The polarizing literary debut by Scottish author Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory is the bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath. Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least: Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.

Powerful, perverse, and engrossing, this controversial novel offers a graphic portrait of a serial killer told in the first-person. "Read it if you dare!"--"The Daily Express".

Set in a war-torn country not unlike Bosnia, this internationally bestselling novel concerns a band of soldiers who find refuge in a rural castle.

Eighteen-year-old Kit is weird: big, strange, odd, socially disabled, on a spectrum that stretches from "highly gifted" at one end, to "nutter" at the other. At least Kit knows who his father is; he and Guy live together in a decaying country house on the unstable brink of a vast quarry. His mother's identity is another matter. Now, though, his father's dying, and old friends are gathering for one last time. "Uncle" Paul's a media lawyer now; Rob and Ali are upwardly mobile corporate bunnies; pretty, hopeful Pris is a single mother; Haze is still living up to his drug-inspired name twenty years on; and fierce, protective Hol is a gifted if acerbic critic. As young film students they lived at Willoughtree House with Guy, and they've all come back because they want something. Kit, too, has his own ulterior motives. Before his father dies he wants to know who his mother is, and what's on the mysterious tape they're all looking for. But most of all he wants to stop time and keep his father alive. Fast-paced, gripping and savagely funny, The Quarry is a virtuoso performance whose soaring riffs on the inexhaustible marvel of human perception and rage against the dying of the light will stand among Iain Banks' greatest work.

In Scotland, a self-appointed executioner dispenses justice to fit the crime. Thus the lenient judge who let a rapist go is punished by being raped, while a man who killed is killed in turn. By the author of The Wasp Factory.

"In the Pennsylvania town of Pine Deep, a handful of brave souls prepare for an unspeakable evil that has been gathering strength for thirty years. On Halloween night, the legend that has haunted their community will return with a vengeance. The dead will rise, the damned will take human form, and a red wave of terror will consume every man, woman, and child. For the few left standing, time is running out. Daylight is fading, and the ultimate battle between good and evil is about to begin..."--Back cover.

This Bayesian modeling book provides a self-contained entry to computational Bayesian statistics. Focusing on the most standard statistical models and backed up by real datasets and an all-inclusive R (CRAN) package called bayess, the book provides an operational methodology for conducting Bayesian inference, rather than focusing on its theoretical and philosophical justifications. Readers are empowered to participate in the real-life data analysis situations depicted here from the beginning. Special attention is paid to the derivation of prior distributions in each case and specific reference solutions are given for each of the models. Similarly, computational details are worked out to lead the reader towards an effective programming of the methods given in the book. In particular, all R codes are discussed with enough detail to make them readily understandable and expandable. Bayesian Essentials with R can be used as a textbook at both undergraduate and graduate levels. It is particularly useful with students in professional degree programs and scientists to analyze data the Bayesian way. The text will also enhance introductory courses on Bayesian statistics. Prerequisites for the book are an undergraduate background in probability and statistics, if not in Bayesian statistics.