Half Life Series

*Unprecedented access behindHalf-LifeandHalf-Life 2 *A forward by Valve founder Gabe Newell *Hundreds of art, design, preproduction, and other art pieces crammed into the book *Over a dozen key members of Valve's staff interviewed *Officially approved by Valve *Behind City 17 and other locations *The development of the Source engine *A rogue's gallery of beasts, characters, and monstrosities *Key weapons development revelations *A tour of many of the game's locations, from inception to completion *Filled with art, screens, and anecdotes from the Valve team

The Reverse Design series looks at all of the design decisions that went into classic video games. This is the fourth installment in the Reverse Design series, looking at Half-Life. Written in a readable format, it is broken down into six sections examining some of the most important topics to the game: 1. How Half-Life is a key step in the evolution from the composite style of videogame design to the set piece of style of design; 2. How Half-Life defined almost all of the core concepts of the cover-based shooter, and redefined the level architecture of the FPS genre; 3. The small tricks and flourishes that Half-Life used to tell a story through its mechanics, AI and environments--back cover.

One of the finest living writers in the English language, V. S. Naipaul gives us a tale as wholly unexpected as it is affecting, his first novel since the exultantly acclaimed A Way in the World, published seven years ago. Half a Life is the story of Willie Chandran, whose father, heeding the call of Mahatma Gandhi, turned his back on his brahmin heritage and married a woman of low caste—a disastrous union he would live to regret, as he would the children that issued from it. When Willie reaches manhood, his flight from the travails of his mixed birth takes him from India to London, where, in the shabby haunts of immigrants and literary bohemians of the 1950s, he contrives a new identity. This is what happens as he tries to defeat self-doubt in sexual adventures and in the struggle to become a writer—strivings that bring him to the brink of exhaustion, from which he is rescued, to his amazement, only by the love of a good woman. And this is what happens when he returns with her—carried along, really—to her home in Africa, to live, until the last doomed days of colonialism, yet another life not his own. In a luminous narrative that takes us across three continents, Naipaul explores his great theme of inheritance with an intimacy and directness unsurpassed in his extraordinary body of work. And even as he lays bare the bitter comical ironies of assumed identities, he gives us a poignant spectacle of the enervation peculiar to a borrowed life. In one man’s determined refusal of what he has been given to be, Naipaul reveals the way of all our experience. As Willie comes to see, “Everything goes on a bias. The world should stop, but it goes on.” A masterpiece of economy and emotional nuance, Half a Life is an indelible feat of the imagination.

I've learned that surviving isn't all it's cracked up to be. NOW: Icie's parents gave her $10,000 in cash, a map of a top-secret bunker, and instructions to get there by any means necessary. They have news of an imminent viral attack and know that the bunker is Icie's only hope for survival. She and three other teens live locked away for months, not knowing what's happening in the outside world or who has survived. Then one day, Icie discovers a shocking secret deep in the bunker. Are they really safe there after all? THEN: Generations in the future, the world has changed, and a mysterious cult worships the very mountain where Icie's secret bunker was built. The people never leave the mountain, they're ruled by Beckett, a teenager...and they have surprising ties to Icie. Icie and Beckett must both fight to survive while protecting a secret that could destroy their civilizations. This high-stakes, original, and thought-provoking adventure follows two unlikely heroes, hundreds of years apart.

"Two nursing home residents, both in their 80s, meet and fall in love, rekindling what might have been a wartime romance. Had they previously met somewhere else under different circumstances? Why is their love so troubling for their children? Indeed, the light at dusk is sometimes warmer and more enveloping than that of the midday sun. Characters navigate between being and appearance, between cowardice and dissoluteness."--BOOK JACKET.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A special 25th anniversary edition of the beloved book that has changed millions of lives with the story of an unforgettable friendship, the timeless wisdom of older generations, and healing lessons on loss and grief—featuring a new afterword by the author “A wonderful book, a story of the heart told by a writer with soul.”—Los Angeles Times “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was his college professor Morrie Schwartz. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn’t you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man’s life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final “class”: lessons in how to live. “The truth is, Mitch,” he said, “once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie’s lasting gift with the world.

“Ingenious, sensual, gleeful. . . . It demands of its readers only imagination, and rewards them with hilarity, terror, and marvels.”—Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn Nora and Blanche are cojoined twins. Nora, the dominant twin, thirsts for love and adventure, while Blanche has been asleep for nearly 30 years. Determined to shed herself of her her sister’s dead weight, Nora leaves for London in search of the mysterious Unity Foundation, which promises to make two one. But once Nora arrives in London, the past begins to surface, forcing her into a most reluctant voyage into memory—a search for meaning and understanding, that will push Nora to the brink of insanity. Grotesque, funny, and dazzlingly told, Shelley Jackson’s first novel is an imaginative and touching portrait of two lives in a cleft world yearning for wholeness.