The Agent Gambit

Two space adventure novels in the popular Liaden Universe® series in one Omni-trade edition: Agent of Change: Once a brilliant First-in-Scout, Val Con yosPhelium was _recruitedÓ by the shadowy Liaden Department of Interior and brainwashed into an Agent of Change¾a ruthless covert operative who kills without remorse. Val Con has been playing a deep game, far from the orderly life of clan and kin. Fleeing his latest mission, he saves the life of ex-mercenary Miri Robertson, a Terran on the run from interplanetary assassins. Thrown together by circumstances, Val Con and Miri struggle to elude their enemies and stay alive without killing each other-or surrendering to the unexpected passion that flares between them. Which name _ or face _ will the agent choose when the game gets tough and an escape for only one of them seems possible? Carpe Diem: On the run from interplanetary assassins and a ruthless interstellar crime cartel, covert operative Val Con yos'Phelium and former mercenary sergeant Miri Robertson formed an alliance of necessity and wound up stranded on a planet with no rescue in sight. Their on-world problems were looking manageable after they assumed new identities as musicians, that is until a local war forced them to reveal their alien combat skills _ and doubt their own growing partnership of trust and love. By then the relentless hound of an agent on Val Con's trail was closing in with the very weapon Val Con and Miri most feared, and the game got very rough indeed. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). _I rarely rave on and on about stories, but I am devoted to Lee and Miller novels and stories.Ó ¾Anne McCaffrey

Netflix’s most watched limited series to date! The thrilling novel of one young woman’s journey through the worlds of chess and drug addiction.​ When eight-year-old Beth Harmon’s parents are killed in an automobile accident, she’s placed in an orphanage in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Plain and shy, Beth learns to play chess from the janitor in the basement and discovers she is a prodigy. Though penniless, she is desperate to learn more—and steals a chess magazine and enough money to enter a tournament. Beth also steals some of her foster mother’s tranquilizers to which she is becoming addicted. At thirteen, Beth wins the chess tournament. By the age of sixteen she is competing in the US Open Championship and, like Fast Eddie in The Hustler, she hates to lose. By eighteen she is the US champion—and Russia awaits . . . Fast-paced and elegantly written, The Queen’s Gambit is a thriller masquerading as a chess novel—one that’s sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. “The Queen’s Gambit is sheer entertainment. It is a book I reread every few years—for the pure pleasure and skill of it.” —Michael Ondaatje, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The English Patient

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, AGI 2011, held in Mountain View, CA, USA, in August 2011. The 28 revised full papers and 26 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 103 submissions. The papers are written by leading academic and industry researchers involved in scientific and engineering work and focus on the creation of AI systems possessing general intelligence at the human level and beyond.

Jerry Mitchell returns in Arctic Gambit, an explosive military thriller by New York Times bestselling author Larry Bond Jerry Mitchell, now the commodore of submarine Development Squadron Five, is dismayed when USS Toledo is reported missing in Arctic waters, close to Russian territory. The vessel is captained by his former shipmate and close friend, Lenny Berg. Eager to investigate, Jerry convinces the Navy to redirect one of his squadron’s boats to find out what happened. It turns out Toledo was sunk just outside of Russian territorial waters by a torpedo launched from a naval mine. Even more disturbing is the discovery that Russia is building a deadly weapon. Engineers have modified the STATUS-6, a strategic nuclear-propelled, nuclear armed torpedo that is already operational, into a stealthy first strike weapon: Drakon. This new tool would allow the Russians to launch a completely covert nuclear decapitation strike on the USA. The new Russian president has plans for Europe, and is more than willing to use nuclear blackmail—or an actual attack—to keep the Americans from interfering. To avoid a Russian war in Europe, and a nuclear catastrophe at home, Mitchell must find a way to destroy the Drakon launcher before it’s too late. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From the author of Argo comes an unforgettable behind-the-scenes story of espionage in action. In the first ever memoir by a top-level operative to be authorized by the CIA, Antonio J. Mendez reveals the cunning tricks and insights that helped save hundreds from deadly situations. Adept at creating new identities for anyone, anywhere, Mendez was involved in operations all over the world, from “Wild West” adventures in East Asia to Cold War intrigue in Moscow. In 1980, he orchestrated the escape of six Americans from a hostage situation in revolutionary Tehran, Iran. This extraordinary operation inspired the movie Argo, directed by and starring Ben Affleck.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, A Checklist, 1700-1974, Volume one of Two, contains an Author Index, Title Index, Series Index, Awards Index, and the Ace and Belmont Doubles Index.

This book provides a description of advanced multi-agent and artificial intelligence technologies for the modeling and simulation of complex systems, as well as an overview of the latest scientific efforts in this field. A complex system features a large number of interacting components, whose aggregate activities are nonlinear and self-organized. A multi-agent system is a group or society of agents which interact with others cooperatively and/or competitively in order to reach their individual or common goals. Multi-agent systems are suitable for modeling and simulation of complex systems, which is difficult to accomplish using traditional computational approaches.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Third KES Symposium on Agent and Multi-agent Systems – Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2009)––held at Uppsala University in Sweden during June 3-5, 2009. The symposium was organized by Uppsala University, KES International and its Focus Group on Agent and Multi-agent Systems. The KES-AMSTA Symposium series is a sub-series of the KES Conference series. Following the successes of the First KES Symposium on Agent and Multi-agent Systems – Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2007), held in Wroclaw, Poland, from May 31 to 1 June 2007––and the Second KES Symposium on Agent and Multi-agent Systems – Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2008) held in Incheon, Korea, March 26-28, 2008––KES-AMSTA 2009 featured keynote talks, oral and poster presentations, and a number of workshops and invited sessions, closely aligned to the themes of the conference. The aim of the symposium was to provide an international forum for scientific - search into the technologies and applications of agent and multi-agent systems. Agent and multi-agent systems are an innovative type of modern software system and have long been recognized as a promising technology for constructing autonomous, c- plex and intelligent systems. A key development in the field of agent and multi-agent systems has been the specification of agent communication languages and formali- tion of ontologies. Agent communication languages are intended to provide standard declarative mechanisms for agents to communicate knowledge and make requests of each other, whereas ontologies are intended for conceptualization of the knowledge domain.