New Releases by Simon James

As we navigate the intersection of queer history, public health, and ageing, LGBTQ+ Healthy Ageing serves as a vital resource for scholars, practitioners, and anyone committed to promoting healthy ageing for all.

Alfie Parker has bagged the hottest date to prom ... hasn’t he? Bestselling LGBTQ+ writer Simon James Green makes his Barrington Stoke debut with a life-affirming teen romance.

"Jack really wants to impress his diving coach dad... There''s just one problem. Jack is the worst diver in the worst diving team in Damp Bottom, England. Luckily, when a new kid starts at school with awesome swimming skills and an eagerness to share tips, Jack''s luck might be about to change. But when Jack''s new friend gets into trouble--and the fate of a secret world hangs in the balance--it''s up to Jack and the rest of his diving crew to save the day. As Jack is about to discover, lifting trophies isn''t all that... Because being part of a team feels a lot like winning, and friendship might just last forever." --

Edward has always wanted to be a popular kid, but due to an embarrassing incident that will not be named, he finds it harder than ever to fit in. But when Edward''s parents split up, his whole life changes. Although leaving his best friend Archie behind sucks, Edward is about to discover that staying with his dad might have its perks. Because with a new start, is the chance to re-invent yourself that''s right, Ted has the opportunity to choose his new identity and it''s going to be fresh. But can Ted keep up the cool-kid charade, or will his lies catch up with him?

A landmark comedic novel about a group of queer teens at their worst - and ultimately their best - from one of the UK''s leading writers of LGBTQ+ teen fiction. Barney''s a shoo-in for his school''s LGBTQ+ Society President at the club''s next election. But when the vote is opened up to the entire student body, the whole school starts paying attention. How low will the candidates go to win? Buckle up for some serious shade, scandals and sleazy shenanigans. It isn''t long before it''s National Coming Out Day - for everyone''s secrets! But when the group faces an unexpected threat - and a big opportunity - can the club members put politics aside and stand united?

"Believable characters and the warmth of Green''s writing bring light to a difficult topic" - Observer In the margins of a book''s pages, sparks fly as a teenage romance begins. But in this time and place, sparks like these can only ignite trouble. It''s 1994 and thanks to Section 28, there can be no mention of gay relationships in UK schools. When a kind librarian leads Jamie to a disguised novel in the library that reflects his own confused feelings towards boys, Jamie sees that he''s not the only one who has checked the book out. Will Jamie and this mystery boy have the courage to meet - and if they do, what will it take to hold on to each other? A timely - and timeless - story of forbidden love by one of the UK''s most beloved authors of teen LGBTQ+ fiction Filled with Simon James Green''s distinctive brand of humour making this an important but also very enjoyable read! Perfect for fans of books such as They Both Die At the End, Afterlove and Young Mungo, as well as dramas like It''s a Sin, Close, and Blue Jean.

At Finn''s funeral, grieving best friend Eric receives a message from beyond the grave - and it must be because this is Finn''s biggest prank ever, faking his own death! As Eric follows Finn''s cryptic instructions for various challenges, he goes down memory lane and through a scavenger hunt that will change him for ever.

This volume considers the military architecture and its impact on local communities in Rome''s eastern frontier, which stretched from the north-east shore of the Black Sea to the Red Sea.

First published in 1994, Putting the Family First is a study of better-off couples that clarifies the relationship between individualism and family values. Partners’ cultural practices focus on "making something of themselves", being "supportive" of each other, and spending "quality time" with children. But their economic strategies are directed towards competition for positional goods, especially higher education and good jobs for their offspring. The authors argue that, although these strategies are rational for individual families, they are collectively wasteful and mutually frustrating, and construct a narrow and exclusive version of citizenship. Such private morality depletes civic culture, and is socially costly. This revealing study provides a valuable text for students, with considerable appeal for courses in sociology, social policy, gender and cultural studies. It will be of broader interest to others connected to avoid the unravelling of our social fabric.

When Otis wakes up after a sleepover at popular kid Rocco Rococo''s house, it''s a scene of total chaos and disaster. Weirdly, no one can remember what happened the night before, so Rocco and Otis reluctantly team up to retrace their steps in the hopes of working out happened.

In the hundredth year of the British Broadcasting Corporation, historian Simon J. Potter looks back over the hundred year history, asking if the BBC is really the ''voice of Britain'', and what comes next for British public broadcasting. 2022 marks the centenary year of the British Broadcasting Corporation. As Britain''s most famous and influential broadcaster, the BBC faces a range of significant challenges to the way it operates, and perhaps to its existence, from the government but also from a rapidly changing media environment. Historian Simon J. Potter explores the hundred year history of this corporation, drawing out the roots of these challenges and understanding how similar threats - hostile politicians and prime ministers, the advent of television - were met and overcome in the past. Potter poses the question ''Is the BBC the voice of Britain?'', exploring its role in changing wider culture and society.

Celebrities, heroes and champions explores the role of the popular politician in British and Irish society from the Napoleonic Wars to the Second Reform Act of 1867. Covering movements for parliamentary reform up to and including Chartism, Catholic Emancipation, transatlantic Anti-Slavery and the Anti-Corn Law League, as well as the receptions of international celebrities such as Lajos Kossuth and Giuseppe Garibaldi, it offers a unique perspective on the connections between politics and historical cultures of fame and celebrity. This book will interest students and scholars of Britain, Ireland, continental Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, as well as general readers with an interest in the history of popular politics. Its exploration of the relationship between politics and celebrity, and the methods through which public reputations have been promoted and manipulated for political ends, have clear contemporary relevance.

Riley is cursed. No, really! After a fairground incident - TOTALLY not his fault - bad luck follows Riley everywhere, causing disaster after disaster. It''s got so bad that no one wants to go near Riley, including his teachers! But when new student Brad Chicago shows up, Riley quickly realizes that Brad is the human equivalent of a good luck charm. Can Brad''s good luck cancel out Riley''s bad luck? Or is this yet another recipe for disaster?

Faking the best summer ever is a lot harder than it looks... At the start of summer, Jack and Nate find themselves dumped as their respective exes, Dylan and Tariq, start up a new relationship together. Not only that, their exes start posting pics on social media, showing the whole world how fabulous their new life together is! Jack and Nate are reeling. Not to be outdone, they decide to create their own ''highlights reel'' and show their exes that they''re having an even better time. But between the depressing motorway service station motels, damp campsites, and an ultimate showdown with the exes, something epic really is happening: Jack and Nate are learning to get over their heartache and open themselves up to new possibilities for love. A hilarious story of heartbreaks and hijinks from award-winning author Simon James Green.

This book examines how the wonders of AI have contributed to the battle against COVID-19. Just as history repeats itself, so do epidemics and pandemics. In the face of the novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, the book explores whether, in this digital era where artificial intelligence is successfully applied in all areas of industry, we are doing any better than our ancestors did in dealing with pandemics. One of the most contagious diseases ever known, COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire around and has cost thousands of human lives. The book discusses how AI can help fight this deadly virus, from early warnings, prompt emergency responses, and critical decision-making to surveillance drones. Serving as a technical reference resource, data analytic tutorial and a chronicle of the application of AI in epidemics, this book will appeal to academics, students, data scientists, medical practitioners, and anybody who is concerned about this global epidemic.

Larry the llama has a secret: he loves dancing! But have you ever seen a llama dance? Well, neither had Larry - until one day he spots an ad for the Llama Glamarama. He joins the crowd, and it blows Larry''s mind to see llamas DANCING! Will this raucous, joyful celebration give Larry the courage to embrace his inner dancer? How would the other llamas back at the barn react, if he ever revealed his secret?

Simon Potter links the history of broadcasting to the history of internationalism, showing how radio was used as a means of promoting international peace and understanding. He looks at histories of propaganda and international conflict and reconstructs early international radio programming and the experience of ''distant listening''.

A sweetly silly story of a little boy and a dog who make an unlikely (but perhaps perfect) pair. Everyone knows that owners and their dogs belong together in a unique way. Polly belongs to Molly, Eric belongs to Derek, Berry belongs to Terry. But poor Mr. Scruff, alone in the rescue shelter, doesn’t belong to anyone. Then a boy named Jim walks in, and they seem to get along. Jim and Mr. Scruff don’t look anything alike, and their names certainly don’t rhyme, but they may end up belonging to each other just the same. From author-illustrator Simon James comes a warm, winning story about friendship and finding a home.

A novel that will have you laughing out loud one minute, and swooning the next! In the town of Newsands, painfully shy Alex is abandoned by his two best friends for the summer. But he unexpectedly lands a part-time job at Wonderland, a run-down amusement arcade on the seafront, where he gets to know the other teen misfits who work there. Alex starts to come out of his shell, and even starts to develop feelings for co-worker Ben ... who, as Alex''s bad luck would have it, has a girlfriend. Then as debtors close in on Wonderland and mysterious, threatening notes start to appear, Alex and his new friends take it on themselves to save their declining employer. But, like everything in Wonderland, nothing is quite what it seems...

This book addresses computer scientists, IT specialists, mathematicians, knowledge engineers and programmers, who are engaged in research and practice of multicriteria decision making. Fuzzy measures, also known as capacities, allow one to combine degrees of preferences, support or fuzzy memberships into one representative value, taking into account interactions between the inputs. The notions of mutual reinforcement or redundancy are modeled explicitly through coefficients of fuzzy measures, and fuzzy integrals, such as the Choquet and Sugeno integrals combine the inputs. Building on previous monographs published by the authors and dealing with different aspects of aggregation, this book especially focuses on the Choquet and Sugeno integrals. It presents a number of new findings concerning computation of fuzzy measures, learning them from data and modeling interactions. The book does not require substantial mathematical background, as all the relevant notions are explained. It is intended as concise, timely and self-contained guide to the use of fuzzy measures in the field of multicriteria decision making.

Dura-Europos, a Parthian-ruled Greco-Syrian city, was captured by Rome c.AD165. It then accommodated a Roman garrison until its destruction by Sasanian siege c.AD256. Excavations of the site between the World Wars made sensational discoveries, and with renewed exploration from 1986 to 2011, Dura remains the best-explored city of the Roman East. A critical revelation was a sprawling Roman military base occupying a quarter of the city''s interior. This included swathes of civilian housing converted to soldiers'' accommodation and several existing sanctuaries, as well as baths, an amphitheatre, headquarters, and more temples added by the garrison. Base and garrison were clearly fundamental factors in the history of Roman Dura, but what impact did they have on the civil population? Original excavators gloomily portrayed Durenes evicted from their homes and holy places, and subjected to extortion and impoverishment by brutal soldiers, while recent commentators have envisaged military-civilian concordia, with shared prosperity and integration. Detailed examination of the evidence presents a new picture. Through the use of GPS, satellite, geophysical and archival evidence, this volume shows that the Roman military base and resident community were even bigger than previously understood, with both military and civil communities appearing much more internally complex than has been allowed until now. The result is a fascinating social dynamic which we can partly reconstruct, giving us a nuanced picture of life in a city near the eastern frontier of the Roman world.

Paleoecological data from the Quaternary Period (2.6 million years ago to present) provides an opportunity for educational outreach for the earth and biological sciences. Paleoecology data repositories serve as technical hubs and focal points within their disciplinary communities and so are uniquely situated to help produce teaching modules and engagement resources. The Neotoma Paleoecology Database provides support to educators from primary schools to graduate students. In collaboration with pedagogical experts, the Neotoma Paleoecology Database team has developed teaching modules and model workflows. Early education is centered on discovery; higher-level educational tools focus on illustrating best practices for technical tasks. Collaborations among pedagogic experts, technical experts and data stewards, centered around data resources such as Neotoma, provide an important role within research communities, and an important service to society, supporting best practices, translating current research advances to interested audiences, and communicating the importance of individual research disciplines.

Pauvre Noah ! Son père a quitté la maison il y a des années et sa mère est une ultra fan de Beyoncé dont elle reprend les tubes sur YouTube : la honte pour son fils ! Et l''école est un véritable enfer, car avec ses airs d’intello timide, il n’a aucun ami, à part Harry. Pourtant, tout ce que demande Noah, 16 ans, c’est d’être un lycéen comme les autres. Peut-être que s’il sortait avec une fille, la vie serait différente ? Justement, Sophie est plutôt jolie et a toujours été gentille avec lui. C’est décidé : il va lui déclarer qu’il l’aime. Mais les plans de Noah déraillent complètement quand son meilleur ami Harry l''embrasse lors d''une fête. Un baiser qu’il apprécie et, surtout, qui le bouleverse : et s’il était gay ? La vie de Noah, déjà bien compliquée, devient un total chaos... Noah et Harry sont les meilleurs amis du monde... et même un peu plus ?

Noah and Harry are now officially boyfriends, but is Noah ready to go all the way? It''s no help that a group of cosmopolitan French exchange students have descended on Little Fobbing - including sexy Pierre Victoire, who seems to have his eye on Harry! Will Noah ever catch a break?

The MILLARWORLD ANNUAL is back! After an international hunt for the world''s best new comic book talent, a fresh crop of creators are taking on MARK MILLAR''S hit characters. With stories from HUCK to SUPERIOR, EMPRESS to NEMESIS, the second ANNUAL is an instant collector''s item.

Statistics Analysis of Geographical Data: An Introduction provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the theory and practice of statistical analysis in geography. It covers a wide range of topics including graphical and numerical description of datasets, probability, calculation of confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, collection and analysis of data using analysis of variance and linear regression. Taking a clear and logical approach, this book examines real problems with real data from the geographical literature in order to illustrate the important role that statistics play in geographical investigations. Presented in a clear and accessible manner the book includes recent, relevant examples, designed to enhance the reader’s understanding.

Painfully geeky Noah Grimes thinks his best chance at social normalcy is to strike up a romance with Sophie. But his delusional plans are hopelessly derailed when his best (and only) friend Harry kisses him at a party. That''s when things go from bad to utter chaos.

In recent decades, Tokyo, London, and New York have been the sites of credit bubbles of historically unprecedented magnitude. Central bankers have enjoyed almost unparalleled power and autonomy. They have cooperated to construct and preserve towering structures of debt, reshaping relations of power and ownership around the world. In Central Banks and Gold, Simon James Bytheway and Mark Metzler explore how this financialized form of globalism took shape a century ago, when Tokyo joined London and New York as a major financial center.As revealed here for the first time, close cooperation between central banks began along an unexpected axis, between London and Tokyo, around the year 1900, with the Bank of England''s secret use of large Bank of Japan funds to intervene in the London markets. Central-bank cooperation became multilateral during World War I—the moment when Japan first emerged as a creditor country. In 1919 and 1920, as Japan, Great Britain, and the United States adopted deflation policies, the results of cooperation were realized in the world''s first globally coordinated program of monetary policy. It was also in 1920 that Wall Street bankers moved to establish closer ties with Tokyo. Bytheway and Metzler tell the story of how the first age of central-bank power and pride ended in the disaster of the Great Depression, when a rush for gold brought the system crashing down. In all of this, we see also the quiet but surprisingly central place of Japan. We see it again today, in the way that Japan has unwillingly led the world into a new age of post-bubble economics.

This textbook helps future data analysts comprehend aggregation function theory and methods in an accessible way, focusing on a fundamental understanding of the data and summarization tools. Offering a broad overview of recent trends in aggregation research, it complements any study in statistical or machine learning techniques. Readers will learn how to program key functions in R without obtaining an extensive programming background. Sections of the textbook cover background information and context, aggregating data with averaging functions, power means, and weighted averages including the Borda count. It explains how to transform data using normalization or scaling and standardization, as well as log, polynomial, and rank transforms. The section on averaging with interaction introduces OWS functions and the Choquet integral, simple functions that allow the handling of non-independent inputs. The final chapters examine software analysis with an emphasis on parameter identification rather than technical aspects. This textbook is designed for students studying computer science or business who are interested in tools for summarizing and interpreting data, without requiring a strong mathematical background. It is also suitable for those working on sophisticated data science techniques who seek a better conception of fundamental data aggregation. Solutions to the practice questions are included in the textbook.