Is it worth swimming in shark-infested waters to surf a 50-foot, career-record wave?Is it riskier to make an action movie or a horror movie?Should sex workers forfeit 50 percent of their income for added security or take a chance and keep the extra money?Most people wouldn't expect an economist to have an answer to these questions—or to other questions of daily life, such as who to date or how early to leave for the airport. But those people haven't met Allison Schrager, an economist and award-winning journalist who has spent her career examining how people manage risk in their lives and careers. Whether we realize it or not, we all take risks large and small every day. Even the most cautious among us cannot opt out—the question is always which risks to take, not whether to take them at all. What most of us don't know is how to measure those risks and maximize the chances of getting what we want out of...

Meet Ptolemy Jovan Lane, a unique peacemaker. Laws are hard to hold, out in the fringes of known space, but Ptolemy Lane is charged with maintaining peace under the dome of Georgina's Town, among humans, the docile emre and more. When a body is discovered in a zero gee suite in the local casino's brothel wing, Lane is reluctant to get involved. The casino is off limits to his style of law keeping. Only, the body is the casino's owner, Guisy Oakmint, and Doc Lowry is insisting Lane investigate. Lane soon learns why... "The Body in the Zero Gee Brothel" is the first Ptolemy Lane story in the science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Ptolemy Lane Tales: 1.0: The Body in the Zero Gee Brothel 2.0: The Captain Who Broke the Rules ...and more to come! Space Opera Science Fiction Novelette __ Praise for Cameron's Science Fiction: I am in awe of the...

Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque crowd together: the early basilica of St Vaclar stands between the sixteenth-century Chemnitz fortress and the eighteenth-century Capuchin monastery, all noteable examples of their periods, and are joined just below, in Konigsplatz, by the beautiful new Egyptianate concert hall designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. It has been fairly said that there are no ugly buildings in Mirenburg, only some which are less beautiful than others. Many travellers stop here on their way to and from the Bohemian spas of Karlsbad, Manenbad and Franzenbad. Mirenburg is joined to Vienna by water, rail and road and it is common to change here from one mode of transport to another, or merely to make the appropriate train connections. The station is by Kammerer: a Temple to Steam in the modern 'Style Liberty'. From it one may progress easily to Prague or Dresden, to St Petersburg or Moscow, to Wroclaw or Krakow, to Buda-Pesht or Vienna, and beyond to Venice and Trieste, which may also be reached by canal. Mirenburg's wealth comes from the industry and commerce of Walden-stein, whose capital she is, but it is enhanced by the constant waves of visitors, who arrive at all seasons. The revenues from tourism are used to maintain the older structures to perfection and it is well-known that Prince Badehoff-Krasny, the hereditary ruler of Waldenstein, spends a considerable proportion of his own fortune on commissioning new buildings, as well as works by living painters, composers and writers. For this reason he has been fairly called a 'present-day Lorenzo' and he is apparently quite conscious of this comparison to the great Florentine. Mirenburg is the quintessential representation of a Renaissance which is at work everywhere in modern Europe. R.P. DOWNES, Cities which Fascinate, Kelly, London,

How many secrets can one house hold? In the case of The Magnolia, the secrets are what keep it alive. Only the wealthy are granted access to see what happens beyond the iron gates. Wildest dreams come true, fantasies and satisfaction are guaranteed. No price is too high for the ultimate taste of desire.Eight authors take you behind the walls... the only question is, can you keep a secret?

When Harvard medical student Alexa Albert conducted a public-health study as the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada, the only state in the union where prostitution is legal, neither she nor the brothel could have predicted the end result. Having worked with homeless prostitutes in Times Square, Albert was intimate with human devastation cause by the sex trade, and curious to see if Nevada's brothels offered a less harmful model for a business that will always be with us. The Mustang Ranch has never before given an outsider such access, but fear of AIDS was hurting the business, and the Ranch was eager to get publicity for its rigorous standards of sexual hygiene. Albert was drawn into the lives of the women of the Mustang Ranch, and what began as a public-health project evolved into something more intimate and ambitious, a six-year study of the brothel ecosystem, its lessons and significance. The women of the Mustang Ranch poured their stories out to Albert: how they...