An in-depth analysis of game development and rules and fiction in video games—with concrete examples, including The Legend of Zelda, Grand Theft Auto, and more A video game is half-real: we play by real rules while imagining a fictional world. We win or lose the game in the real world, but we slay a dragon (for example) only in the world of the game. In this thought-provoking study, Jesper Juul examines the constantly evolving tension between rules and fiction in video games. Discussing games from Pong to The Legend of Zelda, from chess to Grand Theft Auto, he shows how video games are both a departure from and a development of traditional non-electronic games. The book combines perspectives from such fields as literary and film theory, computer science, psychology, economic game theory, and game studies, to outline a theory of what video games are, how they work with the player, how they have developed historically, and why they are fun to play. Locating video games in a history of games that goes back to Ancient Egypt, Juul argues that there is a basic affinity between games and computers. Just as the printing press and the cinema have promoted and enabled new kinds of storytelling, computers work as enablers of games, letting us play old games in new ways and allowing for new kinds of games that would not have been possible before computers. Juul presents a classic game model, which describes the traditional construction of games and points to possible future developments. He examines how rules provide challenges, learning, and enjoyment for players, and how a game cues the player into imagining its fictional world. Juul’s lively style and eclectic deployment of sources will make Half-Real of interest to media, literature, and game scholars as well as to game professionals and gamers.

An unforgettable novel about race and motherhood from the bestselling author of Before and After Once a Civil Rights activist, Miriam Vener feels trapped in the comfortable upper-middle-class life she leads with her family in Houston in the 1980s. That life suddenly shatters with the appearance, after almost eighteen years, of Veronica (Ronnee), Miriam's biracial daughter born of her passionate affair a generation ago with Eljay, a brilliant black professor at a Mississippi college, who has raised the child. When Miriam introduces her daughter to the utterly white New England town where she summers, and to the Houston society that represents her own compromise of her '60s ideals, the results are complicated. What claim does Miriam have on Ronnee after all this time, and what does Ronnee, no longer a child, want of her mother now? As Miriam desperately and awkwardly invites affection from this stranger who shares her blood, Ronnee--hot-tempered, sensitive, manipulative, and deeply hurt--wrestles with her fury at her mother's mysterious disappearance from her life and searches for reparations. With which family--and which race--does Ronnee identify, and how does that affect her relationships with her newly discovered half sister, her white boyfriend, and the father she is rebelling against? A moving story about estrangement and intimacy, race and privilege, identity and belonging, Half a Heart is a searingly honest novel of public and private ideals betrayed and hopes reignited, in which one of our foremost novelists probes the way history and unyielding love shape our lives.

In a rut? Follow Addie Sewell's 10-step plan! 1. Refuse to be the Scary Cat Lady. Don't buy a cat. 2. Step out of your comfort zone. 3. Use a friend's wedding to start your New Spontaneous Life. 4. Prepare to seduce The One Who Got Away (TOWGA). 5. Avoid Derek Bates. Sure, he's hot…but he's not why you're here! 6. Seriously. Stop looking at Derek like he's sex-on-a-stick. 7. Seduce TOWGA by slipping into his bed naked. (You can do it!) 8. Don't panic—you accidentally ended up in Derek's bed instead. 9. Okay, maybe you're enjoying being in Derek's bed a little too much. But he does feel really, really incredible. 10. Abort plan. Just go with it.

Calvert Green literally believes he's dead--but that won't stop him from diving deep into the secrets that threaten to bury him. The car accident took his wife and nearly killed him too, but Calvert Green's problems are just beginning. He was a respected Russian literature scholar in Chicago, but due to severe head trauma, he's now suffering from Cotard's Disease--a rare physiological condition that makes him believe he's dead. He has also lost much of his memory, including the academic knowledge that defined his life. Calvert knows few details about the accident but believes there's more going on than he's been told, so he leaves the care facility determined to find the truth behind his "death." His search lands him in the middle of a city being terrorized by a murder spree, and young homicide detective Whistler Diaz has a prime suspect. But Whistler's cousin Moe, a crusading journalist, zeroes in on Calvert, determined to prove he's not all he seems. Intuition and improvisation were never Calvert's strong suits, but now he has to draw on his hidden inner resources to clear his name. On a harrowing journey into the city's underbelly--and deep into his psyche--Calvert begins to uncover the shocking truth of who he once was. Calvert might be on the verge of finding a new definition of sanity--but a malevolent force lurks in the shadows bent on total madness.

Toward the Bigger Half: Equity in Public Education explores what makes equity and schooling uncomfortable but necessary companions. Dr. Beth Godett theorizes about the goal of equity in public education and provides a vital window into history and the law. The term “equity” is demystified by introducing historical figures as if they were alive today. Her book will make you angry, curious, and also hopeful. Challenging her readers to embrace opportunities, Dr. Godett details pragmatic ways that teachers (like herself) can make a difference in K-12 education. Enjoy it in one sitting or break it into small bites; either way you will be eager to share new ideas with colleagues.

South Eastern Idaho has many famous lava flows that cover large portions of the countryside. Unknowingly the humans have created parks and National Monuments out of these ancient places of destruction. Among these is Hell's Half Acre; a stretch of lava that runs along part of the I-15 highway in Idaho. For thousands of years something has lain dormant beneath the strange scenery; it's tomb. This book contains several tales of its awakening and the unwitting people who are pulled into the darkness of the lava flow known as Hell's Half Acre.

An irresistible story of a woman remaking her life after her husband’s betrayal leads to a year of travel, art, and passion in Paris, from the award-winning author of This Close to Okay. Vincent, having grown up as the privileged daughter of artists, has a lovely life in many ways. At forty-four, she enjoys strolling the streets of Paris and teaching at the modern art museum; she has a vibrant group of friends; and she’s even caught the eye of a young, charismatic man named Loup. But Vincent is also in Paris to escape a painful betrayal: her husband, Cillian, has published a bestselling book divulging secrets about their marriage and his own past, hinting that when he was a teenager, he may have had a child with a young woman back in Dublin—before he moved to California and never returned. Now estranged from her husband, Vincent has agreed to see Cillian again at their son’s wedding the following summer, but Loup introduces new complications. Soon they begin an intense affair, and somewhere between dinners made together, cigarettes smoked in the moonlight, hazy evenings in nightclubs, and long, starry walks along the Seine, Vincent feels herself loosening and blossoming. In a journey that is both transportive and intimate, Half-Blown Rose traverses Paris, art, travel, liminal spaces, and the messy complexities of relationships and romance, with excerpts from Cillian’s novel, playlists, and journal entries woven throughout. As Cillian does all he can to win her back, Vincent must decide what she wants . . . and who she will be.

This book reports on a comprehensive study on a novel high-power converter, i.e. a Modular Multilevel Converter with Interleaved Half-bridge Submodules (ISM-MMC). It describes in depth its average model, the operating principles, as well as a new control method and a hybrid modulation strategy that help to exploit the benefits of the interleaving scheme. The new power converter is particularly advantageous for high-current applications that require superb quality of input/output waveforms. Moreover, this book reports on a systematic study of the current balancing problem between parallel-connected units that commutate in non-simultaneous fashion. This is a typical issue in interleaved converters, however here it is analyzed for the first time in relation to MMC-based structures. Two control strategies are proposed to cope with this matter. By using a sensorless regulation scheme, the number of required current transducers has been minimized, reducing complexity, cost, and footprint of the hardware, while providing converter with a fast and accurate current balancing. This book also offers a comprehensive comparison between several practical designs of ISM-MMC and classical MMC for an ultra-fast electrical vehicle charger. All in all, it provides graduate students and researchers, as well as field engineers and professionals with extensive information and essential practical details on the state-of-the-art MMC and ISM-MMC design.

“One of the most remarkable prose stylists to emerge from the noir tradition in this century.” –Stephen King “Hard-boiled horror, pulp noir vampires, decaying urban souls– you’re gonna need a shower after this one. . . . [Huston] kicks down the door of horror.” –Fangoria, on Already Dead There’s only so much room on the Island, only so much blood, and Manhattan’s Vampyre Clans aren’t interested in sharing. So when the Vyrus-infected dregs of New York’s outer boroughs start creeping across the bridges and through the tunnels, the Clans want to know why. Bad luck for PI and general hard case Joe Pitt. See, Joe used to be a Rogue, used to work off his own dime, picked his own gigs, but tight times and a terminally ill girlfriend pushed him into the arms of the renegade Society Clan. Now he has all the cash and blood he needs, but at a steep price. The price tonight is crossing the bridge, rolling to Coney Island, finding the Freak Clan, and figuring out what’s driving that bunch of savages to scratch at the Society’s door. No need to look far. The answer lies around the corner in Gravesend. Convenient, all those graves. From uptown to the boardwalk, war drums are beating. Murderous family feuds and personal grudges are being drawn and brandished, along with the long knives. Blood will spill and, big surprise, Joe’s in the middle. But hey, why should this night be different from any other? Sunset to sunrise: put off a war, keep your head attached to your neck, and save your girl. Check. Joe’s on the case. Praise for Charlie Huston and his Joe Pitt novels “In conceiving his world (a New York City divided by vampire clans, each with different reasons to hate Pitt), Huston gives a fading genre a fresh afterlife. [Grade:] A.” –Entertainment Weekly “[Huston] creates a world that is at once supernatural and totally familiar, imaginative, and utterly convincing.” –The Philadelphia Inquirer