Entertainment Science

Everything has been taken from Annika - her family, her friends, and even her freedom - by the vampires who enslaved her in the hidden kingdom of the Vale. But now she possesses a magical ring that contains Geneva, the most powerful witch in the world, and she's ready for revenge. When Prince Jacen invites vampire princesses from all over the world to the palace to compete for his hand in marriage, Annika finds her chance. By commanding Geneva to turn her into a vampire princess, she can try to win the cold heart of the prince who betrayed her.

This delightfully narrated classic is a story within a story. In an attempt to postpone execution, the king's new bride spends one thousand and one nights enchanting him with story after story of true love, tragedy, sorcerers, and jinns.

From Snow White to Moana, from Pinocchio to Frozen, the animated films of Walt Disney Studios have moved and entertained millions. But few fans know that behind these groundbreaking features was an incredibly influential group of women who fought for respect in an often ruthless male-dominated industry and who have slipped under the radar for decades.

When Miri receives a silver cat charm from her omama on the night before she dies, she has no idea that the charm holds a secret, a powerful magic that saved her omama's life and is about to make Miri's a whole lot more interesting.

Today’s gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but former gay teenager Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the (largely straight) teen cultural phenomena the aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan’s fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl”, country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her adult identity. She came out on the other side like many millennials did: in her words, gay as hell.

Considered by many to be a founder of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra - a.k.a. Herman Blount - was a composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, entrepreneur, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn. He recorded over 200 albums with his Arkestra, which, dressed in Egypto-space costumes, played everything from boogie-woogie and swing to fusion and free jazz.

Listen to This stands out as the first book exclusively dedicated to Davis' watershed 1969 album, Bitches Brew. Victor Svorinich traces its incarnations and inspirations for 10-plus years before its release. The album arrived as the jazz scene waned beneath the rise of rock and roll and as Davis faced large changes in social conditions affecting the African-American consciousness.

From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series The Get Down, Hip Hop America is the definitive account of the society-altering collision between Black youth culture and the mass media.

Lief, Barda, and Jasmine are on a perilous quest to find the seven lost gems of the magic belt of Deltora. Only when all the gems have been restored to the belt can Deltora be freed from the tyranny of the evil Shadow Lord. Four gems have been found. Now, though grave news reaches Lief from home, and he longs to return, the quest must continue. To find the fifth stone the heroes must venture almost to the border of the Shadowlands, and plunge into the darkness and terror of the realm of the monstrous toad Gellick - Dread Mountain.

From the chief architect of the Pandora Radio’s Music Genome Project comes a definitive and groundbreaking examination of how your mind, body, and upbringing influence the music you love. In this sweeping and authoritative audiobook, Dr. Nolan Gasser - a composer, pianist, and musicologist, and the chief architect of the Music Genome Project, which powers Pandora Radio - breaks down what musical taste is, where it comes from, and what our favorite songs say about us.

By fang and feather, explore the vibrant lands of Kalimdor! Join famed hunter Rexxar, his animal companions, and Horde Ambassador Zekhan as they make the perilous journey across the lush and vivid reaches of Kalimdor to learn the secrets of the realm. Leave no stone unturned and no tracks unfollowed as Rexxar and Zekhan reveal lore, insights, equipment, and breathtaking landscapes from the ramparts of Orgrimmar to the golden plains of Mulgore to the wilds of Un’Goro Crater—and share one final kindness with a friend along the way.

Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just 14 years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the US, Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family.

In 1939, 50 million Americans went to the movies every week, Louis B. Mayer was the highest-paid man in the country, and Hollywood produced 530 feature films a year. One decade and five thousand movies later, the studios were faltering....

Jack and his fellow students are now well into their School of Thought training and are "sidekicking" for official, card-carrying super heroes. But, even though Jack feels more at home in the Imagine Nation, he's still hiding secrets from his friends Skerren and Allegra, both about his shocking connection to their enemy Revile and about his "Top Secret" school assignment, which involves investigating the RÜstov computer virus that affects the Mechas.

Daniel Levitin follows up his acclaimed New York Times best-selling first book, This Is Your Brain on Music, with The World in Six Songs, an audacious look at how the brain evolved to play and listen to music in six fundamental forms and gave rise to human culture.

It's 1872, year five of the Meiji era, and the world is rapidly changing, long leaving the samurai behind--but some things aren't content to remain a memory of the past. Now in Kyoto with his daughter Nomari, Jinya runs a soba restaurant by day and patrols the streets at night hunting demons, which have strangely been increasing in number.

Radioactive is the mesmerizing, landmark biography of Marie Curie, by acclaimed author and artist Lauren Redniss. Through brilliant storytelling, Redniss walks us through Curie’s life, which was marked by extraordinary scientific discovery and dramatic personal trauma - from her complex working and romantic relationship with Pierre Curie, to their discovery of two new scientific elements, to Pierre’s tragic death, to Marie’s two Nobel Prizes.

In 1997, Daniel Trush, a bright, active, outgoing twelve-year-old, collapsed on the basketball court and fell into a deep coma. Rushed to the hospital, he was found to have five previously undetected aneurysms in his brain. One had burst, causing a massive cerebral hemorrhage. While Daniel remained comatose, the uncontrolled pressure inside his skull caused him to suffer multiple strokes.

A welcome surprise: more than 50 prose pieces, gathered together for the first time, by one of America's most revered and admired novelists and short-story writers, whose articles, essays, and cultural commentary - appearing in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Harper's Magazine, and elsewhere - have been parsing the political, artistic, and media idiom for the last three decades.

Nelson George's chronicle of Motown Records' rise and fall remains a classic account of an essential American music company and its dynamic founder, Berry Gordy Jr. Gordy's uncanny instinct for finding extraordinary talent - from performers and musicians to songwriters and producers - packed the label's roster with a who's who of historic artists and hitmakers.