Search results for ""Spark""

M.G. Leonard, internationally bestselling author of Twitch, Beetleboy and Adventures on Trains, is back with the second thrilling wildlife mystery for birdwatching detectives The Twitchers! >> Shortlisted for the CRIMEFEST Award for Best Crime Novel for Children 2022>> Longlisted for the 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation>> "A clarion call for environmentalists everywhere." Rob Biddulph on SparkWhen Jack rescues a wounded cat, he quickly suspects foul play. Could there be a wildlife criminal on the loose in Briddvale?Jack rushes to investigate, determined to catch the culprit, only to stumble into a deepening mystery and a sinister criminal plot.Can Jack and The Twitchers stop the villains before it's too late?Spark is a page-turning autumn mystery adventure about courage, friendship and protecting our planet, perfect for readers 9+ and for fans of Robin Stevens, Lauren St John and Jenny Pearson. It can be enjoyed as a stand-alone adventure or read as part of The Twitchers series. Praise for The Twitchers:"A skilfully crafted mystery adventure. A clarion call for environmentalists everywhere." Rob Biddulph, LoveReading4Kids on Spark"Another pacy wonderful adventure steeped in the magic of nature and friendship.” Jasbinder Bilan on Spark"Absolutely magnificent. Gripping and funny, utterly engaging, unputdownable. Cannot recommend highly enough. Perfect storytelling, loved it with all my heart!” Liz Hyder on Spark“Leonard knows her audience and the jeopardy comes in flocks ... Find your nest, curl up and enjoy.” The Times, Children's Book of the Week on Twitch "A twist-laden, thriller-like tale of a bird-mad boy, some bullies and an escaped convict hiding in the nearby woods." Observer on Twitch"A twisty crime drama as well as a persuasive story about friendship and nature." The Sunday Times on Twitch "Simply genius." BBC Wildlife Magazine on Twitch“Leonard has crafted an intelligent mystery from unlikely material, with bonus bird facts.” Irish Times on Twitch “A winged masterpiece.” Maz Evans on Twitch “Enthralling from beginning to end, it really touched my young bird-loving heart! Just wonderful!” Dara McAnulty on Twitch “Twitch is an absolute triumph. The perfect blend of mystery and adventure, a winning hero with an eye for ornithological facts and a heart as big as the countryside, plus a cracking whipsmart plot, I think this is M. G. Leonard's best book yet.” Christopher Edge on Twitch “Cracking characters, beyond pacy plotting and an ending that is almost Bugsy Malone-esque!” Phil Earle on Twitch

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As in her debut picture book, Ping, Ani Castillo brilliantly delivers a deep and inspiring reading experience with just a few captivating words and images. In Spark, she asks a series of gentle and inviting questions that inspire readers to ponder, imagine, and ultimate celebrate the magic of being alive.Beginning with the birth of a baby, the story takes the reader on a journey through life, navigates the ups and downs, and culminates in a deeply satisfying sense of the power and magic of being human.With a charming gift book trim size, a unique and inspiring message delivered in an artful, accessible package, Spark will strike a chord with both children and adults, and appeal to fans of Todd Parr, Peter Reynolds, and Patrick McDonnell.

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Professor Peyton Wilde has an enviable life teaching sociology at an idyllic liberal arts college--yet she is troubled by a sense of fading inspiration. One day an invitation arrives. Peyton has been selected to attend a luxurious all-expense-paid seminar in Iceland, where participants, billed as some of the greatest thinkers in the world, will be charged with answering one perplexing question. Meeting her diverse teammates--two neuroscientists, a philosopher, a dance teacher, a collage artist, and a farmer--Peyton wonders what she could ever have to contribute. The ensuing journey of discovery will transform the characters' work, their biases, and themselves. This suspenseful novel shows that the answers you seek can be found in the most unlikely places. It can be read for pleasure, is a great choice for book clubs, and can be used as unique and inspiring reading in qualitative research and other courses in education, sociology, social work, psychology, and communication.

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In a world struggling to exist, only the strongest will survive. The explosive, action-packed new adventure from the award-winning author of Kick and Pop!Ash has always lived in Last Village, lonely since the day his father left and never came back.The world is unbearably hot, water is drying up, and life is hard. After a vicious thunderstorm, Ash wakes to find that the village's water has completely run out, and all the other villagers have mysteriously disappeared.Accompanied by the outcast Bronwyn, Ash sets off in search of water, for answers about what happened to the villagers, with hope they might find 'The Kingdom' - a rumoured land to the north where life still flourishes.Ash and Bronwyn have to survive a journey across an arid landscape, discovering that other people out there are even more dangerous than the lightning strikes that follow them. Then they reach The Wall - beyond it, something impossible.Lying in wait are the answers Ash is searching for, and maybe even the truth about what happened to his father. If only he could get past The Wall...Sometimes all it takes is just one spark.Praise for Mitch Johnson'Fizzes with adventure and great characters who pop from the page' - Peter Bunzl, bestselling author of Cogheart'I read it all in one gulp!' - Ross Welford, bestselling author of Time Travelling with a Hamster'A bonkers Willy-Wonka nightmare designed to get children thinking about the effects of everything they buy' - Ross Montgomery, bestselling author of The Midnight Guardians'A zany adventure that will make you bubble with laughter and fizz with indignation on behalf of our planet' - Maria Kuzniar, bestselling author of The Ship of Shadows'An exploding soda geyser of a book - an adventure story that will make you laugh, make you angry and make you want to do something to fix this crazy, messed up world' - Charlie Higson, bestselling author of Young Bond and The Enemy'Pop! is an explosive and unforgettable adventure with defiant heroes, devious villains, deadly corporate secrets all told with Johnson's brilliant humour. I loved it' - Tamsin Winter, bestselling author of Jemima Small Versus the Universe

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Exercise is not only good for the body: it can transform your mind too. This new scientific revolution will teach you how to boost brain cells, protect yourself against mental illness and dementia, and ensure success in exams and the workplace.We all know that exercise is good for the body. But did you know that it can transform your mind? This new scientific revolution will teach you how to boost brain cells, protect yourself against mental illness and dementia, and ensure success in exams and the workplace. Follow the SPARK! training regimen and build your brain to its peak performance. This book will change the way you think about exercise - and, for that matter, the way you think.

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Professor Peyton Wilde has an enviable life teaching sociology at an idyllic liberal arts college--yet she is troubled by a sense of fading inspiration. One day an invitation arrives. Peyton has been selected to attend a luxurious all-expense-paid seminar in Iceland, where participants, billed as some of the greatest thinkers in the world, will be charged with answering one perplexing question. Meeting her diverse teammates--two neuroscientists, a philosopher, a dance teacher, a collage artist, and a farmer--Peyton wonders what she could ever have to contribute. The ensuing journey of discovery will transform the characters' work, their biases, and themselves. This suspenseful novel shows that the answers you seek can be found in the most unlikely places. It can be read for pleasure, is a great choice for book clubs, and can be used as unique and inspiring reading in qualitative research and other courses in education, sociology, social work, psychology, and communication.

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Balance in a box: accessible prompts in a pick-me-up package that will genuinely help to cultivate a more balanced life, including mindfulness practices and self-care activities. The gift of rejuvenation and calm, this is a perfect way to refresh for New Year, New You—or anytime of the year. Includes 50 faux matchsticks with printed prompts.Fans of Mindfulness Cards and Spark Happiness or The Little Book of Mindfulnesswill love this gift. This gift is ideal for:• Parents• Brides• Soul nurturers

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Data is getting bigger, arriving faster, and coming in varied formats-and it all needs to be processed at scale for analytics or machine learning. How can you process such varied data workloads efficiently? Enter Apache Spark. Updated to emphasize new features in Spark 2.4., this second edition shows data engineers and scientists why structure and unification in Spark matters. Specifically, this book explains how to perform simple and complex data analytics and employ machine-learning algorithms. Through discourse, code snippets, and notebooks, you'll be able to: Learn Python, SQL, Scala, or Java high-level APIs: DataFrames and Datasets Peek under the hood of the Spark SQL engine to understand Spark transformations and performance Inspect, tune, and debug your Spark operations with Spark configurations and Spark UI Connect to data sources: JSON, Parquet, CSV, Avro, ORC, Hive, S3, or Kafka Perform analytics on batch and streaming data using Structured Streaming Build reliable data pipelines with open source Delta Lake and Spark Develop machine learning pipelines with MLlib and productionize models using MLflow Use open source Pandas framework Koalas and Spark for data transformation and feature engineering

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Creativity in a box: accessible prompts in a pick-me-up package that are applicable to any type of creative pursuit, be it visual art, music, writing, or any other practice that requires idea-generation. It''s the gift of inspiration, with effective strategies to spark creativity and get unstuck. Includes 50 faux matchsticks with printed prompts.Fans of Spark Adventure, Spark Happiness, or The Creativity Project will love this gift. This gift is ideal for:• Artists and Musicians• Writers• Creative Business People

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NOTABLE BOOK: 2023 CBCA Book of the Year, Older ReadersSHORTLISTED: 2023 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's LiteratureI don't tell Mum and Sam anything about my weekends with Dad. It would be giving them tickets into that world. The world Dad and I have created. And I don't want to do that. It's ours. It's all we have. It's all we've been allowed since my parents got divorced.Cate gets to spend every second weekend with her dad, and each time something special and surprising happens. Something that fires the creative spark that Cate channels into her writing.And everything is fine until Cate's stepdad, Sam, gets offered his dream job in London and her mum decides they are going to move to England with him...Cate must decide what she wants for herself. She loves both her parents - but she must choose between them.A warm and funny novel full of unexpected twists and turns, joy and heartbreak.

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Make any day sparkle! This newest addition to the popular Spark series is full of fun prompts to get the whole family creating, imagining, and playing together.This shimmering faux matchbox is filled with 50 prompts for hands-on activities that encourage connection and creativity for all ages! Design a family crest together, reuse everyday materials to build a tiny town, or craft cards for friends and relatives. With 50 ideas for creative play, this box will spark imagination and screen-free fun on rainy days or whenever boredom strikes.UNIQUE WAY TO SPARK JOY: Slide open this shimmering box to reveal 50 kraft sticks in the shape of matches. Pick one whenever you want to strike up a little fun for the family!   THE GIFT OF CREATIVITY: Use Spark Family Creativity to plan a day of engaging offline activities for birthdays, family reunions, vacations, or any gatherings! The prompts include project ideas for visual art, music, writing,

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Bestselling product line! Small acts of kindness have big impact. Spark positive change—for yourself and others—with 50 prompts (printed on cleverly designed faux matchsticks) that cultivate generosity and compassion. • Slide open the shimmering foil box to reveal faux decorative matchsticks. The eye-catching packaging makes this a beautiful, thoughtful gift for a birthday, Mother's Day, or just because. • We can all use more kindness in our lives: the prompts inside the box offer easy ways to spark "kindfulness," compassion, positivity, and new connections—anytime and anywhere. • Sample prompts: Pay it forward (cover someone's bridge toll, buy their coffee, etc.). Tell someone you've taken for granted how much you appreciate them. Volunteer your time or donate to a good cause. Make sure the first words you say each day are kind ones. • Contents: Foil-stamped box tray with sleeve, 50 kraft-paper faux matchsticks, shrink-wrapped tray

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Bestselling product line! Your dreams are within reach. Spark success in all your pursuits with these 50 faux matchsticks featuring prompts to help you dream big, aim high, and accomplish your goals, whatever they may be. • Slide open the shimmering foil box to reveal faux decorative matchsticks. The eye-catching packaging makes this a beautiful, unique gift for recent grads, people in job transitions, entrepreneurial spirits, or creative types. • Everyone's version of success will be different. Whether it's advancing in your career, attaining a big life goal, or starting fresh in a new endeavor, the prompts inside the box offer easy ways to find your own personal success—anytime and anywhere. • Sample prompts: When have you felt most successful? Recreate those conditions. Be brave: Ask for something, even if you think you won't get it. Create a vision board that depicts the life of your dreams. Try doing the most challenging thing first rather than the easy one. • Contents: Foil-stamped box tray with sleeve, 50 kraft-paper faux matchsticks, shrink-wrapped tray

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Happiness in a box: Full of inspiring ideas for sharing and cultivating moments of joy, appreciating bright spots, and celebrating the everyday. This petite and sweet box of prompts makes an excellent gift. It''s the gift of inspiration, with prompts that will inspire a joyful outlook and everyday wonder- making it a great way to affordably give the gift of a new perspective and fresh discoveries. Includes 50 faux matchsticks with printed prompts.Fans of After Dinner Amusements: Family Time and You Make Everything Better will love this gift. This gift is ideal for:• Hostesses• Housewarming• Stocking stuffer• Milestone birthdays• Party favor

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THE UNFORGETTABLE NEW NOVEL FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SIGHT OF YOUPeople kept telling me it was impossible that, aged eighteen, I''d found the person I wanted to spend my life with. And yet, here we were.Childhood sweethearts Neve and Jamie are inseparable from the moment they meet. Everyone knows they''ll be together forever - that is, until tragedy strikes, and Jamie is torn from Neve''s life.One street away, Ash is hit by lightning. As he recovers, family members notice a drastic change in Ash, almost as though he is a different person.My whole life, there''s only been one other person who''s looked at me like that.Years later, chance brings Neve and Ash together- and she is struck by his familiarity. He shares so many traits with Jamie, as if their souls are entwined.Neve must ask herself whether she can love for a second time in the face of her grief. Is she ready for what life has to of

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In November 2017 Ali Smith gave the annual Muriel Spark Lecture to kick off the Muriel Spark centenary celebrations. Those lucky enough to get tickets were treated to an invigorating, joyous call-and-response between two of our best writers, both supremely talented in the playful interrogation of truth, power, art and living. In Spark, Smith finds the most formidable inspiration. In Smith, Spark has a formidable champion, one who shows us how Spark’s work resonates now more than ever. If you want to read a regenerative blast in praise of how and why fiction matters, start here, and, as Spark writes, ‘Hear me to the end.’

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Apache Spark is amazing when everything clicks. But if you haven't seen the performance improvements you expected, or still don't feel confident enough to use Spark in production, this practical book is for you. Authors Holden Karau and Rachel Warren demonstrate performance optimizations to help your Spark queries run faster and handle larger data sizes, while using fewer resources. Ideal for software engineers, data engineers, developers, and system administrators working with large-scale data applications, this book describes techniques that can reduce data infrastructure costs and developer hours. Not only will you gain a more comprehensive understanding of Spark, you'll also learn how to make it sing. With this book, you'll explore: How Spark SQL's new interfaces improve performance over SQL's RDD data structure The choice between data joins in Core Spark and Spark SQL Techniques for getting the most out of standard RDD transformations How to work around performance issues in Spark's key/value pair paradigm Writing high-performance Spark code without Scala or the JVM How to test for functionality and performance when applying suggested improvements Using Spark MLlib and Spark ML machine learning libraries Spark's Streaming components and external community packages

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A young girl is inspired to make a difference in this thoughtful and lyrical exploration of the Jewish philosophy tikkun olam or repair the world.

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The Seven-the Divine beings meant to protect the world-just declared war. On Harley. They took Ray, her baby sister, and they're using her boyfriend, Draven, to do their dirty work. But she's not about to stand for that. She may not be able to wipe them off the face of the earth right now, but she knows what can. Thanks to an Ather connection, she's found out about the Seven Scrolls. An ancient incantation made by the Creator to counteract the Seven's great power, scattered into pieces across the world. With the help of her new crew, Harley's on the hunt. And with each located scroll, she faces new battles, bloodier and harder than she's ever known before. But now the stakes are even higher, because Ray has always been her bright light in the darkness, and Draven is her hope when all seems lost-so what's left if she doesn't get them back? Harley will become the scariest legend the world has ever known.

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Before you can build analytics tools to gain quick insights, you first need to know how to process data in real time. With this practical guide, developers familiar with Apache Spark will learn how to put this in-memory framework to use for streaming data. You’ll discover how Spark enables you to write streaming jobs in almost the same way you write batch jobs. Authors Gerard Maas and François Garillot help you explore the theoretical underpinnings of Apache Spark. This comprehensive guide features two sections that compare and contrast the streaming APIs Spark now supports: the original Spark Streaming library and the newer Structured Streaming API. Learn fundamental stream processing concepts and examine different streaming architectures Explore Structured Streaming through practical examples; learn different aspects of stream processing in detail Create and operate streaming jobs and applications with Spark Streaming; integrate Spark Streaming with other Spark APIs Learn advanced Spark Streaming techniques, including approximation algorithms and machine learning algorithms Compare Apache Spark to other stream processing projects, including Apache Storm, Apache Flink, and Apache Kafka Streams

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Develop applications for the big data landscape with Spark and Hadoop. This book also explains the role of Spark in developing scalable machine learning and analytics applications with Cloud technologies. Beginning Apache Spark 2 gives you an introduction to Apache Spark and shows you how to work with it.Along the way, you'll discover resilient distributed datasets (RDDs); use Spark SQL for structured data; and learn stream processing and build real-time applications with Spark Structured Streaming. Furthermore, you'll learn the fundamentals of Spark ML for machine learning and much more.  After you read this book, you will have the fundamentals to become proficient in using Apache Spark and know when and how to apply it to your big data applications.  What You Will Learn   Understand Spark unified data processing platform How

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A dazzling performance (think Forrest Gump, think Curious Incident, think Anne Donovan's Buddha Da) from one of Scotland's brightest new talents.Adam Spark. Eighteen going on eight-and-a-half. Fast-food worker. Queen fan. Last in the queue for luck. On waking from an accident in which he saves a child, he has the distinct impression that all is far from right. What are these curious lights that seem to surround people? Why are animals and machines trying to speak to him? And can he really control time? Is it just his imagination, or has Adam Spark been chosen to become Scotland's first, and only, superhero? This, however, is the least of his problems. The local gang is luring him into deeper and darker peril. His sister and lone carer, Jude, is giving all her love to another woman. And if Jude abandons Adam - or Adam drives her away - all the superpowers in the world won't be able to save him.

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"Turano takes readers on a lighthearted romp through matchmaking season . . . . This is a delight."--Publishers Weekly on A Match in the Making After five unsuccessful Seasons on the marriage mart, Miss Adelaide Duveen has resigned herself to the notion that she's destined to remain a spinster forever--a rather dismal prospect, but one that will allow her to concentrate on her darling cats and books. However, when she inadvertently stumbles upon Mr. Gideon Abbott engaged in a clandestine activity during a dinner party, Adelaide finds herself thrust into a world of intrigue that resembles the plots in the spy novels she devours. Former intelligence agent Gideon Abbott feels responsible for Adelaide after society threatens to banish her because of the distraction she caused to save his investigation. Hoping to return the favor, he turns to a good friend--and one of high society's leaders--to take Adelaide in hand and turn her fashionable. When danger surrounds them and Adelaide finds herself a target of the criminals in Gideon's case, the spark of love between them threatens to be quenched for good--along with their lives.

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