Operating Systems: Internals And Design Principles Novels & Stories

Harlequin Frost is in an arranged marriage for two years when she overhears a conversation between her husband, Victor Cross, and his best friend, Liam. Victor admits he is going to ask her for a divorce. When he does tell Harley that he wants a divorce, she is nothing but cold and she lets him see her anger for the first time. Victor starts noticing sides of his wife that he never knew were there. Harley realizes that she has lost everything about herself just trying to be the kind of woman he could love. Victor swears she was hiding her true self while Harley insists, he would have seen these sides to her if he had attempted to get to know her. When his first love comes back to town, Victor tries to bully Harley into making concessions in their divorce agreement to try to hang on to Daya while Harley refuses to budge. When Victor's half-brother comes back from abroad, he takes an interest in Harley while Harley is just trying to concentrate on growing her jewelry design firm. She doesn't even notice that Victor's best friend and his half-brother are trying to get her attention until her best friends notice and point it out to her. Will Harley find love with Liam or Daniel? Or will she and Victor reconnect and try to make their relationship work?

"Part One: TakenJessie Coford had a plan: work hard, save money, open her own restaurant. She sacrificed her relationship with the man of her dreams to get it. Then, in the blink of an eye, she lost her job and her apartment and her life crashed around her. Until a letter taking her to Fort Mavis, Texas, and an unexpected windfall.Part Two: TamedShea Prescott was astonished when million Cruz Castillo chose her to design his new home on his ranch. They hardly traveled in the same circles. But Cruz had been hot for Shea since he first saw her and at their first meeting the chemistry between them ignited. Cruz coaxed her deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of erotic sex, awakening latent sexual desires and bringing her orgasms beyond her wildest imaginings. Her body screamed yes at his every touch, but will she say yes to the most important question?USA Today best-selling and award-winning author Desiree Holt writes everything from romantic suspense and paranormal to erotic. and has been referred to by USA Today as the Nora Roberts of erotic romance, and is a winner of the EPIC E-Book Award, the Holt Medallion and a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice nominee. She has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and in The Village Voice, The Daily Beast, USA Today, The (London) Daily Mail, The New Delhi Times and numerous other national and international publications.Taken by Surprise is created by Desiree Holt, an EGlobal Creative Publishing signed author."

After ten years studying interior design overseas, I came back to my hometown to do work that mattered to the people who raised me. I offered the full package, from site survey to soft furnishings. The materials were chosen by hand. The price was fair to the bone. The town had just gone through a redevelopment. Everyone was getting new units. With the new family policy, every family wanted a third bedroom too. My business was good. Customers from the next county were driving in. Then a girl just back from a city college kicked open my studio with her phone on a livestream and her neighbors at her shoulder. "This is the dishonest one. Look at her. She has been ripping the village off." "In the city, an eighty-square-meter unit can be done for twenty thousand dollars. She is charging eighty." "That's a sixty-thousand-dollar margin. Sixty thousand. Right out of our pockets." The village fell in line behind her. They demanded the difference back. When I refused, they smashed my studio. They beat me into a coma. The pile-on online killed me. When I opened my eyes again, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I would refund every single one of them. And then I would tear out every single thing I had installed. Let's see what twenty thousand dollars actually buys you.

After the video exposing my sister Issa Acosta’s plot against me was revealed, my parents and my fiancé, Henry Nolan, stood firmly by my side, making me feel loved and safe. I confidently handed over all the evidence to them, trusting them to handle it. However, they told me that after Issa was kicked out of the house, she died in a sudden car accident, and I believed them. That was until five years into my marriage, when I accidentally saw Issa—the woman who was supposed to be dead. She was holding a little boy, clinging tightly to Henry’s hand. "Henry, if it weren’t for you and my parents, I’m afraid Zoe would’ve thrown me in prison. Thankfully, my parents destroyed the evidence and even opened a jewelry design studio for me. To avoid suspicion, you even sacrificed your own marriage. Thank you for everything in the past five years.” "Think of it as me atoning to Zoe on your behalf. As long as you and Bear are happy, that’s enough for me." So, what I thought was a happy family was nothing more than a giant lie—a scheme concocted by my parents and Henry. My parents, my husband, and Issa were the real family, and I? I was just the fool who had been deceived for five long years. Whether it was family or love, none of it was real, and I don’t want any of it anymore.

I dated my younger brother’s best friend, Dylan Lane, for three years. More than once, he told me how much he loathed arranged marriages and how he hated being chained by family interests. However, one night, after another bout of indulgence, he wrapped his arms around me and begged me sweetly to design a wedding ring for his fiancée—someone he had never even met. The smile froze on my face, yet he just said indifferently, “Aren’t people like us all destined to marry for our families' benefit?” Seeing the blood drain from my face, he even chuckled. “Vee, don’t you tell me you're still as naïve as a 20-year-old girl, thinking I would ever marry you? At most, we're just… pillow friends." Later, I agreed to the marriage my family had arranged for me. Dylan showed up on my wedding day, disheveled and red-eyed. He fell to his knees and begged me not to leave. I stood beside my new husband, hand in hand, and smiled faintly as I chuckled. “Didn’t you say people like us were born for arranged marriages? I’m simply doing what you always wanted me to do. Shouldn’t you be happy?”

Elina Hemsworth ran away from her happy marriage because she lost another child to miscarriage. She's been married to Noah Woods for five years and she knows what havoc the news would bring to him. She ran, ignoring his calls and blocking him, only leaving him with a text that she is sorry for what she has cost him. She created a new life for herself, hoping that her old life would stay dead, but that is not always how it ends. Noah Woods was hurt. The separation left him cold and hard hearted. He believed Elina left him because she found someone else and that he wasn't good enough to take care of her. He focuses all of that pain into his business and immediately, skyrocketed to be one of the biggest billionaires in New York. To him, Elina was dead, but dead things still find a way back to life. Noah Woods hired a big interior designer to help design a new estate of his and he is beyond shocked to find out that it is none other than his wife that left him five years ago. As old wounds opened and secrets surfaced, Elina and Noah found themselves caught between the past they never healed from, but when a blackmailer threatened to expose everything, love may no longer be enough to save them. This time, the truth doesn't hurt, it could destroy them both.

"“Funny, charming, and utterly captivating! I devoured this sparkling read.” - New York Times bestselling author Annika Martin The man I hate might be the first one to pluck my petals… Confession: I, Dandelion “Dani” Wright, am twenty-six years old and have yet to be deflowered. No man has hosed my hyacinth. Fondled my freesia. Diddled my daffodil. You get the point. My excuse? I was too busy running my family’s flower shop and winning floral design competitions. Suddenly that whole pesky virginity thing becomes a big deal when Jacob West walks back into my life. The boy I once loved. The same boy who humiliated me when he stood me up for prom. This Jacob is no boy, though: he’s all man now—confident, charming, and so sexy my metaphorical blossoms are getting scorched. I can almost forget I’m supposed to hate him forever. Almost. To make things worse, he’s my main competition now, since he took over his parents’ flower shop. If I give into this sizzling attraction between us, it could jeopardize everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve. But if I’m not careful, he might not just be the first man to pluck my petals—he might also be the only man to capture my heart."

How can someone fall in love when they don't even know who they are? At the age of ten, she was left at the orphanage without any recollection of who she was and where she came from. Twenty years later, Clara now the CEO of her own security company, SST, provides top-of-the-line security systems and technology that stamps out the competition. If only they could get the biggest shipping company in the country to upgrade their outdated system. But it seems that the CEO, Sebastian Colfer, will do everything to thwart their efforts. Or so it seems. Behind his icy demeanor, he has a hidden agenda. The mystery surrounding her appearance at the orphanage keeps her busy these days, and having somebody in her life is not part of her plan. ---=--- This book is purely fictional. Any similarities with people in real life are purely coincidental. ---=--- Sitting in the back seat of the car, Clara could feel the heat emanating from his body. His legs were spread out a little too wide, and they were rubbing against her outer thigh. She tried not to let it affect her, but his arm seemed to graze hers every time the car moved, and that unnerved her a little. They were sitting a little too close if you asked her. She tried to get away from him, as far as the space could allow, but her brother won't cooperate. He scolded her to stop squirming. She was just trying to find a comfortable position that would keep their body parts from touching. Sebastian was tormenting her and she's had enough, elbowing her brother she told him to switch places with her. ‘Are you scared of me?’ Sebastian whispered.

I was the hospital's top surgeon. After three successful surgeries, Medical Affairs decided to reprimand me in front of the whole hospital and canceled my bonus for the month. I argued with the head of Medical Affairs. "I've been working for this place for ten years, and I've always been the first to do everything! I went through five surgeries nonstop last year and had to go through one myself for exhaustion! What did I do to deserve this?" Yes, I was the top surgeon, but the bills were stressing me out, too. My husband had just lost his job, and I had to pay for the car, the mortgage, and our kid's extracurriculars. The burden I had to shoulder wasn't an easy one. So, I was counting on that bonus to get my kid into a basketball club, and now it had been taken away from me. This couldn't be happening! I couldn't believe that they were blaming me for a successful surgery! I was high up in the hierarchy here, so the department head didn't start a fallout right away. Instead, he tried to calm me down. "You drank two bags of IV during the late-night surgery and charged the patients for it. Their family's complaining about unfair fees, and it went viral. We had no choice!" That reminded me. That surgery was a complex one, and it wasn't even supposed to be assigned to me. After all, I'd been working around the operating table for 36 hours prior to that. However, it was the deputy director who came to me and insisted that I take over. I had no choice but to go ahead.

My girlfriend had always been drawn to powerful men, yet she was perfectly content to keep a useless intern on her payroll. She said she loved me with her whole life. When a routine health screening showed that the intern and I shared a rare blood type, she chose to keep him close. She claimed it was just a precaution, a backup source of blood in case I ever needed it. She cooked for him, took him on trips, made him gifts by hand, and fussed over him at every turn. She insisted it was all for my sake. To build good karma for my future. Then I was in a car accident. She arranged for blood to be brought in from over 60 miles away rather than let the intern donate a single drop. She said he had a cold and worried his blood might make me sick. The next day, the intern was diagnosed with uremic nephropathy. My girlfriend drugged me and had me wheeled into the operating room to donate a kidney before I could say a word. Her voice was gentle when she explained it afterward. "Daniel is our trump card. He has to stay healthy. He can only be used when your life is genuinely on the line, not wasted on every small setback. I had you donate the kidney for your own future, so you would stop overthinking everything. Once you are out of surgery, I am marrying you." What she did not know was that I already had mid-stage leukemia. The surgery accelerated its spread. I was dying, and I would never have the chance to marry her.