What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Especially murder. Nikki Tate is infamous, even by Las Vegas standards. Her dad is sitting on death row, convicted of killing his best friend in a gambling dispute turned ugly. And for five years, he's maintained his innocence. But Nikki wants no part of that. She's been working on Operation Escape Vegas: playing in illegal card games so she can save up enough money to get out come graduation day.Then her dad's murder conviction is overturned. The new evidence seems to come out of nowhere and Nikki's life becomes a mess when he's released from prison. Because the dad who comes home is not the dad she remembers. And he's desperately obsessed with finding out who framed him-and why.As her dad digs into the seedy underbelly of Vegas, the past threatens everything and Nikki is drawn into his deadly hunt for the truth. But in the city of sin, some sinners will do anything to keep their secrets, and Nikki soon finds herself playing for the biggest gamble ever-her life.

A compelling account of Christianity’s Jewish beginnings, from one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient religion How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus’s prophecy—“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”—they were, in their own eyes, history's last generation. But in history's eyes, they became the first Christians. In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.

The Adapa myth is a literary work of ancient Mesopotamia with different versions in Sumerian and Akkadian. According to the Adapa myth, the sage and cook from Eridu goes fishing to the Persian Gulf, where the South Wind capsizes his boat. The sage's curse breaks the wing of the South Wind. Adapa lies seven days in the ocean, whence he is summoned to heaven, to be positively judged by the sky god Anu. The present book investigates the literary development of the Adapa myth and argues that it represents an exorcistic version of the flood story with the protagonist as priest. In the Adapa myth, the primordial sage survives the flood, which serves as ideological background for exorcism, ─ ┼ ip┼1/2tu. The exorcist, who used fire and water as sanitizing substances during the rituals, impersonated Adapa, who had gone through an extreme form of purification himself. Adapa's critical period in the sea was the symbolic etiology for illnesses, difficult births, witchcraft, bad omens, sin, and imprisonment, which the exorcist was able to counter. The deluge was a symbol of water ordeal and judgment, for which the exorcist's assistance was sought. Because Adapa was given rebirth from his disaster, the human exorcist as his embodiment possessed the powers of the flood in manipulating the purifying substances and incantations against all misfortune. The identity constituting narrative of ancient Mesopotamian exorcism is explored with a methodology combining the intertextual studies with cognitive neuroscience.

The name of Phan-Boi-Chau may not be readily recognized by many people outside Vietnam, but within his own country he is one of the most widely known and respected figures in recent history. Phan (1867-1940) was the most prominent leader of the Vietnamese independence movement during the first quarter of the twentieth century and a living link between the older generation who initiated the struggle against French rule in Vietnam and the younger generation who carried that struggle to its conclusion. In 1928, while under house arrest by the French authorities, Phan composed an account of his eventful life. His original text in literary Chinese has been used for this translation, which brings Phan's story into English for the first time. It is accompanied by an introduction and notes incorporating the most up-to-date information about Phan's life and setting his career in the panoramic context of modern Vietnamese history.

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 173. The ocean's meridional overturning circulation (MOC) is a key factor in climate change. The Atlantic MOC, in particular, is believed to play an active role in the regional and global climate variability. It is associated with the recent debate on rapid climate change, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation (AMO), global warming, and Atlantic hurricanes. This is the first book to deal with all aspects of the ocean's large-scale meridional overturning circulation, and is a coherent presentation, from a mechanistic point of view, of our current understanding of paleo, present-day, and future variability and change. It presents the current state of the science by bringing together the world's leading experts in physical, chemical, and biological oceanography, marine geology, geochemistry, paleoceanography, and climate modeling. A mix of overview and research papers makes this volume suitable not only for experts in the field, but also for students and anyone interested in climate change and the oceans.

Imagine being convicted of a crime you didn't commit and spending years behind bars. Since 1989 more than 1,400 Americans who experienced this injustice have been exonerated. Some of the people who have won their freedom include Ronald Cotton, who was falsely convicted of raping a college student; Nicole Harris, who was unjustly imprisoned for the death of her son; and intellectually disabled Earl Washington Jr., who was unfairly sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a young mother. Wrongful convictions shatter lives and harm society by allowing real perpetrators to potentially commit additional crimes. How can such injustices happen? Overturning Wrongful Convictions recounts stories of individuals who served someone else's prison time due to mistaken eyewitness identification, police misconduct, faulty forensic science, poor legal representation, courtroom mistakes, and other factors. You'll learn about the legal processes that can lead to unjust convictions and about the Innocence Project and other organizations dedicated to righting these wrongs. The sciences—including psychology, criminology, police science, and forensic science—work hand in hand with the legal system to prosecute and punish those people whose actions break laws. Those same sciences can also be used to free people who have been wrongfully convicted. As a society, can we learn from past mistakes to avoid more unjust convictions?

Even in murder, the music lives on. When rising star Paris Secord (aka DJ ParSec) is found dead on her turntables, it sends the local music scene reeling. No one is feeling that grief more than her shunned pre-fame best friend, Kya, and ParSec's chief groupie, Fuse -- two sworn enemies who happened to be the ones who discovered her body. The police have few leads, and when the trail quickly turns cold, the authorities don't seem to be pushing too hard to investigate further. But nobody counted on Paris's deeply loyal fans, ParSec Nation, or the outrage that would drive Fuse and Kya to work together. As ParSec Nation takes to social media and the streets in their crusade for justice, Fuse and Kya start digging into Paris's past, stumbling across a deadly secret. With new info comes new motives. New suspects. And a fandom that will stop at nothing in their obsessive quest for answers, not even murder...