Christopher Beck

At 44, New York divorcee, Mel, is not ready to give up on God or the possibility of motherhood. Between running an actors’ agency in Hammersmith and rehearsing her role in a rock musical, she agrees to take care of her stepdaughter, Jess’s challenging four-year-old son, Billy, two afternoons a week. Writing: Playing Billy’s Mom on a strip of paper to place in her Gratitude jar, she prays that her good deed will have a pay off: her own fertility.Meanwhile, prepped with hormone tablets and injection at the ready, she awaits the return of charismatic Royce, who has been filming in Hollywood. But all is not well with Royce. A strange incident on Venice Beach after dark has shifted his world. Can he really be cursed? Desperate, Mel reaches out to her friend, Anto. He’s gay but wants to be a parent. Thwarted again, will surrogacy be the answer? Will Mel be locked into taking on more responsibility for Billy as Jess spirals into depression following the loss of her father? Or can Mel make a life with the new man in her life, refugee Hassan, suffering from PTSD and raising his disabled eight-year-old son alone?Or will life take an unexpected turn? As Mel’s faith moves towards Buddhism under Anto’s influence and a friend steps in to help with a problem deeper than infertility that is gripping her life, will she be able to answer the call when an unlooked for opportunity presents itself?A deeply empathic, humane debut, Gratitude asks how we live now and how we make meaning in lives that rarely work to plan.

Elves with blasters It's all true Faeries, Elves and Angels; the gods and monsters of myth and legend are real, and living among us. There has been a war going on for a very long time between the Elder races of the Vansadagaadian Corridor and predatory forces of the Annunaki god Enlil and the Pandemonium. Humanity is caught in the middle.Walter Ryan is an agent of the Melkizedek Order who has been given orders to track down an enemy named Graud. The mission leads him into the world of the Vansadagaadians and the Faerie tribes that protect humanity from the Pandemonium. From the Western Front of World War I to Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat, then to 100 years later and a new global war against the ancient enemy, Walter and his family must fight both in the present and in the ancient past to defeat Graud and prevent the enslavement of the world.

Nasslaufende, permanenterregte Synchronmaschinen eignen sich aufgrund ihrer Eigenschaften für den Einsatz im Fahrzeug. Um das thermische Verhalten frühzeitig im Entwicklungsprozess abbilden zu können, ist ein geeigneter Modellierungsansatz notwendig. Seine Analyse der Schlüsselfaktoren in Bezug auf die Wärmequellen/-senken und den Wärmetransport führt den Autor zu den Haupteinflussparametern der Kühlungssimulation. Durch die Wahl geeigneter Modellierungssätze zur Berücksichtigung der relevanten Einflussparameter kann Christopher Beck die Bauteiltemperaturen der nasslaufenden Synchronmaschine in Dauerbetriebspunkten bei adäquater Rechenzeit ermitteln.

One hundred years ago, invention, adventure, honor and duty were the soul of the aviator. Mankind looked at them with wonder, suspicion, fear, and faith. From this intersection in time, a new modern folklore emerged.The Astonished Earth is a revealing, breathtaking journey into the untold story of the legends of early aviation. Fokker, Garros, Strange, Immelmann, Boelcke, Hawker, and Richthofen. Icons all. Legends rise.

Mastering Oracle PL/SQL: Practical Solutions isn't a tutorial on how to code PL/SQL. It's designed to show you how to code PL/SQL well. It will show you how to write code that will run quickly and won't break in high load, multi-user environments. It covers the vast array of the functionality that PL/SQL provides, including effective handling of relational and abstract data, security, triggers, dynamic web content presentation from within the database, creation of a DBA toolkit, and effective debugging techniques.

This book teaches you all of the core concepts behind using the database, shows you the tools and techniques you need to master, and gives you practical examples of programming Oracle. This book is aimed at would-be Oracle developers and administrators alike. No matter what your background might be, this book takes a simple approach to teaching you Oracle technology. By the time you have completed this book, you will have all the knowledge you need to use Oracle databases with confidence.Oracle is the world's leading relational database. It provides a rich environment to store, handle, and extract data and, when used properly, is the fastest and most scaleable database on which to build enterprise scale applications. However, with power comes complexity and mastering the Oracle database is not an overnight job. It takes time, practice, and a lot of real world experience. The authors of this book have that experience. They understand the challenges that are going to be met when developing an application or administering the database and can guarantee you that the techniques taught in this book are proven and have led them through many successful implementations.