Four essays from Michel de Montaigne's "The Complete Essays."

The first-ever Rumpole story, introducing many of the characters and setting the scene for the whole series. In reminiscent mood, Horace Rumpole, barrister, looks back to his successful defence of 16-year-old Jim Timson, member of a large and industrious family of south London.

Easy Rawlins comes home from work, and finds more trouble on his doorstep in a day than most men encounter in a lifetime.

A friend has left his daughter at Easy's house without so much as a note. Clearly this friend, Christmas Black, a veteran of Vietnam, fears for his life and his daughter's.

Easy's closest friend, the man known as Mouse, has disappeared too—and his wife tells Easy that he is wanted for murder. Mouse has been a thorn in the police's side for so long that Easy is convinced that this time they will kill him as soon as they find him.

Worst of all, Easy's longtime lover tells him that she plans to marry another man. In a world of hurt, Easy strikes out on his own to try to find one friend, save another, and save himself from the pain that is driving him out of his mind. On his path he meets drug dealers, corrupt officials, every manner of criminal and con—and a woman named Faith who may hold the key to more than one life.

In his tenth Easy Rawlins novel, Walter Mosley writes with a grace and insight that few writers ever achieve. It is the clearest proof yet that Walter Mosley is "one of this nation's finest writers" (Boston Globe).

A brand-new mystery series from one of the country’s best-known, best-loved writers: a new character, a new city, a new era. A new Walter Mosley.

His name is etched on the door of his Manhattan office: LEONID McGILL , PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. It’s a name that takes a little explaining, but he’s used to it. “Daddy was a communist and great-great- Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland. You know, the black man’s family tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story.”

Ex-boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades mostly in cash and favors: McGill’s an old-school P.I. working a city that’s gotten fancy all around him. Fancy or not, he has always managed to get by—keep a roof over the head of his wife and kids, and still manage a little fun on the side—mostly because he’s never been above taking a shady job for a quick buck. But like the city itself, McGill is turning over a new leaf, “decided to go from crooked to slightly bent.”

New York City in the twenty-first century is a city full of secrets—and still a place that reacts when you know where to poke and which string to pull. That’s exactly the kind of thing Leonid McGill knows how to do. As soon as The Long Fall begins, with McGill calling in old markers and greasing NYPD palms to unearth some seemingly harmless information for a high-paying client, he learns that even in this cleaned-up city, his commitment to the straight and narrow is going to be constantly tested.

And we learn that with this protagonist, this city, this time, Mosley has tapped a rich new vein that’s inspiring his best work since the classic Devil in a Blue Dress.

Professional C# 2008 starts by reviewing the overall architecture of .NET in Chapter 1 in order to give you the background you need to be able to write managed code. After that the book is divided into a number of sections that cover both the C# language and its application in a variety of areas.

Part I: The C# Language gives a good grounding in the C# language itself. This section doesn’t presume knowledge of any particular language, although it does assume you are an experienced programmer. You start by looking at C#’s basic syntax and data types, and then explore the object-oriented features of C# before moving on to look at more advanced C# programming topics.

Part II: Visual Studio looks at the main IDE utilized by C# developers world-wide: Visual Studio 2005. The two chapters in this section look at the best way to use the tool to build applications based upon either the .NET Framework 2.0 or 3.0. In addition to this, this section also focuses on the deployment of your projects.

Part III: Base Class Libraries looks at the principles of programming in the .NET environment. In particular, you look at security, threading localization, transactions, how to build Windows services, and how to generate your own libraries as assemblies.

Part IV: Data looks at accessing databases with ADO.NET and LINQ, and at interacting with directories and files. This part also extensively covers support in .NET for XML and on the Windows operating system side, and the .NET features of SQL Server 2008. Within the large space of LINQ, particular focus is put on LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML.

Part V: Presentation focuses on building classic Windows applications, which are called Windows Forms in .NET. Windows Forms are the thick-client version of applications, and using .NET to build these types of applications is a quick and easy way of accomplishing this task. In addition to looking at Windows Forms, you take a look at GDI+, which is the technology you will use for building applications that include advanced graphics. This section also covers writing components that will run on Web sites, serving up Web pages. This covers the tremendous number of new features that ASP.NET 3.5 provides. Finally, this section also shows how to build applications based upon the Windows Presentation Foundation and VSTO.

Part VI: Communication covers Web services for platform-independent communication, .NET Remoting for communication between .NET clients and servers, Enterprise Services for the services in the background, and DCOM communication. With Message Queuing asynchronous, disconnected communication is shown. This section also looks at utilizing the Windows Communication Foundation and the Windows Workflow Foundation.

Part VII: Appendices (Online): This section includes three appendices focused on how to build applications that take into account the new features and barriers found in Windows Vista. Also, this section looks at the upcoming ADO.NET Entities technology and how to use this new technology in your C# applications. You can find these three appendices online at www.wrox.com.