A young woman makes a shocking self-discovery when she visits a traveling carnival in this dark contemporary fantasy by a New York Times bestseller. When Delilah Marlow visits a famous traveling carnival, Metzger’s Menagerie, she is an ordinary woman in a not-quite-ordinary world. But under the macabre circus big-top, she discovers a fierce, sharp-clawed creature lurking just beneath her human veneer. Captured and put on exhibition, Delilah is stripped of her worldly possessions, including her own name, as she’s forced to “perform” in town after town. But there is breathtaking beauty behind the seamy and grotesque reality of the carnival. Gallagher, her handler, is as kind as he is cryptic and strong. The other “attractions” —mermaids, minotaurs, griffins and kelpies—are strange, yes, but they share a bond forged by the brutal realities of captivity. And as Delilah struggles for her freedom, and for her fellow menagerie, she’ll discover a strength and a purpose she never knew existed. Renowned author Rachel Vincent weaves an intoxicating blend of carnival magic and startling humanity in this intricately woven and powerful tale. Praise for Menagerie “Well-paced, readable, and imaginative.” —New York Times Book Review “Delilah is magnificent in her defiance of injustice, and the well-wrought background for her world sets the stage for her future adventures in this captivating new fantasy series.” —Publishers Weekly “A dark tale of exploited and abused others, expertly told by Vincent.” —Library Journal, starred review “Vincent summons bold and vivid imagery with her writing, especially with the otherworld aspects of the carnival.” —Kirkus Reviews “Vincent creates a fantastic world that is destined to pique your curiosity . . . As Delilah Marlow slowly uncovers a side of herself that she never knew existed, you’ll sympathize with her . . . desperate to see her succeed.” —RT Book Reviews, Top Pick

This book, the second volume in the new DIMACS book series, contains the proceedings of a workshop held in Princeton, New Jersey in October 1989. The workshop, which drew seventy-four participants from five countries, addressed a wide range of practical and theoretical questions arising in the overlap of distributed computation and cryptography. In addition to fifteen papers based on formal talks presented at the workshop, this volume also contains two contributed papers on related topics, and an extensive summary of informal discussions that took place during the workshop, including some open questions raised. The book requires basic background in computer science and either a familiarity with the notation and terminology of distributed computing and cryptography, or a willingness to do some background reading. Students, researchers, and engineers interested in the theoretical and practical aspects of distributed computing and cryptography will appreciate the overview the book provides of some of the major questions at the forefront of research in these areas.

If you've ever made a secure purchase with your credit card over the Internet, then you have seen cryptography, or "crypto", in action. From Stephen Levy—the author who made "hackers" a household word—comes this account of a revolution that is already affecting every citizen in the twenty-first century. Crypto tells the inside story of how a group of "crypto rebels"—nerds and visionaries turned freedom fighters—teamed up with corporate interests to beat Big Brother and ensure our privacy on the Internet. Levy's history of one of the most controversial and important topics of the digital age reads like the best futuristic fiction.

Dive into Bitcoin technology with this hands-on guide from one of the leading teachers on Bitcoin and Bitcoin programming. Author Jimmy Song shows Python programmers and developers how to program a Bitcoin library from scratch. You’ll learn how to work with the basics, including the math, blocks, network, and transactions behind this popular cryptocurrency and its blockchain payment system. By the end of the book, you'll understand how this cryptocurrency works under the hood by coding all the components necessary for a Bitcoin library. Learn how to create transactions, get the data you need from peers, and send transactions over the network. Whether you’re exploring Bitcoin applications for your company or considering a new career path, this practical book will get you started. Parse, validate, and create bitcoin transactions Learn Script, the smart contract language behind Bitcoin Do exercises in each chapter to build a Bitcoin library from scratch Understand how proof-of-work secures the blockchain Program Bitcoin using Python 3 Understand how simplified payment verification and light wallets work Work with public-key cryptography and cryptographic primitives

The Lightning Network (LN) is a rapidly growing second-layer payment protocol that works on top of Bitcoin to provide near-instantaneous transactions between two parties. With this practical guide, authors Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, and Rene Pickhardt explain how this advancement will enable the next level of scale for Bitcoin, increasing speed and privacy while reducing fees. Ideal for developers, systems architects, investors, and entrepreneurs looking to gain a better understanding of LN, this book demonstrates why experts consider LN a critical solution to Bitcoin's scalability problem. You'll learn how LN has the potential to support far more transactions than today's financial networks. This book examines: How the Lightning Network addresses the challenge of blockchain scaling The Basis of Lightning Technology (BOLT) standards documents The five layers of the Lightning Network Protocol Suite LN basics, including wallets, nodes, and how to operate one Lightning payment channels, onion routing, and gossip protocol Finding paths across payment channels to transport Bitcoin off-chain from sender to recipient

Featured in the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his multiple award-winning stories for a groundbreaking collection—including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume. With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This mesmerizing collection features many of Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware” (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalists), “All the Flavors” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie” (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards). Insightful and stunning stories that plumb the struggle against history and betrayal of relationships in pivotal moments, this collection showcases one of our greatest and original voices.

The two volume-set, LNCS 9215 and LNCS 9216, constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 35th Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2015, held in Santa Barbara, CA, USA, in August 2015. The 74 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 266 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: lattice-based cryptography; cryptanalytic insights; modes and constructions; multilinear maps and IO; pseudorandomness; block cipher cryptanalysis; integrity; assumptions; hash functions and stream cipher cryptanalysis; implementations; multiparty computation; zero-knowledge; theory; signatures; non-signaling and information-theoretic crypto; attribute-based encryption; new primitives; and fully homomorphic/functional encryption.