A midnight intruder begs former Navy SEAL Ben Blackshaw to save a young girl from human traffickers scheming to deal with their prisoners in the most gruesome ways imaginable. Blackshaw stalks in toward the truth, realizing that only extermination of these of butchers can free the girl and shut the slaughterhouse down. The final cost of the rescue will be too devastating for Blackshaw to bear.
Ben Blackshaw's old friend Travis Cynter is dead. Cynter was Blackshaw's comrade-in-arms in the U.S. Navy SEALs. He was killed in full tactical gear during a black-ops mission on American soil. FBI Agents Molly Wilde and Pershing Lowry try to draw Blackshaw into helping them solve Cynter's murder. The agents need Blackshaw because the case landed in their laps from an American intelligence agency with overseas interests. From two previous cases, these Feds have come to appreciate how Blackshaw can work in the shadows, off the books, and be easily disavowed should his investigations implode. Blackshaw is torn. He has a longstanding mistrust of doing any kind of clandestine work for government intelligence agencies. In fact, when patriotism has led him to do the right thing in the past, usually against his better judgement and instincts, his friends and loved ones have suffered; many have died. Helping Wilde and Lowry always comes at too great a cost. This unhappy history weighs heavily against Blackshaw's profound desire to solve the mystery of Travis Cynter's death. Should he serve with patriotic duty to an ideal that might not exist, or act with honor to clear the name of his murdered friend? Against the wishes of LuAnna, Blackshaw's expectant wife, and contrary to the grim and hard-won advice of his friend Knocker Ellis Hogan, Blackshaw reluctantly launches the investigation with a close study of the murder scene on Dog & Bitch Island near Ocean City, Maryland. The trio finds the exact spot where Travis Cynter died. It is LuAnna who discovers a clue which spins the team into a deadly transatlantic chase; she quickly learns that the Feds have not told them the whole truth about Cynter's final mission. Thanks to Ellis's wisdom and wealth, and LuAnna's independent deductive logic, Blackshaw operates like a small covert agency unto himself. Along the way, he tangles with an old enemy, discovers an unfinished SEAL mission, and cuts out rot at the highest levels of government, including a scandal that could rally terrorists the world over. And it is all controlled by the iron hand of a shadowy syndicate called Faction.
Diving the Chesapeake Bay for oysters, former SEAL Ben Blackshaw finds a wrecked speedboat laden with gold, a stolen nuke, and the corpse of a man who's been missing for fifteen years, his father. A psychotic merc, Maynard Chalk, raids Blackshaw's Smith Island home to snatch the blighted cargo. Blackshaw must defend the gold, rescue hostages, and stop the bomb. Failure means World War III.
Ben Blackshaw's wife, LuAnna, has been shot and lies in a permanent coma on Smith Island. Blackshaw has a disastrous falling out with his best friend, Knocker Ellis. Licking his wounds alone on Lethe Island, Blackshaw resolves to quit the Chesapeake. To his disgust, he soon uncovers evidence of the brutal lynching of a young black boy. Police fail to capture the murderers despite the evidence Blackshaw turns over; Blackshaw himself becomes a suspect. He deploys west to Arizona in search of the killers, and discovers an encampment of armed ranchers, along with a one-percenter biker gang, and a cult of white supremacist vigilantes who have all sworn to stop the flood of undocumented immigrants crossing the Mexico line. But everyone hides deadly secrets, including a biologic Weapon of Mass Destruction, the bizarre shoot-down of a Customs and Border Protection helicopter, and the disappearance of its crew. The vigilante camp itself is surrounded by a raging wildfire. Blackshaw teams with Del, an Apache member of the Geronimo Interagency Hotshot Crew, who was detailed to battle the blaze. Together they patrol in on the gathering of monsters. Part of their treacherous journey takes Blackshaw and Del through a cavern system of strange, wondrous, and lethal beauty. In the end, fire and hate threaten to consume everyone; the light of the inferno reveals that Blackshaw might be no better than the quary he hunts.
This book gathers the latest insights into soil health and its sustainability, providing an up-to-date overview of the various aspects of soil quality and fertility management, e.g., plant-microbe interactions to maintain soil health; and the use of algal, fungal and bacterial fertilizers and earthworms for sustainable soil health and agricultural production. It first discusses the past, present, and future scenarios of soil health, and then explores factors influencing soil health, as well as the consequences of degradation of soil health for sustainable agriculture. Lastly it highlights solutions to improve and maintain soil health so as to achieve greater productivity and sustainability without damaging the soil system or the environment. Soil health is defined as the capacity of a soil to function within ecosystem frontiers, to sustain biological productivity, to maintain environmental quality and to promote plant, animal and human health. Soil health is established through the interactions of physical, chemical and biological properties, e.g., soil texture, soil structure, and soil organisms. Healthy soil provides adequate levels of macro- and micronutrients to plants and contains sufficient populations of soil microorganisms. As a result of the increasingly intensified agriculture over the past few decades, soils are now showing symptoms of exhaustion and stagnating or declining crop yields. Exploring these developments as well as possible solutions based on holistic and sustainable approaches, this book is a valuable resource for researchers in the area of soil and environmental science, agronomy, agriculture, as well as students in the field of botany, ecology and microbiology.
This volume aims to connect current ideas and concepts about GI disorders with the search for novel therapeutics. Towards this goal, authors provide a timely state-of-the-art overview of the GI tract in health and disease, current treatment approaches and ongoing developments in drug discovery, and their potential for the better treatment of patients with GI disorders.
This book provides a contemporary theoretical insight into the fashion and luxury industry, addressing potential gray areas within the literature. The authors analyze the luxury and fashion industry using multiple perspectives, allowing for a critical comprehensive overview of the phenomenon across diverse streams. The book provides insight into fashion and luxury retailing in the context of both online and brick and mortar retailers based on a variety of market scenarios. It deciphers the rationale of customer behavioral and decision making in online and offline luxury and fashion purchasing contexts. It provides an overview of the challenges that the industry faces with the advent of the evolving omni-channel environment. The multiple theoretical and practical nuances of the fashion and luxury industry are presented. In this sense, the book is a fundamental reference point for the students and academics. This book will be of interest to practitioners in the fashion and luxury retailing sectors. Also, many policy makers will find the conceptual and exploratory insight of this book relevant to their organizational and retailing policies. The new knowledge that is produced in this book is a ground breaker in the fashion and luxury literature. It offers insight from both theoretical and practical perspectives from both retailer and customer perspectives.
This book explains in detail the diagnosis, management, and treatment of comorbid disorders in patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Important insights are provided into the nature of the symptoms of psychiatric comorbidities in these patients, and particularly children and adolescents, with a view to assisting clinicians in reaching a correct diagnosis that will permit the implementation of appropriate treatment strategies, whether psychological or pharmacological. The full range of potential comorbidities is considered, including mood disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, eating disorders, disruptive behavioral disorders, Tourette’s disorder, and substance-related disorders. In each case guidance is provided on how to avoid incorrectly attributing symptoms to ASD and on treatment options. Psychiatric Comorbidities in Autism Spectrum Disorders will be of value to all practitioners who are confronted by patients with these complex co-occurring conditions.
This book gathers recommendations of the European Association for Endoscopic Surgery (EAES), as compiled by leading European laparoscopic surgeons. The book offers an overview of current surgical research. All recommendations precisely describe the proven benefit of each surgical procedure and technique. Chapters follow a structured format to allow quick identification of recommendations. This work provides a highly usable and practice-oriented overview of the achievements in laparoscopic surgery throughout the last decade.
'What is the real hip hop?' 'To whom does hip hop belong?' 'For what constructive purposes can hip hop be put to use?' These are three key questions posed by hip hop activists in Hip Hop Versus Rap, which explores the politics of cultural authenticity, ownership, and uplift in London’s post-hip hop scene. The book is an ethnographic study of the identity, role, formation, and practices of the organic intellectuals that populate and propagate this ‘conscious’ hip hop milieu. Turner provides an insightful examination of the work of artists and practitioners who use hip hop ‘off-street’ in the spheres of youth work, education, and theatre to raise consciousness and to develop artistic and personal skills. Hip Hop Versus Rap seeks to portray how cultural activism, which styles itself grassroots and mature, is framed around a discursive opposition between what is authentic and ethical in hip hop culture and what is counterfeit and corrupt. Turner identifies that this play of difference, framed as an ethical schism, also presents hip hop’s organic intellectuals with a narrative that enables them to align their insurgent values with those of policy and to thereby receive institutional support. This enlightening volume will be of interest to post-graduates and scholars interested in hip hop studies; youth work; critical pedagogy; young people and crime/justice; the politics of race/racism; the politics of youth/education; urban governance; social movement studies; street culture studies; and vernacular studies.
