Chains of Time

Chains of Time PDF

Author: R. B. Woodstone

Publisher:

Published: 2020-07-05

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Across race and time, a magical battle for freedom... 1859 Mkembro, West Africa "I know what's going to happen," says Amara as she wakes on the morning of her wedding to discover that she has been blessed -- or cursed -- with the power of prophecy. In her visions, she sees the slaver Van Owen, who will soon arrive on Africa's shores. Her father will challenge the invaders, wielding magic against rifles and whips, and setting in motion Amara's bid for freedom -- a quest that will extend for five generations. But no wait is too long, for Amara can see far into the future. Chains of Time tells two interweaving stories -- Amara's nineteenth century slave chronicle and the tale of her modern-day descendants, all of them fighting to find their voices, their redemption, and their freedom. Praise for CHAINS OF TIME... "A perceptive and gripping tale of race and family." -- Kirkus Reviews "★★★★★ The beauty of Woodstone's prose evokes the intensity and allegorical journey that is usually reserved for literary fiction. The writing is simultaneously gorgeous, terrifying, and hopeful." -- Readers' Favorite "R.B. Woodstone has crafted a thoughtful, time-spanning novel that touches on family, oppression, and otherness in Chains of Time... the dramatic blend of history, tragedy, and magic pulls a reader in from the very start." -- Self-Publishing Review "An exceptional story that will place you in the heart and mind of each of the amazing characters. Prepare to be moved by a unique story that delves deep into the historical abuse of a people but has dynamic pockets of excitement, heartbreak, and the paranormal. Highly recommended." -- Lesley Jones, international best-selling author "With captivating characters on a fulfilling magical journey, Chains of Time is a strong novel that does not disappoint." -- IndependentBookReview.com "Though the work is rooted in fantasy and magical realism, there's a highly realistic quality to the historical content and the experience of Africans in the tragedy of the slave trade. Young adult and adult readers alike can appreciate the sophistication of ideas, which are layered into a powerful storyline that blends present and past exceedingly well." -- K.C. Finn, USA Today best-selling author and Chanticleer Book Award winner

Chains

Chains PDF

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-01-05

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1416905863

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl? As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight...for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom. From acclaimed author Laurie Halse Anderson comes this compelling, impeccably researched novel that shows the lengths we can go to cast off our chains, both physical and spiritual.

Dragon in Chains

Dragon in Chains PDF

Author: Daniel Fox

Publisher: Del Rey

Published: 2009-01-27

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0345513460

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From award-winning author Daniel Fox comes a ravishingly written epic of revolution and romance set in a world where magic is found in stone and in water, in dragons and in men–and in the chains that bind them. Deposed by a vicious usurper, a young emperor flees with his court to the small island of Taishu. There, with a dwindling army, a manipulative mother, and a resentful population–and his only friend a local fishergirl he takes as a concubine–he prepares for his last stand. In the mountains of Taishu, a young miner finds a huge piece of jade, the potent mineral whose ingestion can gift the emperor with superhuman attributes. Setting out to deliver the stone to the embattled emperor, Yu Shan finds himself changing into something more than human, something forbidden. Meanwhile, a great dragon lies beneath the strait that separates Taishu from the mainland, bound by chains that must be constantly renewed by the magic of a community of monks. When the monks are slaughtered by a willful pirate captain, a maimed slave assumes the terrible burden of keeping the dragon subdued. If he should fail, if she should rise free, the result will be slaughter on an unimaginable scale. Now the prisoner beneath the sea and the men and women above it will shatter old bonds of loyalty and love and forge a common destiny from the ruins of an empire.

Classical Loop-in-Loop Chains

Classical Loop-in-Loop Chains PDF

Author: J.R. Smith

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-04-18

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1468491326

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

ThiS is not only a book of instruction in chainmaking but it is also a work celebrating man's continuous creativity over thousands of years. At times something that man creates has far-reach ing effects; an example that quickly comes to mind is the wheel, which has enabled many devel opments, from pottery to computers. At this point it is important to note that these same wheels could not have been made without metal tools. From early Neolithic times on gold was a favorite choice in the making of jewelry. During the Neolithic period these "shining stones," probably alluvial, were prized. Actually gold was cold worked as if it were a stone. There is a surviving example of cold-worked gold from Catahuyuk (present day Turkey) estimated to have been made in 6500 B. C. There were only four metals on the earth's surface that were found in sufficient quantity to be used: gold, copper, silver, and meteoric iron. An understanding of the malleability of gold, and of the annealing effect of fire, changed jewelry making; new forms were found. Gold was no longer a piece of stone but a material that could be flattened and made very thin. Sheet and foil are the oldest forms of worked gold. The smiths' tools were stone, wood, and horn.

Continuous-Time Markov Chains

Continuous-Time Markov Chains PDF

Author: William J. Anderson

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1461230381

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Continuous time parameter Markov chains have been useful for modeling various random phenomena occurring in queueing theory, genetics, demography, epidemiology, and competing populations. This is the first book about those aspects of the theory of continuous time Markov chains which are useful in applications to such areas. It studies continuous time Markov chains through the transition function and corresponding q-matrix, rather than sample paths. An extensive discussion of birth and death processes, including the Stieltjes moment problem, and the Karlin-McGregor method of solution of the birth and death processes and multidimensional population processes is included, and there is an extensive bibliography. Virtually all of this material is appearing in book form for the first time.

Cy in Chains

Cy in Chains PDF

Author: David L. Dudley

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0547910681

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Cy Williams, thirteen, has always known that he and the other black folks on Strong's plantation have to obey white men, no question. Sure, he's free, as black people have been since his grandfather's day, but in rural Georgia, that means they're free to be whipped, abused, even killed. Almost four years later, Cy yearns for that freedom, such as it was. Now he's a chain gang laborer, forced to do backbreaking work, penned in and shackled like an animal, brutalized, beaten, and humiliated bythe boss of the camp and his hired overseers. For Cy and the boys he's chained to, there's no way out, no way back. And then hope begins to grow in him, along with strength and courage he didn't know he had. Cy is sure that a chance at freedom is worth any risk, any sacrifice. This powerful, moving story opens a window on a painful chapter in the history of race relations.

Passage Times for Markov Chains

Passage Times for Markov Chains PDF

Author: R. Syski

Publisher: IOS Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 9789051990607

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book is a survey of work on passage times in stable Markov chains with a discrete state space and a continuous time. Passage times have been investigated since early days of probability theory and its applications. The best known example is the first entrance time to a set, which embraces waiting times, busy periods, absorption problems, extinction phenomena, etc. Another example of great interest is the last exit time from a set. The book presents a unifying treatment of passage times, written in a systematic manner and based on modern developments. The appropriate unifying framework is provided by probabilistic potential theory, and the results presented in the text are interpreted from this point of view. In particular, the crucial role of the Dirichlet problem and the Poisson equation is stressed. The work is addressed to applied probalilists, and to those who are interested in applications of probabilistic methods in their own areas of interest. The level of presentation is that of a graduate text in applied stochastic processes. Hence, clarity of presentation takes precedence over secondary mathematical details whenever no serious harm may be expected. Advanced concepts described in the text gain nowadays growing acceptance in applied fields, and it is hoped that this work will serve as an useful introduction. Abstracted by Mathematical Reviews, issue 94c

Continuous-Time Markov Chains and Applications

Continuous-Time Markov Chains and Applications PDF

Author: G. George Yin

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-11-14

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 1461443466

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book gives a systematic treatment of singularly perturbed systems that naturally arise in control and optimization, queueing networks, manufacturing systems, and financial engineering. It presents results on asymptotic expansions of solutions of Komogorov forward and backward equations, properties of functional occupation measures, exponential upper bounds, and functional limit results for Markov chains with weak and strong interactions. To bridge the gap between theory and applications, a large portion of the book is devoted to applications in controlled dynamic systems, production planning, and numerical methods for controlled Markovian systems with large-scale and complex structures in the real-world problems. This second edition has been updated throughout and includes two new chapters on asymptotic expansions of solutions for backward equations and hybrid LQG problems. The chapters on analytic and probabilistic properties of two-time-scale Markov chains have been almost completely rewritten and the notation has been streamlined and simplified. This book is written for applied mathematicians, engineers, operations researchers, and applied scientists. Selected material from the book can also be used for a one semester advanced graduate-level course in applied probability and stochastic processes.

Selected Topics on Continuous-time Controlled Markov Chains and Markov Games

Selected Topics on Continuous-time Controlled Markov Chains and Markov Games PDF

Author: Tomas Prieto-Rumeau

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1848168497

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book concerns continuous-time controlled Markov chains, also known as continuous-time Markov decision processes. They form a class of stochastic control problems in which a single decision-maker wishes to optimize a given objective function. This book is also concerned with Markov games, where two decision-makers (or players) try to optimize their own objective function. Both decision-making processes appear in a large number of applications in economics, operations research, engineering, and computer science, among other areas. An extensive, self-contained, up-to-date analysis of basic optimality criteria (such as discounted and average reward), and advanced optimality criteria (e.g., bias, overtaking, sensitive discount, and Blackwell optimality) is presented. A particular emphasis is made on the application of the results herein: algorithmic and computational issues are discussed, and applications to population models and epidemic processes are shown. This book is addressed to students and researchers in the fields of stochastic control and stochastic games. Moreover, it could be of interest also to undergraduate and beginning graduate students because the reader is not supposed to have a high mathematical background: a working knowledge of calculus, linear algebra, probability, and continuous-time Markov chains should suffice to understand the contents of the book.