The Gamble

Welcome to New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Kristen Ashley's Colorado Mountain Series, where friends become family and everyone deserves a second chance. Life isn't meant to be perfect. It's meant to be lived . . . Nina Sheridan thought she'd found the perfect man who would become the perfect husband. She was wrong. When Nina realizes the man she planned to grow old with doesn't know her at all, it's time to rethink her idea of perfect. And what better place to get her life in order than a remote Colorado mountain town halfway around the world? Gnaw Bone, Colorado, may not be flashy or cosmopolitan, but it's got a brand of hospitality all its own. Nina isn't entirely sure she's ready to trade the life she thought she wanted in England for cozy evenings in her mountain retreat, and she definitely isn't sure she's ready to handle the connection she feels to the owner of her rental house, Max Holden . . . Nina didn't come to Colorado to find love, but even the best-laid plans can go awry. Now, if Nina can let go of her past, Max-and a future in Gnaw Bone-might just be the perfect second chance she's been waiting for.

Facing the task of raising her two boys alone, teacher Lauren Halvorson would give anything for some excitement and passion in her life. Joining fellow co-workers at the local bar in Red Deer, Alberta and being set up by her best friend brings very exhilarating, sexy men into her life. But Lauren must decide if these men are good father figures, or just skillful sexual partners. Everything goes from bad to worse when a student desperately needs her, and she has to try to juggle a man, her family life, and breaking the law. She finds herself in over her head when Tristan Mackenzie, a fellow teacher, is there to bail her out of trouble. But will he be able to save her from making a colossal mistake that will affect her life forever? (Some sexually explicit scenes.)

A story of honesty and humor for anyone who has ever lived and loved from New York Times bestselling author LaVyrle Spencer. Agatha was the picture of primness and propriety, but her green eyes could blaze with anger—or sparkle with humor. Scott was the picture of lazy charm and happy indifference to what others thought was right and wrong. They were enemies, then friends. Then the sweet innocence of a child opened their eyes and their hearts—and they were reborn in each other’s arms by the soft, wondrous gift of love.

Justice Lonesome has enjoyed a life of bounty. Even so, she’s inherited the curse of the Lonesome. A poet’s soul. Which means she’s still searching for something. Searching for peace. Searching for the less…that’s more. And when the foundation of her life is pulled out from under her, grieving, she goes to the mountains to find her oasis. She hits Carnal, Colorado and decides to stay. Deke Hightower lost everything at the age of two. He lost it again at fifteen. His life has not been about bounty. It’s been about learning to live with less, because there’s no way to get more. Deke’s also watched all his friends go down to the women who gave them what they needed. He wants that for himself. But he knows that search isn’t going to be easy because he’s a rider. His home is the road. That’s the only place he can breathe. And the woman who takes her place at his side has to do it sitting on the back of his bike. When Deke meets Justice, he knows she’s not that woman. She’s cute. She’s sweet. And she’s into him, but she’s got it all and Deke knows he won’t fit into that. So he holds her at arm’s length. Establishes boundaries. And Justice will take it because she wants Deke any way he’ll let her have him. But when Justice finds herself a pawn in a dangerous game, Deke makes a decision. When he does, he has no idea he’s just opened himself up to bounty.

A unique "moneyball" look at the 2012 U.S. presidential contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney "Game changer." We heard it so many times during the 2012 U.S. presidential election. But what actually made a difference in the contest—and what was just hype? In this groundbreaking book, John Sides and Lynn Vavreck tell the dramatic story of the election—with a big difference. Using an unusual "moneyball" approach and drawing on extensive quantitative data, they look beyond the anecdote, folklore, and conventional wisdom that often pass for election analysis to separate what was truly important from what was irrelevant. The Gamble combines this data with the best social science research and colorful on-the-ground reporting, providing the most accurate and precise account of the election yet written—and the only book of its kind. In a new preface, the authors reflect on the place of The Gamble in the tradition of presidential election studies, its reception to date, and possible paths for future social science research.

Stabilizing the world’s climates means cutting carbon dioxide pollution. There’s no way around it. But what if that’s not enough? What if it’s too difficult to accomplish in the time allotted or, worse, what if it’s so late in the game that even cutting carbon emissions to zero, tomorrow, wouldn’t do? Enter solar geoengineering. The principle is simple: attempt to cool Earth by reflecting more sunlight back into space. The primary mechanism, shooting particles into the upper atmosphere, implies more pollution, not less. If that doesn’t sound scary, it should. There are lots of risks, unknowns, and unknowables. In Geoengineering: The Gamble, climate economist Gernot Wagner provides a balanced take on the possible benefits and all-too-real risks, especially the so-called “moral hazard” that researching or even just discussing (solar) geoengineering would undermine the push to cut carbon emissions in the first place. Despite those risks, he argues, solar geoengineering may only be a matter of time. Not if, but when. As the founding executive director of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, Wagner explores scenarios of a geoengineered future, offering an inside-view of the research already under way and the actions the world must take to guide it in a productive direction.

Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks’s #1 New York Times bestseller, transformed the political dialogue on the war in Iraq—The Gamble is the next news breaking installment Thomas E. Ricks uses hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to document the inside story of the Iraq War since late 2005 as only he can, examining the events that took place as the military was forced to reckon with itself, the surge was launched, and a very different war began. Since early 2007 a new military order has directed American strategy. Some top U.S. officials now in Iraq actually opposed the 2003 invasion, and almost all are severely critical of how the war was fought from then through 2006. At the core of the story is General David Petraeus, a military intellectual who has gathered around him an unprecedented number of officers with both combat experience and Ph.D.s. Underscoring his new and unorthodox approach, three of his key advisers are quirky foreigners—an Australian infantryman-turned- anthropologist, an antimilitary British woman who is an expert in the Middle East, and a Mennonite-educated Palestinian pacifist. The Gamble offers news-breaking account, revealing behind-the-scenes disagreements between top commanders. We learn that almost every single officer in the chain of command fought the surge. Many of Petraeus’s closest advisers went to Iraq extremely pessimistic, doubting that the surge would have any effect, and his own boss was so skeptical that he dispatched an admiral to Baghdad in the summer of 2007 to come up with a strategy to replace Petraeus’s. That same boss later flew to Iraq to try to talk Petraeus out of his planned congressional testimony. The Gamble examines the congressional hearings through the eyes of Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and their views of the questions posed by the 2008 presidential candidates. For Petraeus, prevailing in Iraq means extending the war. Thomas E. Ricks concludes that the war is likely to last another five to ten years—and that that outcome is a best case scenario. His stunning conclusion, stated in the last line of the book, is that “the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered by us and by the world have not yet happened.”