"Robison's minimalism is more like a slap in the face: it's short, it stings, and you wonder who in tarnation did that to you." —The New York Times Enter Eve. Based in New Orleans, she's a location scout for a movie production company and complacently married to Adam. ""Now you know,"" she says. ""Our names really didn't bother me that much until the mail started arriving addressed to 'Adam and Eve Broussard.'"" He's just been diagnosed with a grave illness and gone back to the palatial family home where his parents reside. It's all just fine with Eve—or so she tells herself at the beginning. But standing left of center in this still–prosperous but mortally wounded family does not get easier as the weeks wear on. As she negotiates her way around the anger of Adam's despised twin brother Saunders, maintains her friendship with his beautiful and volatile wife Petal, and protects what's left of the innocence of her niece Collie, Eve finds more than the Louisiana heat oppressive.

Enjoy three titles in one collection from RaeAnne Thayne

"The 2000's International Symposium on Distributed Objects and Applications (DOA) is the second ..."--Preface.

Fundamentals of distributed object systems and their use to solve problems in industrial applications are the focus of these papers from a September 2001 symposium. Contributors include researchers who provide technical and theoretical solutions, practitioners who show how distributed object systems are used to solve real world problems, and users who are interested in understanding how distributed object technology can be exploited in their application domains. Themes are support for mobility, monitoring, and management, meta-data services, enterprise architectures/workflow, reflection and reconfiguration, multimedia, and fault-tolerance. Some subjects include transparent dissemination of adaptors in Jini, a collaborative word processing system using a CORBA-based workflow framework, and developing mobile agent organizations. Lacks a subject index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).