Böcker av Austin Williams

"The concoction of pills an individual takes really tells you all you need to know about a person."Cain was brought up in a broken city where drug use has become the norm and tents filled with the homeless line city blocks. Life has become bleak for so many that the only slice of heaven they can find is wrapped in a plastic dime bag. Cain, coming from a crime-ridden family, is no stranger to seeing and using violence on a regular basis. For him, dope offers some kind of escape from the grim reality of crime he's taken up in order to survive on the streets. When a chance encounter causes Cain to fall for Alexis, a pastor's daughter from the wealthier side of town, the two begin popping, injecting, and snorting whatever they can to find a reprieve from their bleak environment. After Cain becomes witness to a murder, however, he finally decides enough is enough and takes measures to get him and his newly found love out of town. Will these two dope-dependent lovers be able to escape the city as well as their own addictions?

By 2025, China will have built fifteen new 'supercities' each with 25 million inhabitants. It will have created 250 'Eco-cities' as well: clean, green, car-free, people-friendly, high-tech urban centres. From the edge of an impending eco-catastrophe, we are arguably witnessing history's greatest environmental turnaround - an urban experiment that may provide valuable lessons for cities worldwide. Whether or not we choose to believe the hype - there is little doubt that this is an experiment that needs unpicking, understanding, and learning from. Austin Williams, The Architectural Review's China correspondent, explores the progress and perils of China's vast eco-city program, describing the complexities which emerge in the race to balance the environment with industrialisation, quality with quantity, and the liberty of the individual with the authority of the Chinese state. Lifting the lid on the economic and social realities of the Chinese blueprint for eco-modernisation, Williams tells the story of China's rise, and reveals the pragmatic, political and economic motives that lurk behind the successes and failures of its eco-cities. Will these new kinds of urban developments be good, humane, healthy places? Can China find a 'third way' in which humanity, nature, economic growth and sustainability are reconciled? And what lessons can we learn for our own vision of the urban future? This is a timely and readable account which explores a range of themes - environmental, political, cultural and architectural - to show how the eco-city program sheds fascinating light on contemporary Chinese society, and provides a lens through which to view the politics of sustainability closer to home.

Austin Williams concludes his Rusty Diamond trilogy, perfect for readers of George Pelecanos, by sending Rusty back to where everything fell apart, Las Vegas.

An ex-magician-turned-amateur-detective hunts for a missing pregnant woman in this tale of New Orleans noir... Rusty Diamond abandoned the Crescent City years ago to pursue fame in Las Vegas, leaving Marceline Lavalle with a broken heart. Now Rusty has finally come back to New Orleansbut no one has seen Marceline for days. Five months pregnant, Marceline's vanished without a trace, and her estranged boyfriend, a casino boss with criminal ties and a hair-trigger temper, claims no knowledge of her whereabouts. With the police not yet ready to declare foul play, Rusty launches his own investigation. The search for Marceline will take Rusty into dark corners far from the neon lights of Bourbon Street, where enormous profit can be made from human misery and desperate people hunt on the fringes. The journey will force him to confront the mistakes of his past, and offer him a shot at redemptionif he doesn't wind up at the bottom of a bayou first... ';I wanted to take a bite out of Blind Shuffle before breakfast but ended up reading straight through lunch. I finished it on a plane to Tijuana. This was my first Rusty Diamond novel... it won't be my last. Dig in.' Patrick Hasburgh, creator of 21 Jump Street

A street magician needs more than sleight-of-hand to survive in this dark, edgy crime thriller... After years of chasing fame and hedonistic excess in the bright lights of Las Vegas, Rusty ';The Raven' Diamond has returned home to Ocean City, Maryland, to piece his life back together. When he finds himself an innocent suspect in his landlord's brutal murder, Rusty abandons all hope of maintaining a tranquil existence. Acting on impulse, he digs into the investigation just enough to anger both the police and a local drug cartel. As the case grows more complex, claiming new victims and inciting widespread panic, Rusty feels galvanized by the adrenaline he's been missing for too long. But his newfound excitement threatens to become an addiction, leading him headfirst into an underworld he's been desperately trying to escape... This is the first in the series featuring an illusionist-turned-sleuth by the author of The Platinum Loop, which was praised by Publishers Weekly as ';pulp fun at its best.'

The first survey of China's leading female architects, featuring 20 established and emerging talents making an impact on the national scene.

Shortcuts provides an eclectic mix of at-a-glance guides to the minefield of regulations, new materials, and technologies that confront building designers today. Comprising hand-drawn sketches, technical drawings,and punchy articles. Each Shortcut is a quick, reliable, and incisive clarification of the welter of diverse technical guidance.

This polemical book examines the concept of sustainability and presents a critical exploration of its all-pervasive influence on society, arguing that sustainability, manifested in several guises, represents a pernicious and corrosive doctrine that has survived primarily because there seems to be no alternative to its canon.