Awakening to find his body has been modified with Houston Corps' secret technology, Ottavio grows to discover that Houston's public image is far removed from reality. While he fights to retain his humanity and gain freedom from their monstrous plans, Ryan, an Acolyte of The Vigils, commits an atrocious act in order to gain the favor of a mysterious Father Abraham. Adaptation - Part 1 explores the origins of Acolyte Ryan and Agent Ottavio, the choices they make and the ideals to which they are bound. The salvation of Humanity comes at a personal price. In a world only just recovering from the most vicious war to date, who will be the salvation of mankind?

Carmella was still a teen when the Motherships first appeared dotting the skies over the Earth. For years the world tried to normalize while the silent Motherships hovered. And then THEY arrived, promising that they meant no harm. But within ten years eighty percent of the world's population would be wiped out. Including everyone that Carmella loved.The 'blobs' took those that survived to another planet called Earth Two. But Carmella was an Earthling and she would kill the hated monsters that had destroyed her world before she would allow them to take her. Carmella settled into a lonely existence on the now desolate earth--all alone except for her wolf. And then she sees it hiding, watching her--maybe to capture her and remove her from the only thing that she can still call her own--her world.But Bilal is not like the other Centaurians. He is fully aware that he will never be like the humans that he's grown up with. Earth is the only home he knows and he feels that he is just as much an Earthling as any human. Shunned by his own kind, Bilal travels the Earth trying to capture an essence of the life that he could never be a part of and a world that would never accept him.When he sees the black woman living all alone his curiosity gets the best of him. He can not stop himself from watching her, and secretly growing more attached to the human. Bilal's quest to become human brings him to a decision that will forever change the course of human-kind. In an attempt to ease the woman's loneliness--or perhaps a need to recreate himself, Bilal impregnates the woman with his Alien DNA.

Across North America, flocks of birds hurl themselves into airplanes, causing at least a dozen to crash. Thousands of people die. Fearing terrorism, the United States government grounds all flights, and millions of travelers are stranded. Among them are Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David, who are in Arizona when the disaster occurs. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway in the middle of the Nevada night, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won't tell them what happened, where they are--or how they've been miraculously healed. Things become even stranger when Reese returns home. San Francisco feels like a different place with police enforcing curfew, hazmat teams collecting dead birds, and a strange presence that seems to be following her. When Reese unexpectedly collides with the beautiful Amber Gray, her search for the truth is forced in an entirely new direction-and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret. Adaptation is a bold contemporary science-fiction thriller from the acclaimed author of Ash.

A guide for individuals and organizations navigating the complex and ambiguous Future of Work Foreword by New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas L. Friedman Technology is changing work as we know it. Cultural norms are undergoing tectonic shifts. A global pandemic proves that we are inextricably connected whether we choose to be or not. So much change, so quickly, is disorienting. It's undermining our sense of identity and challenging our ability to adapt. But where so many see these changes as threatening, Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley see the opportunity to open the flood gates of human potential—if we can change the way we think about work and leadership. They have dedicated the last 5 years to understanding how technical, business, and cultural shifts affecting the workplace have brought us to this crossroads, The result is a powerful and practical guide to the future of work for leaders and employees. The future can be better, but only if we let go of our attachment to our traditional (and disappearing) ideas about careers, and what a "good job" looks like. Blending wisdom from interviews with hundreds of executives, The Adaptation Advantage explains the profound changes happening in the world of work and posits the solution: new ways to think about careers that detach our sense of pride and personal identity from our job title, and connect it to our sense of purpose. Activating purpose, the authors suggest, will inherently motivate learning, engagement, empowerment, and lead to new forms of pride and identity throughout the workforce. Only when we let go of our rigid career identities can we embrace and appreciate the joys of learning and adapting to new realities—and help our organizations do the same. Of course, making this transition is hard. It requires leaders who can attract and motivate cognitively diverse teams fueled by a strong sense of purpose in an environment of psychological safety—despite fierce competition and external pressures. Adapting to the future of work has always called for strong leadership. Now, as a pandemic disrupts so many aspects of work, adapting is a leadership imperative. The Adaptation Advantage is an essential guide to help leaders meet that challenge.

Scholars of cultural, gender, film, literary, and adaptation studies will find this collection innovative and thought-provoking.

Adaptation in Young Adult Novels argues that adapting classic and canonical literature and historical places engages young adult readers with their cultural past and encourages them to see how that past can be rewritten. The textual afterlives of classic texts raise questions for new readers: What can be changed? What benefits from change? How can you, too, be agents of change? The contributors to this volume draw on a wide range of contemporary novels – from Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series and Megan Shepherd's Madman's Daughter trilogy to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones – adapted from mythology, fairy tales, historical places, and the literary classics of Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others. Unpacking the new perspectives and critiques of gender, sexuality, and the cultural values of adolescents inherent to each adaptation, the essays in this volume make the case that literary adaptations are just as valuable as original works and demonstrate how the texts studied empower young readers to become more culturally, historically, and socially aware through the lens of literary diversity.

"Challenging the binary categories of "new play" and "production" dramaturgy, this book offers both a theoretical model for understanding adaptation for the stage and a practical guide for dramaturgs and others involved in the creation of theatrical adaptations"--