Showing results by narrator "Christopher" in All Categories

At times in our careers, we face conversations that bring out tense emotions. Our instinct may be to avoid them entirely, but engaging in challenging conversations can create opportunities to build stronger work relationships, teams, and organizations. This book will help you learn how to communicate productively under stress, offer and accept critical feedback, and ensure teams walk away from challenging conversations feeling united.

Everyone around me seems to be landing their dream pack. Not me. I'm destined for a life of stress baking with only cats and books for company. Why? No pack wants to date the little sister of the notorious Stormgate brothers. Especially when that sister is an omega with a smart mouth and a scent that's—now how did the last alpha describe it? Spicy.

Unlock the potential of Generative AI with this Large Language Model production-ready playbook for seamless deployment, optimization, and scaling. This hands-on guide takes you beyond theory, offering expert strategies for integrating LLMs into real-world applications using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector databases, PEFT, LoRA, and scalable inference architectures. Whether you're an ML engineer, data scientist, or MLOps practitioner, you’ll gain the technical know-how to operationalize LLMs efficiently, reduce compute costs, and ensure rock-solid reliability in production.

While many Westerners still think of yoga as an invigorating series of postures and breathing exercises, these physical practices are only part of a vast and ancient spiritual science. For more than three millennia, yoga sages systematically explored the essential questions of our human existence: What are the root causes of suffering, and how can we achieve freedom and happiness? What would it be like to function at the maximum potential of our minds, bodies, and spirits? What is an optimal human life?

The unimaginable has happened: the world has been plunged into all-out nuclear war. Sailing near the Arctic Circle, the USS Nathan James is relatively unscathed, but the future is grim and Captain Thomas is facing mutiny from the tattered remnants of his crew. With civilization in ruins, he urges those that remain - 152 men and 26 women - to pull together in search of land. Once they reach safety, however, the men and women on board realize that they are the earth's last remaining survivors.

Driven by his tragic past, prosecutor Chance Meridian seeks justice for a beautiful woman brutally murdered in her own home. Except nothing comes easy in Atlanta, and certainly not justice. A lot of people in town wanted Sara Barton dead, and every single one of them is lying about something. Chance shouldn't be surprised. Murder is an ugly business. But so is love.

Watching the world from her bedroom window, she exists only in second-hand romance novels and falls for any fast-food employee who happens to spare her a glance. Everything changes with the return of Vince, a boy who became a legend after he was hauled away in handcuffs at 14. Sonny and Vince used to be childhood friends. But with all that happened in-between, childhood seems so long ago. It will take two years of juvie, an inebriated grandmother and a porn stash for them to meet again.

This final play from the pen of Oscar Wilde is a stylish send-up of Victorian courtship and manners, complete with assumed names, mistaken lovers, and a lost handbag. Jack and Algernon are best friends, both wooing ladies who think their names are Ernest, "that name which inspires absolute confidence." Wilde’s effervescent wit, scathing social satire, and high farce make this one of the most cherished plays in the English language.

One by one, people are mysteriously disappearing from a small Maine town. Four months ago, a ruthless murderer killed two people and kidnapped three more, including Danny Sullivan’s sister, who barely escaped. Unfortunately so did the killer, vanishing without a trace into the vast wilderness. When the police fail to find his sister's captor, Danny returns to Maine to hunt him down.

As a devastating hurricane approaches, as the benighted creations of Victor Helios begin to spin out of control, as New Orleans descends into chaos and the future of humanity hangs in the balance, the only hope rests with Victor's first, failed attempt to build the perfect human. Deucalion's centuries-old history began as the original manifestation of a soulless vision - and it is fated to end in the ultimate confrontation between a damned creature and his mad creator. But first they must face a monstrosity not even Victor's malignant mind could have conceived.

How much better would your world be if you deliberately trained and developed your confidence, competence, discipline, motivation, mental toughness, and more - like an elite member of the Special Operations community? Whether fighting the war against terrorism or applying their mentality and leadership principles in the marketplace and at home, this book is for anyone who wants to cultivate the champion mindset required to do more and win.

Mike Bellamy's father Barry is as tough as they come. Widely credited as the inspiration for Barry Crump's back-country character Sam Cash, Barry was a roving worker in rural North Island during the 50s, 60s and 70s. Tough Country is a book about a father by a son, about a bygone era of bushmen, scrub-cutters, hunters and shepherds. It's also a book about the author's own life working the land, and the characters of the 80s and 90s, from tradies and digger-drivers to drain-layers and wharfies.

When a sniper kills four people on Boston Common, Boston homicide detective Mike Houston and his partner Anne Bouchard are sent to investigate the case. Amidst the blood and terror, Houston discovers similarities, likenesses the killer’s positioning, his choice of victims, and his code of ethics between the crime scene and his own training as a US Marine scout and sniper. And with the staging of the scene set for prime shock value, Houston has to wonder what it is this murderer intends to accomplish.

With his wedding behind him, Fred is looking forward to nightly life finally settling down. Unfortunately, someone from his past has other, far less peaceful, plans in mind. Finding his clan under attack, Fred must scramble to discover who is working against him and how to fight back. Between securing shelter, trading favors, and keeping up with his accounting business, it won’t be easy to stay out of trouble; let alone uncover the identity of his adversary.

It’s been eight years since the Change rendered technology inoperable across the globe. Rising from the ashes of the computer and industrial ages is a brave new world. Survivors have banded together in tribal communities, committed to rebuilding society. In Oregon’s Willamette Valley, former pilot Michael Havel’s Bearkillers are warriors of renown. Their closest ally, the mystical Clan Mackenzie, is led by Wiccan folksinger Juniper Mackenzie. Their leadership has saved countless lives. But not every leader has altruistic aspirations.

Every person follows a script for living, a life guide that directs our behavior and shapes our choices. As believers, we find the original script for living woven throughout the Bible. Yet while the Christian message is simple, it can become complicated by our environment, our culture, and our religious ideas and traditions. For this reason, we are all in constant need of revising the scripts by which we live. Author Frank Viola believes we need to revisit and revise what it means to live the Christian life.

This dialogue is a must-listen for anyone interested in ancient philosophy, cosmology, or metaphysics. Timaeus invites listeners to reflect on the deeper questions of life, existence, and the universe’s origins.

A mysterious letter alluding to a secret in her parents' past brings Genevieve Woodward back to her Blue Ridge Mountains hometown, but she's also in need of a break from a high-profile career that has left her dangerously burned out and concealing a powerful secret of her own. When she wakes inside an unfamiliar cottage to find the confused owner staring down at her, she can no longer ignore the fact that she needs help.

Stein on Writing provides immediately useful advice for writers of fiction and nonfiction, whether newcomers or accomplished professionals. As Sol Stein, renowned editor, author, and instructor, explains, "This is not a book of theory. It is a book of usable solutions, how to fix writing that is flawed, how to improve writing that is good, how to create interesting writing in the first place."

He is Deucalion, a tattooed man of mysterious origin, a sleight-of-reality artist who has traveled the centuries with a secret worse than death. He arrives in New Orleans as a serial killer stalks the streets, a killer who carefully selects his victims for the humanity that is missing in himself. Deucalion's path will lead him to cool, tough police detective Carson O'Connor and her devoted partner, Michael Maddison, who are tracking the slayer but will soon discover signs of something far more terrifying: an entire race of killers who are much more - and less - than human.