, but the catch is that your workflow must change. New tools come with n...

Step behind the hotel room doors of The Chatsfield, London…This is so not how Alice Hammond planned on spending her birthday. Not only has her own father stood her up, but now some guy has sat down next to her at the Chatsfield bar and started teasing her! Ok, he’s the seriously gorgeous captain of a top football team, but he’s also the most arrogant man Alice has ever met, and storming off is the only option!But when she accidentally switches phones with Angus it’s time to...