The sister is a knife thrower in a magician's stage act, the brother is an undertaker's assistant. Neither orphan knows of the other's existence. Until, that is, three terrible Aunts descend on the girl's house and imprison her guardian, the Great Cardamom. His dying act is to pass the girl a note with clues to the secret he has carried to his grave. Cardamom was one of three explorers on an expedition to locate the legendary Amarant, a plant with power over life and death. Now, pursued by flesh-eating crow-like ghuls, brother and sister must decode the message and save themselves from its sinister legacy.

Nothing has rocked the foundations of the world, including the business world, more than the COVID- 19 pandemic. As businesses struggle and often flounder to cope, many business leaders are wondering how to deal with the unpredictable. How do you plan for something you can't predict? Strategist Lance Mortlock says you can, and you should. In this practical and accessible guide, Mortlock shows how scenario planning can identify risks and uncertainties, and predict a variety of different realities that will affect the future of any organization. He gives business leaders the tools to understand the forces emerging in a volatile, rapidly changing world so organizations are better prepared than their competitors to deal with them. This guide can be used by industries, the military, even governments, and, if executed properly, it will prepare leaders for every kind of unexpected challenge, from dramatic changes in commodity prices to wars and terrorist attacks and even pandemics. This book will help business leaders gain an earlier view of long-term forces that will affect their organizations performance, and be better prepared for future disasters on the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This book describes the central aspects of diffusion in solids, and goes on to provide easy access to important information about diffusion in metals, alloys, semiconductors, ion-conducting materials, glasses and nanomaterials. Coverage includes diffusion-controlled phenomena including ionic conduction, grain-boundary and dislocation pipe diffusion. This book will benefit graduate students in such disciplines as solid-state physics, physical metallurgy, materials science, and geophysics, as well as scientists in academic and industrial research laboratories.

Advances in Microbial Physiology publishes topical and important reviews, interpreting physiology to include all material that contributes to our understanding of how microorganisms and their component parts work.