Voyeurism comes with the territory, whether you're a gargoyle assigned to roof duty or a half-fae/half-human constrained by a magical contract. Rhain Beauchêne's perch is the roof of the Winslow's Park Avenue mansion. He's a Watcher, a position custom-made for gargoyles and one that suits his physical appearance and grouchy demeanor. He knows he can manage this second and final year of his contract without losing his mind to the monotony of his days--until the building across the street gains an intriguing new occupant. Maddie Meadows lucks into the chance of a lifetime when a mythological creature in need of a break makes her an offer she can't refuse. All Maddie has to do is care for Medusa's snakes for an entire year. The biggest challenge? Maddie's got to keep lovers out of her bed. If she can do that, she’ll be financially secure for the rest of her life. And maybe even befriend Medusa in the process. There's a perfect solution to Rhain and Maddie's mutual longing for physical touch—but first they've got to learn to trust.

The International Web Content Caching and Distribution Workshop (WCW) is a premiere technical meeting for researchers and practitioners interested in all aspects of content caching, distribution and delivery on the Internet. The 2001 WCW meeting was held on the Boston University Campus. Building on the successes of the five previous WCW meetings, WCW01 featured a strong technical program and record participation from leading researchers and practitioners in the field. This book consists of all the technical papers presented at WCW'01. It includes 20 full papers and four R&D synopses that were presented at the workshop.The collection reflects the latest research in this important area, including such topics as Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), tools and methodology of performance measurements, Web characterization as relates to caching and content distribution, scalable web server architectures, cache prefetching, emerging new edge services, and delivery of streaming content.

Since the start of the International Workshop on Web Caching and Content Distribution (WCW) in 1996, it has served as the premiere meeting for researchers and practitioners to exchange results and visions on all aspects of content caching, distribution, and delivery. Building on the success of the previous WCW meetings, WCW 2004 extended its scope and covered interesting research and deployment areas relating to content services as they move through the Internet. This year, WCW was held in Beijing, China. Although it was the first time that WCW was held in Asia, we received more than 50 high quality papers from five continents. Fifteen papers were accepted as regular papers and 6 papers as synopses to appear in the proceedings. The topics covered included architectural issues, routing and placement, caching in both traditional content delivery networks as well as in peer-- peer systems, systems management and deployment, and performance evaluation. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who submitted papers to WCW 2004 for their valued contribution to the workshop. This event would not have been possible without the broad and personal support and the invaluable suggestions and contributions of the members of the program committee and the steering committee.

The proceedings of the first IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems comprise technical sessions on scheduling and synchronization, synthetic information and video generation, networking, operating systems, content-based retrieval, distributed systems, capture and creation

Examines images of horror in Victorian fiction, criticism, and philosophy.

Everybody says I look good on paper. I was adopted into the Winslow dragon clan, with their boatloads of status and wealth. I’m built like a superhero. I have loyal friends and a thriving surveillance business. Only, there’s so much more to my story. My parents are hellbent on mating me to a high society dragon. But the truth is I’m damaged goods. I’m twenty-nine, and my dragon form is stuck in adolescence. I have no wings, I’m afraid to use my magic, and not even my best friend knows I’ve never had a lover. Before I can consider marriage, I need to get back to the Ukrainian orphanage and figure out what the hell happened to me when I was a kid. But nothing’s ever simple. The orphanage sits dead center in the Transcarpathian Mountains--and any Magical who dares approach risks losing their powers to the Dragon King. Can I find the answers that release my wings, or will I become just another sacrifice to the Dragon King’s insatiable appetite? ◆◆◆ Paper Dragon is the first book in the Shifters in the Underlands series, which is set in the same universe as the Sister Witches Urban Fantasy Series and the Calliope Jones novels. The reading order is: ◆ Paper Dragon ◆ Blood Dragon ◆ Moon Dragon