Showing results by author "R J" in All Categories

The Fellowship is broken; the quest to destroy the Ring seems already shrouded in disaster. But as the evil lord Sauron readies his armies for war, Frodo and Sam continue their lonely journey toward Mordor, guided only by Gollum, a deceitful and tortured creature, helplessly in thrall to the Ring's dark power.

FinOps brings financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud. Used by the majority of global enterprises, this management practice has grown from a fringe activity to the de facto discipline managing cloud spend. In this book, authors J. R. Storment and Mike Fuller outline the process of building a culture of cloud FinOps by drawing on real-world successes and failures of large-scale cloud spenders. Complete with a road map to get you started, this revised second edition includes new chapters that cover forecasting, sustainability, and connectivity to other frameworks.

In the ancient lands of Middle-earth, a place of elves and dwarves, Orcs and wizards, the darkest evil and the brightest good, a hobbit named Frodo Baggins embarks on a perilous quest: to carry the One Ring, ruler of all the Rings of Power, into the shadowy land of Mordor and destroy it in the fires where it was forged.

When Cait Douglass resolves to get over her broken heart, throw off her inhibitions, and start really living, she's unprepared for the two sensual men who cross her path. Torn between them, she doesn't know which to choose - or what kind of dire consequences could follow. Jim Heron, fallen angel and reluctant savior, is ahead in the war, but he puts everything at risk when he seeks to make a deal with the devil - literally.

Mother, wife, private investigator... vampire. Six years ago federal agent Samantha Moon was the perfect wife and mother, your typical soccer mom with the minivan and suburban home. Then the unthinkable happens, an attack that changes her life forever. And forever is a very long time for a vampire. Now the world at large thinks Samantha has developed a rare skin disease, a disease which forces her to quit her day job and stay out of the light of the sun.

Fetching a cat out of a tree should’ve been a quick, easy fifty bucks in Kanika’s pocket. Instead, following one stray thought, the devil pays her a visit and leaves her with a debt to repay.

They promised him one weekend a month. The House or Reason swore the 9th would never leave their gentle homeworld. But after Kublar, things changed for Sergeant Fetch and the Caledonian Reserve Legion Corps. Thrown into a meat grinder conflict in a desperate bid to hold the line, it doesn’t matter whether you’re reserve or active, only that you kill and survive.

This is a world where sin and salvation collide. This is a world where a cynical fallen angel struggles with the seven deadly sins and seven chosen souls. With the spellbinding Immortal, the riveting series that "changed the face of paranormal romance" comes to an epic close as mankind's reluctant savior struggles with his greatest challenge yet.

Someone is killing the people of London, leaving behind bodies drained of blood and bite marks upon their necks. Faced with the possibility of a vampire attack in London, Sherlock Holmes is called upon by Scotland Yard to uncover the identity of the killer. Once on the case, it doesn’t take long for the detective to follow a trail leading to a bar along St. Katherine Docks. Soon after, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson stumble upon an improbable ring of immortal spies, into which they are promptly recruited. It is a cat and mouse game, with Sherlock and Watson as the bait. But with London's ...

I don't think we even begin to understand love until we've lost the one we thought we'd spend the rest of our life with. I don't think we begin to understand ourselves until we realize that it's most likely our fault. And I don't think we begin to understand life until we understand it comes in so many shades of gray. You can be a good person and still do irrevocable harm. Life is messy, so f--king messy. I hate it. Or maybe I hate myself. I thought for a long time I hated him.

War looms on the horizon. The fates of mankind and dragonkind alike hang in the balance. And as tensions rise and allegiances shift, someone dear to Griffin is taken by the enemy. Desperate, Griffin embarks on a rescue mission into hostile territory, where old grudges bring new dangers and legendary monsters come to life. But even if he succeeds, it won't be enough. If he's to stop the redwings once and for all, Griffin must reach across the sea, beyond the grave, and into perhaps the most frightening place of all: his own heart.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries that was a self-conscious move away from the Reformation's emphasis on faith and revelation. It was the mind of man that became the new standard. "My own mind is my own church," wrote Thomas Paine in his Age of Reason (Part First, 1794), which was an attack on all religion that claimed to be authoritative and Christianity in particular.

Laura has found her calling - she was born to be a detective and is determined to prove it. The next case file on her desk turns out to be a bank heist, and it should be easy enough, but what starts off as a one-and-done job quickly begins to seem too by-the-book and oddly like a notorious series of deadly bank hits from years past dubbed Twilight. But it's a dead end - Twilight is only ever mentioned in hushed tones, and there's little to no history on it in the department. And then she receives her first sign, of many more to come, that her investigation is not welcome.

Amazon's number-one best-selling vampire detective is back! In Midnight Moon, private investigator Samantha Moon returns when she's hired to look into a haunting. A female house ghost is wreaking havoc on the life of her new client - except this isn't a normal house ghost, and her new client, Charlie Reed, isn't what he seems either. There's something strange going on in Charlie's house, something truly not of this world. Meanwhile, Sam's teen daughter, Tammy, is coming into her own as a mind reader - abilities that attract the devil himself.

Lucifer has descended on Fortune Academy Underworld a whole five days early — leave it to Cole to be a big fat liar about his timetable. He wasn’t lying about Lucifer’s secret weapon, though, and the truth will take us all for a ride. Olivia is my best friend and she has a past almost as dark as mine, one even she’s not ready to remember and one Lucifer is ready to exploit. I want to help her through all of this, but two of my newest Virtues are trapped in the pit, the lowest level of Hell and Lucifer’s territory.

I've taken everything from the wolves. Their magic. Their pride. Their alphas. But now I wish I could give it all back. Fulfilling my role as the Moon Guardian has brought a new force to this world, one that might even be worse than the wolves.

Where will you be when the world ends? What will you do to save the lives of people you love? When a genetically modified virus is released to eradicate the disease known as Man, survival is all that matters. In the first book of this epic saga, follow the men of ODA-141, the Outlaws and the SEALs of Shark Platoon in this hard-hitting, real-world look at life before, during, and after an apocalyptic event. With the world now inhabited by crazed cannibals, will their skills, training and experience be enough? This is the way the world ended.

There is little doubt that the inerrancy of the Bible is a current and often contentious topic among evangelicals. Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy: Audio Lectures showcases the spectrum of evangelical positions on inerrancy and facilitates understanding of these perspectives, particularly where and why they diverge.

Homes are the divinely ordained fountains of life. It is not by accident, that people live in families, rather than solitarily. The human race began in a family, and Eden was a home. The divine blessing has ever rested upon nations and communities, just in the measure in which they have adhered to these original institutions.

Persuasion is a technique that you use on a daily basis, but how persuasive are you? Are you getting what you are seeking when attempting to persuade others? If not, it is time to start working on your ability to persuade. It is often thought that persuasion, and the techniques that fall under it, is only used for selfish reasons, but this is not true. In fact, being good at persuasion is needed to get ahead at work, form friendships, and even when interacting with strangers.