The Master Of Verona

Romeo & Juliet is the greatest love story ever told. Every story has a beginning. A sweeping novel of Renaissance Italy, THE MASTER OF VERONA follows Pietro Alaghieri, eldest son of the poet Dante, as he's caught up by the charisma and genius of Verona's ruler, Cangrande della Scala. Pietro risks battles, duels, and murder to impress his new lord. At the heart of the story is an infernal plot against Cangrande's bastard heir, and the rivalry of two friends over the affections of a girl - a rivalry will sever a friendship, divide a city, and spark a feud that will someday produce the star-cross'd lovers. Based on the plays of William Shakespeare, the poetry of Dante, and the history of Italy, THE MASTER OF VERONA is a novel of brutal warfare, lost friendship, and dire conspiracy, combining to create an epic journey into the birth of the Renaissance that recalls the best of Bernard Cornwell and Dorothy Dunnett.

With extraordinary narrative power, New York Times bestselling author Colleen McCullough sweeps the reader into a whirlpool of pageantry and passion, bringing to vivid life the most glorious epoch in human history. When the world cowered before the legions of Rome, two extraordinary men dreamed of personal glory: the military genius and wealthy rural "upstart" Marius, and Sulla, penniless and debauched but of aristocratic birth. Men of exceptional vision, courage, cunning, and ruthless ambition, separately they faced the insurmountable opposition of powerful, vindictive foes. Yet allied they could answer the treachery of rivals, lovers, enemy generals, and senatorial vipers with intricate and merciless machinations of their own—to achieve in the end a bloody and splendid foretold destiny . . . and win the most coveted honor the Republic could bestow.

“Far more than just another coming-of-age story” from the award-winning author of the Old Filth trilogy (Bustle). Jane Gardam’s marvelous stories of young girls on the threshold of womanhood—God on the Rocks and Crusoe’s Daughter—have delighted fans and critics alike. These “modern classics” are now joined by a novel that is equally fresh and genuine, comic and touching (The Independent). Jessica Vye introduces herself with an enigmatic pronouncement: “I ought to tell you at the beginning that I am not quite normal, having had a violent experience at the age of nine.” A revered author has told Jessica that she is, beyond all doubt, a born writer. This proves an accurate prediction of the future, one that indelibly colors her life at school and her perception of the world. Jessica has always known that her destiny would be shaped by her refusal to conform, her compulsion to tell the absolute truth, and her dedication to observing the strange wartime world that surrounds her. What she doesn’t know, however, is that the experiences and ideas that set her apart will also lead her to a new and wholly unexpected life. Told with grace and inimitable wit, A Long Way from Verona is a wise and vivid portrait of adolescent discovery and impending adulthood. “A book to be judged by the highest standards.” —The Spectator “A brilliant, witty, and agonizingly true-to-life novel.” —The Times Literary Supplement “A fiercely funny and personal book.” —The Economist “The qualities for which Gardam is cherished (the quirkiness, the bright-eyed wonder at reality) are already apparent in this early work.” —Kirkus Reviews

"A delightful romp through the backstory of 'Romeo & Juliet." - Chicago Sun-Times Cangrande della Scala is everything a man should be. Daring. Charming. Ruthless. To the poet Dante, he is the ideal Renaissance prince - until Dante's son discovers a secret that could be Cangrande's undoing. Thrust into the betrayal surrounding Verona's prince, Pietro Alighieri must navigate a rivalry that severs a friendship, divides a city, and sparks a feud that will produce Shakespeare's famous star-crossed lovers, Romeo & Juliet. Based on the plays of William Shakespeare, The Master Of Verona is a sweeping novel of Renaissance Italy. Filled with swashbuckling adventure and unrequited love, this epic journey recalls the best of Bernard Cornwell, Sharon Kay Penman, and Dorothy Dunnett. Praise: "A novel of intricate plot, taut narrative, sharp period detail and beautifully realized characters." - Publishers Weekly "Intricate plotting, well-staged scenes, and colorful descriptions enhance head-spinning but lively entertainment." - Kirkus Reviews "Be prepared to burn the midnight oil. It's well worth it." - Historical Novel Society "David Blixt bursts onto the historical fiction scene with this masterful tale of adventure, love, and intrigue. This is high adventure at its best." - C.W. Gortner, author of The Last Queen

One of the most beloved painters of the twentieth century, Giorgio Morandi created works that continue to exert their mysterious power on viewers worldwide. This publication focuses on the period from 1948 to 1964, during which Morandi developed and refined his investigations of serial, reductive, and permutational forms and compositions, a body of work that has had a profound influence on twentieth-century art and painting. Included here are five of the ten iconic “yellow cloth” paintings from 1952, a series featured prominently in the historic 1998 exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and numerous late paintings by the Italian master. Lavishly reproduced, these immersive plates draw attention to the idiosyncratic perspectival and color-driven decisions that give the work its abstract power. The catalogue is published on the occasion of the 2015 exhibition of Morandi’s paintings from this period at David Zwirner, New York—which, according to The New York Times, represent “lucid perfection, at once cerebral and impassioned.” It marked the first major presentation of the artist’s late work in America since the acclaimed 2008 retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In addition to an essay by Laura Mattioli and a foreword by David Leiber, who organized the exhibition, this catalogue includes a fantastic array of contributions by contemporary artists: John Baldessari, Lawrence Carroll, Vija Celmins, Mark Greenwold, Liu Ye, Wayne Thiebaud, Alexi Worth, and Zeng Fanzhi. They offer their personal responses to Morandi’s work and to the Zwirner exhibition in particular. Working in different media across many disciplines, this diverse list of contributors is a testament to the reach of Morandi’s paintings and their influence on contemporary art.

Harness the power of DevOps to boost your skill set and make your IT organization perform better About This Book Get to know the background of DevOps so you understand the collaboration between different aspects of an IT organization and a software developer Improve your organization's performance to ensure smooth production of software and services Deploy top-quality software and ensure software maintenance and release management with this practical guide Who This Book Is For This book is aimed at developers and system administrators who wish to take on larger responsibilities and understand how the infrastructure that builds today's enterprises works. This book is also great for operations personnel who would like to better support developers. You do not need to have any previous knowledge of DevOps. What You Will Learn Appreciate the merits of DevOps and continuous delivery and see how DevOps supports the agile process Understand how all the systems fit together to form a larger whole Set up and familiarize yourself with all the tools you need to be efficient with DevOps Design an application that is suitable for continuous deployment systems with Devops in mind Store and manage your code effectively using different options such as Git, Gerrit, and Gitlab Configure a job to build a sample CRUD application Test the code using automated regression testing with Jenkins Selenium Deploy your code using tools such as Puppet, Ansible, Palletops, Chef, and Vagrant Monitor the health of your code with Nagios, Munin, and Graphite Explore the workings of Trac—a tool used for issue tracking In Detail DevOps is a practical field that focuses on delivering business value as efficiently as possible. DevOps encompasses all the flows from code through testing environments to production environments. It stresses the cooperation between different roles, and how they can work together more closely, as the roots of the word imply—Development and Operations. After a quick refresher to DevOps and continuous delivery, we quickly move on to looking at how DevOps affects architecture. You'll create a sample enterprise Java application that you'll continue to work with through the remaining chapters. Following this, we explore various code storage and build server options. You will then learn how to perform code testing with a few tools and deploy your test successfully. Next, you will learn how to monitor code for any anomalies and make sure it's running properly. Finally, you will discover how to handle logs and keep track of the issues that affect processes Style and approach This book is primarily a technical guide to DevOps with practical examples suitable for people who like to learn by implementing concrete working code. It starts out with background information and gradually delves deeper into technical subjects.