In a ruined and desolate land, a young woman finds herself stranded and alone, with no memory of her past and only a single clue to identity: an engagement ring with the inscription, 'Cybil'. Even if she can navigate the hostile realm of homicidal, hybridised beasts, what hope does she have of ever finding home? An encounter with some unlikely allies, offers her a chance of survival. But will the 'smash and grab' tactics of the continent's most notorious smuggling crew be enough to see her through this dystopian nightmare? They quickly find themselves caught up in the intensifying discord between the fascist City States and the anarchic Outlands. Cybil's unyielding desire to find her lost love must take a back seat to the bonds of friendship, as her unfailing sense of loyalty draws her into a conspiracy that threatens to tear civilization apart. Can a handful of misfit rebels thwart the most powerful entity on the continent and change the course of history...? "A well conceived story, with a furious pace and a half-dozen twists that completely blindside you."

What if North Korea’s sudden turn towards peace is a cunning act of misdirection? A routine Coast Guard inspection of a cargo ship in the Caribbean turns into a vicious firefight with unidentified Asian commandos. The second attempt to board the vessel ends with a nuclear detonation. North Korea has been smuggling short and intermediate-range missiles into Cuba. An unknown number of nuclear warheads are hidden less than 100 miles from the tip of Florida. Every American city east of San Antonio is in the target zone. Scrambling to stop the flow of weapons to Cuba, the president orders the Atlantic Fleet to surround the island, cutting off all access. It’s the Cuban Missile Crisis all over again, but this time there won’t be a diplomatic resolution. The North Koreans have developed a secret weapon that rips through the blockade with ease, leaving burning ships and floating bodies in its wake. Against this unimagined threat stand a small detachment of United States Marines and a cutting-edge destroyer that’s never been tested in combat. It’s a battle we never expected to fight, against an enemy we can barely comprehend...

The Structural Defects Reference Manual for Low-Rise Buildings has been written to assist professionals and students involved in building construction to identify causes of structural failure. Each chapter carefully addresses design, materials and workmanship factors which contribute to structural defects. The main structural elements - roofs, walls, floors and foundations - are all covered and illustrated by case studies. The book also contains relevant data and guidance to show how all the different building elements should be designed and constructed.

In a work of extraordinary narrative power, filled with brilliant personalities and vivid scenes of dramatic action, Robert K. Massie, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and Dreadnought, elevates to its proper historical importance the role of sea power in the winning of the Great War. The predominant image of this first world war is of mud and trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, poison gas, and slaughter. A generation of European manhood was massacred, and a wound was inflicted on European civilization that required the remainder of the twentieth century to heal. But with all its sacrifice, trench warfare did not win the war for one side or lose it for the other. Over the course of four years, the lines on the Western Front moved scarcely at all; attempts to break through led only to the lengthening of the already unbearably long casualty lists. For the true story of military upheaval, we must look to the sea. On the eve of the war in August 1914, Great Britain and Germany possessed the two greatest navies the world had ever seen. When war came, these two fleets of dreadnoughts—gigantic floating castles of steel able to hurl massive shells at an enemy miles away—were ready to test their terrible power against each other. Their struggles took place in the North Sea and the Pacific, at the Falkland Islands and the Dardanelles. They reached their climax when Germany, suffocated by an implacable naval blockade, decided to strike against the British ring of steel. The result was Jutland, a titanic clash of fifty-eight dreadnoughts, each the home of a thousand men. When the German High Seas Fleet retreated, the kaiser unleashed unrestricted U-boat warfare, which, in its indiscriminate violence, brought a reluctant America into the war. In this way, the German effort to “seize the trident” by defeating the British navy led to the fall of the German empire. Ultimately, the distinguishing feature of Castles of Steel is the author himself. The knowledge, understanding, and literary power Massie brings to this story are unparalleled. His portrayals of Winston Churchill, the British admirals Fisher, Jellicoe, and Beatty, and the Germans Scheer, Hipper, and Tirpitz are stunning in their veracity and artistry. Castles of Steel is about war at sea, leadership and command, courage, genius, and folly. All these elements are given magnificent scope by Robert K. Massie’ s special and widely hailed literary mastery. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great.

This book discusses performance-based seismic and wind-resistant design for high-rise building structures, with a particular focus on establishing an integrated approach for performance-based wind engineering, which is currently less advanced than seismic engineering. This book also provides a state-of-the-art review of numerous methodologies, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD), extreme value analysis, structural optimization, vibration control, pushover analysis, response spectrum analysis, modal parameter identification for the assessment of the wind-resistant and seismic performance of tall buildings in the design stage and actual tall buildings in use. Several new structural optimization methods, including the augmented optimality criteria method, have been developed and employed in the context of performance-based design. This book is a valuable resource for students, researchers and engineers in the field of civil and structural engineering.

This fully revised essential reference takes into account all important aspects of building control, including new legislation up to Spring 2000 with important revisions to parts B, K, M and N. Each chapter explains the approved document. Publication lists and relevant sources of information are also included, together with annexes devoted to legislation relevant to the construction industry, determinations made by the Secretary of State and sample check lists. Building Regulations Explained will be of wide appeal to architects, planners, surveyors, builders, building control professionals (including new non-NHBC approved inspectors), regulators and students.