Playing Hard To Master

Pleasure and pain once again intertwine in the second installment of Sparrow Beckett’s Masters Unleashed series. Known as a brat in the kink community, Everly can intimidate even the most experienced Dom. Then she meets Ambrose, a dominant who finds her ways amusing. Not only does he charm the pants off her, he makes her crave his mastery. After being abandoned by his submissive, Ambrose has avoided any serious connections—until he meets Everly, who refuses to be ignored. But just when he thinks he’s found the perfect sub, he finds out she’s an anti-poverty activist with harsh opinions about the rich. Telling her he’s wealthy will ruin everything, but he can’t collar her with a huge lie hanging over them. Will the best thing that’s ever happened to him walk away when she finds out the truth?

Dominant, crop-wielding men are all Kate dreams about, but how far is she willing to go? Kate wants a man who will take charge—she just needs to find the right guy. Fortunately, her friend is throwing a kinky Halloween party with a guest list loaded with sexy, available men. That’s where she meets Banner. Dark and intense, Banner’s not just a Dominant, he’s a Master looking for a slave. Kate isn’t interested in something that extreme, but when he offers to help her find the perfect Dom, while training her to be a flawless submissive, she’s glad to have a matchmaker and protector. Banner knows they’re not compatible, yet something about Kate is impossible to resist. Once he finds her the right Dom, will he be able let her go?

Following Playing Hard to Master and Finding Master Right, Sparrow Beckett delivers a seductive tale of surrendered innocence with this third novel in the Masters Unleashed series. Konstantin, a powerful Dominant, is used to fast living and wanton submissives. But after years of his grandmother haranguing him to marry, he agrees to meet a girl from her rural Russian village. Naturally submissive, Varushka turns out to be everything Konstantin wants in a woman. At first her innocence is disturbing, but her enthusiasm for life captivates him. When their relationship becomes a mutual seduction, Konstantin introduces Varushka to wicked pleasures she never imagined. His attentive care wins her absolute devotion. However, when Varushka’s father finds out about Konstantin’s past, he whisks her back home to Russia. Will Konstantin fight to reclaim her, or will his guilt convince him to relinquish the only woman he’s ever loved?

The author of Finding Master Right returns to the Master Unleashed series with a new erotic romance with an unexpected surprise. When Juliet Callahan's company lands a contract to renovate Catacombs, a mysterious private BDSM club, she's intrigued. The club's owner, William Ellis, is a bossy, dominant man who drives her up the wall. To find out what Catacombs needs, Juliet agrees to visit the club, never guessing she'll end up having a torrid night of submitting to Will's dominance. Will doesn't want a needy submissive he has to treat with kid gloves, but naïve and proper Juliet is too hard to resist. She responds to him beautifully, but after one scorching night, she runs scared. Before he can figure out what makes the interesting girl tick, an unexpected shock shows up on his doorstep. His ex's baby.

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

A surprisingly simple way for students to master any subject--based on one of the world's most popular online courses and the bestselling book A Mind for Numbers A Mind for Numbers and its wildly popular online companion course "Learning How to Learn" have empowered more than two million learners of all ages from around the world to master subjects that they once struggled with. Fans often wish they'd discovered these learning strategies earlier and ask how they can help their kids master these skills as well. Now in this new book for kids and teens, the authors reveal how to make the most of time spent studying. We all have the tools to learn what might not seem to come naturally to us at first--the secret is to understand how the brain works so we can unlock its power. This book explains: • Why sometimes letting your mind wander is an important part of the learning process • How to avoid "rut think" in order to think outside the box • Why having a poor memory can be a good thing • The value of metaphors in developing understanding • A simple, yet powerful, way to stop procrastinating Filled with illustrations, application questions, and exercises, this book makes learning easy and fun.

A full-color introduction to the basics of HTML and CSS! Every day, more and more people want to learn some HTML and CSS. Joining the professional web designers and programmers are new audiences who need to know a little bit of code at work (update a content management system or e-commerce store) and those who want to make their personal blogs more attractive. Many books teaching HTML and CSS are dry and only written for those who want to become programmers, which is why this book takes an entirely new approach. Introduces HTML and CSS in a way that makes them accessible to everyone—hobbyists, students, and professionals—and it’s full-color throughout Utilizes information graphics and lifestyle photography to explain the topics in a simple way that is engaging Boasts a unique structure that allows you to progress through the chapters from beginning to end or just dip into topics of particular interest at your leisure This educational book is one that you will enjoy picking up, reading, then referring back to. It will make you wish other technical topics were presented in such a simple, attractive and engaging way! This book is also available as part of a set in hardcover - Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery, 9781119038634; and in softcover - Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery, 9781118907443.

Satan, Judas, a Soviet writer, and a talking black cat named Behemoth populate this satire, “a classic of twentieth-century fiction” (The New York Times). In 1930s Moscow, Satan decides to pay the good people of the Soviet Union a visit. In old Jerusalem, the fateful meeting of Pilate and Yeshua and the murder of Judas in the garden of Gethsemane unfold. At the intersection of fantasy and realism, satire and unflinching emotional truths, Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic The Master and Margarita eloquently lampoons every aspect of Soviet life under Stalin’s regime, from politics to art to religion, while interrogating the complexities between good and evil, innocence and guilt, and freedom and oppression. Spanning from Moscow to Biblical Jerusalem, a vibrant cast of characters—a “magician” who is actually the devil in disguise, a giant cat, a witch, a fanged assassin—sow mayhem and madness wherever they go, mocking artists, intellectuals, and politicians alike. In and out of the fray weaves a man known only as the Master, a writer demoralized by government censorship, and his mysterious lover, Margarita. Burned in 1928 by the author and restarted in 1930, The Master and Margarita was Bulgakov’s last completed creative work before his death. It remained unpublished until 1966—and went on to become one of the most well-regarded works of Russian literature of the twentieth century, adapted or referenced in film, television, radio, comic strips, theater productions, music, and opera.