Whether it be getting a tattoo, using whips and chains or preparing dinner in nothing but stilettos, four divas - all best friends and over 50 years old - decide that they need to spice up their love lives. And they're willing to go to any length to achieve that. So Emma, Queenie, Yolanda and Connie set out to get the pleasure they crave. As things start heating up, the ladies' lives get sexier - and more complicated. Soon, the four divas soon face more drama than they bargained for.

Targeted at Oracle professionals who need fast and accurate working examples of complex issues, Oracle In-focus books target specific areas of Oracle technology in a concise manner. Plenty of working code is provided without a lot of theory, allowing database managers to solve their problems quickly without reviewing data that they already know. All code scripts are available for instant download from a companion web site.

Tormented by past heartbreak and contemporary politics, for Edgar 'Lefty' Mendieta the news of the murder of lawyer Bruno Canizales represents just another day at the office in the drug-ridden city of Culiacán. It soon becomes clear that there is no shortage of suspects in a city where it's hard to tell the gangsters from the politicians. Canizales was the son of a former government minister and the partner of a drug baron's daughter, with his own penchant for cross-dressing and dangerous sex. What is less clear is why the assassin chose to use a silver bullet. And why, two days later, they seem to have struck again. In this sweltering city where a desire for the truth can be as dangerous as any drug, Mendieta's search for justice takes him from mansions to drug dens, in Élmer Mendoza's seminal founding text of Latin America's 'narco-lit' wave.

Silver Bullets isn't about understanding the technology of standard, interoperable data; it's about why the technology is important and how you can use it. If you care about effective operations, no matter your job title, this book is for you. Interoperable data is a major game changer for business and information technology, government and commercial, national and international organizations. This book will let you make it happen, versus wondering what happened and how you were left behind. As Frederick Brooks famously noted in The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, there is no single-approach solution - no Silver Bullet - that delivers significant improvements in productivity, reliability, or simplicity. But in Silver Bullets, Pete O'Dell shows how a single concept - standardized data interoperability - yields improvements in any industry to which it is applied. O'Dell builds his case by reviewing the past. From the Great Wall of China to shipping containers, from punched cards to the VISA network, standardization has fueled enormous breakthroughs. O'Dell investigates current data standardization including XML and the Common Alerting Protocol, using case studies to illustrate success stories ranging from homeland defense to diabetes management. Finally, O'Dell offers practical suggestions on how to get started with interoperable data and points to emerging leaders in commercial, governmental and not-for-profit fields. This accessible, plain-spoken book is full of parables, anecdotes and stories, delivering humor as well as insight. Reading it enables you to make practical decisions about your organization's future and growth. Silver Bullets shines a clear light into your inoperable future.

This book empowers you to immediately grasp the opportunities that present themselves in international commercial negotiation, and to be able to create and maintain positive, mutually beneficial relationships with other parties that are long lasting and productive. International commercial negotiations are a vital element of today’s business world. But how do you conduct them successfully? And how well trained, prepared and knowledgeable are those conducting the negotiation? What makes this book different is that it encapsulates the core ‘need to know’ elements of negotiation that can make or break a deal. It is written to be user-friendly and an easy read – it offers simple advice that will be immediately useful to the commercial negotiator and makes many complicated issues easily understandable. ‘Silver Bullets’ are provided, distilling the critical factors that have significant implications for the negotiated outcome. This book has been written with the experienced business professional who is engaged within commercial negotiations in mind. It provides new insight into how to add value in terms of negotiation skills and operational efficiency. The book has been deliberately written in a non-technical, easy-to-read style that will have broad appeal.

2022 Dragon Award Winner The sixteenth novel in the magical alternate history Elemental Masters series follows sharpshooter Annie Oakley as she tours Europe and discovers untapped powers. Annie Oakley has always suspected there is something "uncanny" about herself, but has never been able to put a name to it. But when Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show goes on tour through Germany, Bill temporarily hires a new sharpshooter to be part of his "World Wide Congress of Rough Riders": a woman named Frida, who also happens to be an Elemental Master of Air. Alongside this new performer, Annie discovers that she and her husband, Frank, are not simply master marksman, but also magicians of rare ability. As they travel and perform, Annie must use her newfound knowledge and rare skill to combat creatures of the night scattered across the countryside, who threaten both the performers and the locals. Annie's got her gun, and it's filled with silver bullets.

This book provides practical guidance for corporate decision makers, project managers, project engineers, and for those wishing to grasp the key issues that define project success. The book represents a distillation of years of practical experience and offers a clear and concise ‘blueprint’ for how to approach projects and their management. This book is designed to be ‘clean and simple’ in its delivery – allowing the reader to immediately have ‘take aways’ that could be implemented within a project, adding value to any approach dealing with the key common problems and issues that arise within the project medium. The book can be applied to a wide range of scenarios in which project management is required – from setting up an organisation, creating distribution networks, bringing new technology to market, and to designing a leadership and training architecture within an organisation. The book, in addition to being a go-to reference book on project management for professional project managers and business leaders, is also ideal for postgraduate and undergraduate students studying project management. It is written to be user friendly, yet provides a wealth of information and tips that will enhance the readers knowledge and understanding of managing projects.

Originating as a radio series in 1933, the Lone Ranger is a cross-media star who has appeared in comic strips, comic books, adult and juvenile novels, feature films and serials, clothing, games, toys, home furnishings, and many other consumer products. In his prime, he rivaled Mickey Mouse as one of the most successfully licensed and merchandised children's properties in the United States, while in more recent decades, the Lone Ranger has struggled to resonate with consumers, leading to efforts to rebrand the property. The Lone Ranger's eighty-year history as a lifestyle brand thus offers a perfect case study of how the fields of licensing, merchandizing, and brand management have operated within shifting industrial and sociohistorical conditions that continue to redefine how the business of entertainment functions. Deciphering how iconic characters gain and retain their status as cultural commodities, Selling the Silver Bullet focuses on the work done by peripheral consumer product and licensing divisions in selectively extending the characters' reach and in cultivating investment in these characters among potential stakeholders. Tracing the Lone Ranger's decades-long career as intellectual property allows Avi Santo to analyze the mechanisms that drive contemporary character licensing and entertainment brand management practices, while at the same time situating the licensing field's development within particular sociohistorical and industrial contexts. He also offers a nuanced assessment of the ways that character licensing firms and consumer product divisions have responded to changing cultural and economic conditions over the past eighty years, which will alter perceptions about the creative and managerial authority these ancillary units wield.

Kitty's radio show, Kitty's Midnight Hour, is as popular as ever, and now she has a boyfriend who actually seems to understand her. Can she finally settle down to a normal life? Not if this is just the calm before the storm. When her mother falls ill, Kitty rushes back to Denver - and right back to the abusive pack of werewolves she escaped a year ago. To make matters worse, a war is brewing in the vampire community as Denver's two oldest vampires vie for the city, threatening the whole supernatural community. Though she wants to stay neutral, Kitty is once again drawn into a world of politics and violence. To protect her family, her lover, and herself, she'll have to choose sides ... and maybe become what she hates most about her kind: a killer.

"Hard to believe this is the 17th Quilters Club cozy mystery by Marjory Sorrell Rockwell. Following the adventures of the denizens of Caruthers Corners, Indiana, as these amateur sleuths solve puzzlers about quilts and crooks and crazies is as addictive as a slice of watermelon upside down cake." -Hollis George, noted editor and anthologist This time around the Quilters Club — Maddy Madison, along with her friends Lizzie, Cookie, and Bootsie — are on the trail of a fragment of the world's oldest quilt, the Tristan and Isolde Quilt. They are following a tip by the ghost of a Caruthers Corners Town Founder. Does it matter that the ghost is part of a fortune telling scam by a pair of con artists? Maddy's grandchildren — Aggie and N'yen — and their pal Sissy join the hunt. And they get a little help from that long-ago exchange student Leslie Ann Holmes, now married into British royalty. Yes, the gang's all here!