When ten-year-old Rainey Teague disappears on his way home from school in idyllic Niceville, Detective Nick Kavanaugh traces the boy to his last sighting - staring into the window of old pawn shop in town. CCTV shows Rainey there one minute and then gone the next. In the days that follow, any hope Rainey's family has of finding him alive starts to fade but then Rainey is found - alive but in a coma, and there's no telling when, or if, he'll ever wake up...One year on, Kavanagh is s...

When two plane crashes set off a spellbinding chain reaction of murder, inadvertent kidnapping, corporate corruption and financial double-dealing, Niceville detective Nick Kavanaugh has to investigate.To add to his worries, he and his wife, Kate, have also just taken in brutally orphaned Rainey Teague. Something bothers Nick about Rainey - and it isn't just that the woman in charge of attendance at Rainey's school has suspiciously disappeared. In fact, people have long been disappe...

Aging is a topic that concerns all of us, since none of us can escape it. The molecular and cellular process is built in every of the billions of cells forming our body. Some of these cells, such as immune cells and red blood cells, live only for a few days to weeks and get life-long constantly replaced by cells produced in the bone marrow. In contrast, there are cells, such as neurons and memory lymphocytes, that get as old as we get.The process of aging limits our maximal life sp...

A comprehensive introduction and teaching resource for state-of-the-art Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) using R software. This guide facilitates the efficient teaching, independent learning, and use of QCA with the best available software, reducing the time and effort required when encountering not just the logic of a new method, but also new software. With its applied and practical focus, the book offers a genuinely simple and intuitive resource for implementing the most complete p...

When a stranger arrives at the palace in the dead of night, carrying a priceless, magical artefact, Dalia and Charlie set off to find the fabled Four Watchmen who can help protect it. It couldn't have come at a worse time though, with the great house of Aelyndore opening its door to apprentices for the first time in decades and Charlie promising himself that he won't get into any more trouble this term.With time running out—literally, and deadly creatures breaching the magical barri...

'THE IVY,' Fredrika Wilhelmina Carstens' remarkable novel, will transport you to the heart of 19th-century Finland. See the world through the eyes of two young girls as they navigate love, loss, and life in an upper-class family. 'THE IVY' is a buried classic waiting to be found, written with raw emotion and deep character insight reminiscent of Jane Austen. Dive into this moving investigation of women's lives and experiences during a moment of enormous change.""'T...

This enlightening book scrutinizes the shifting and overlapping governance paradigms that inform public administration reforms. Exploring the models that shape and reshape the daily operation of public organizations, it explains the core features of public bureaucracy and professional rule in the modern day. From the rise to supremacy of New Public Management to the growing preference for alternatives, such as Digital Era Governance, Public Value Management and New Public Governance, four ...

People say that if Charlie Pratt had a penny for every blunder, he'd fill his pockets and then misplace his trousers.When Charlie tries to learn more about Dalia Addair, the peculiar girl who lives in the haunted manor on the edge of town, he accidentally slots himself into her magical trial—a trial that she has spent her whole life preparing for; he gets a day.But something's wrong; the trial is unleashing monsters that haven't been seen for centuries, and ...

In Niceville, a pleasant Southern town where evil lurks just beneath the surface, two back-to-back airplane crashes set off a spellbinding chain reaction of murder, inadvertent kidnapping, and double-dealing.Detective Nick Kavanaugh must balance his investigation into the accidents with family concerns and a long-buried mystery. He and his wife Kate, a family lawyer, have taken in Kate’s sister and her two children, escaping their abusive father Byron Deitz. The Kavanaughs are also...

The astonishing final installment in the page-turning trilogy that Stephen King calls “an authentic work of American genius.”Niceville has an almost unearthly beauty when the sun tops the ancient nearby mountain called Tallulah’s Wall and bathes it in soft Southern light. But there’s a reason Native American tribes avoided the place: An absence that inhabits the air and the depthless “sink” atop Tallulah’s Wall. This “Nothing” has long bent time and the desires of ...

In 1848, the young men of Marstal leave their Danish island town to fight in the First Schleswig War, and the sea begins to claim them.Set in the Danish seafaring town of Marstal from 1848 to the end of the Second World War, We, The Drowned follows three generations shaped by salt water, violence, and absence. Laurids Madsen returns from battle restless and drawn back to the ocean. His son Albert grows up in the shadow of a father who belongs more to the sea than t...

The charming international bestseller about an unlikely friendship between an elderly door-to-door bookseller and a nine-year-old girl that changes his life.Small-town German bookseller Carl Kollhoff delivers his books to special customers in the evening hours after closing time, walking through the picturesque alleys of the city. These people are almost like friends to him, and he is their most important connection to the world.When Kollhoff unexpectedly l...