The beautiful and deadly Major Kusanagi and her crack team of Japanese internal-affairs operatives are sent to investigate a government factory with questionable labour practices. As it turns out, their labour practices aren't the only thing to be questioned.

In the mighty Yamata Empire, magic and technology are one and the same. Now the Empire is preparing its ultimate feat of psycho-science: the destruction of all the negative karma in the galaxy. But will this mystical purification be the salvation of humanity — or its ultimate destruction? Only one being can save the Empire from its folly: Susano, the God of Destruction.Wild, arrogant, and homicidal, Susano has come to teach the world the true nature of power! Masamune Shirow, creator of Appleseed, Dominion, Intron Depot, and Ghost in the Shell, has built a rabid worldwide following with his unique, eclectic, and visually stunning blend of science-fiction and fantasy.

Functional simplicity, structural complexity: the best life for all. That's the maxim of Olympus, the utopian city that sprung from the ashes of World War III. But Deunan and Bri, a young woman and her cyborg companion just entering the rose-tinted society, find that so long as there are different kinds of people there will be differences among them. Such is the story of Appleseed, the masterwork of manga storyteller Masamune Shirow. Beautiful art and a complex and fully realized future world rank this title among the best comics available.

The next volume in Masamune Shirow's best-selling art book series is orbiting cyberspace and preparing to touch down onto bookstore shelves in late Summer. This volume concentrates primarily on Shirow's character, robot and vehicle designs for interactive games. Shirow is world famous for being equally skilled and creative in the realms of computer-generated graphics and traditional drawing and painting. It is logical then that his unique and imaginative studies are among the most interesting being done in the high-tech game field. With commentary in both English and Japanese, this new collection provides a fascinating insight into the creative process of one of Japan's premiere talents.

Inorganic chemistry is a vast and important subject, covering the chemistry of over 100 elements. This text aims to convey the principles and facts in a way that is both understandable and enjoyable to undergraduates. The material and the emphasis to various topics has been selected with great care to give a balanced view of the subject, and chemical facts are presented in a framework of interpretation. Thus, reactions and structures are presented within the context of broad chemical concepts and periodic trends. Each chapter closes with a list of key points to facilitate review. Examples in the text help to illustrate important points, and end-of chapter exercises and problems help to emphasize their importance. This edition is divided into three parts. Part 1 covers atomic structure and molecular and solid state structure and bonding. The second section opens with a new chapter on the chemistry of metals. The coverage of main group chemistry in the remaining chapters of this section has been expanded and refined. Part 3 covers bonding, spectra and reactions of d-block complexes, and d-block organometallic compounds, catalysis and bioinorganic chemistry.

Best-selling comic book writer/director Kevin Smith (GREEN ARROW) steps into Gotham City to write this graphic novel featuring the mysterious masked killer known as Onomatopoeia who sets his sights - and sounds - against The Caped Crusader!

Will Batman be able to uncover the relationship between The Joker and Onomatopoeia in time to keep them from destroying Gotham City? Or are these villains too much for The Caped Crusader? The wild ride that caught Batman between The Joker and Onomatopoeia comes to a crashing halt as Batman is forced to choose between capturing Onomatopoeia and saving the Joker's life! Will Onomatopoeia have the final word with a deadly "Bang!"? Find out in this exciting conclusion!

Includes Batman: Cacophony #'s 1-3.

In the First Circle A major literary event 50 years in the making: In the First Circle is the first complete English translation of Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "best novel" (Washington Post). With an introduction by Edward Erickson, this work by the author of The Gulag Archipelago is the story of a brilliant mathematician who finds himself locked in a Moscow prison filled with the country's brightest Full description

Sorayama Hyper Illustrations part 2.

Decades into our future, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful Neo-Victorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called a young lady's illustrated primer, designed to raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. Unfortunately, for Hackworth, he loses his smuggled copy to a gang of street urchins in a mugging. One of the young thugs presents the primer to his little sister, Nell and suddenly her life - and perhaps the whole future of humanity - is about to be decoded and reprogrammed...vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, "The Diamond Age" is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time.