Genetic Science

Who are we? How do scientists define Homo sapiens, and how does our species differ from the extinct hominins that came before us? In this accessible account palaeoarchaeologist Paul Pettitt shows how the latest scientific advances, especially in genetics, are revolutionizing our understanding of human evolution. Pettitt reveals the extraordinary story of how our ancestors adapted to unforgiving and relentlessly changing climates, leading to remarkable innovations in art, technology, and society that we are only now beginning to comprehend.

Damaged beyond repair, Halek Cain turns to the one person who can rebuild him from the ground up. Will it be enough to face the mad general sending a clone army after him? Ultimate victories take ultimate sacrifices, and this time defeat means annihilation. Cain and his friends must find their way to Oroth, locate Elise and her ragtag army of desperate heroes, and face a dark threat no one understands. He has come a long way since death row. This will be his greatest challenge yet.

Professor Betsey Dexter Dyer examines the wide ranging field of genetics, which is the study of the hereditary information of organisms, how it is used, and how it is transferred through generations. These fascinating lectures also address DNA sequences and how they apply to "genetic engineering," viruses, and genetic diseases such as cancers and birth defects.

Recorder has no family, no friends, and no name. Donated to the Consortium before birth, her sole purpose is to maintain and verify the records. A neural implant and drone ensure compliance, punishing for displays of bias. Suddenly cut off from controlling technology, Recorder tastes what it means to be human. But if the Consortium discovers her feelings, everyone she knows will be in danger.

“There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.” Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles.

They call it Company Town - a city-size oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd. Hwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bioengineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig - making her doubly an outsider as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire.

Bizarre illnesses and plagues that kill people in the most unspeakable ways. Obsessive and inspired efforts by scientists to solve mysteries and save lives. From The Hot Zone to The Demon in the Freezer and beyond, Richard Preston’s bestselling works have mesmerized readers everywhere by...

Brian and Deborah Charlesworth provide a clear and concise summary of the process of evolution by natural selection, and how natural selection gives rise to adaptations and eventually, over many generations, to new species. They introduce the central concepts of the field of evolutionary biology, as they have developed since Darwin and Wallace on the subject, over 140 years ago, and discuss some of the remaining questions regarding processes.

The Galactic Federation is confronted by the vast and implacable Thandol Empire, which has coveted the former Krall region of space for eons, a region of space now occupied and claimed by the upstart Kobani. Outnumbered, they face an opponent who possesses new and deadly weapons. An enemy that had thousands of years to develop the means to take on the Krall Empire, and now present the supermen with a weapon that turns their greatest genetic asset into their greatest weakness.

In this final installment of Nancy Kress's award-winning Beggars trilogy, it is now 200 years in the future. Regular human beings hate and fear the Sleepless and the SuperSleepless, genetically-modified humans who are immune to disease and hunger and who do not need to sleep. When the Sleepless plot to take over the world and leave regular humans powerless, civilization and the very meaning of the word "human" hang in the balance.

Healers is the third in a series of stories featuring the Hyllis family who tend to inherit “talents”. The stories are set after a plague induced apocalypse which resulted in the collapse of civilization and reduced mankind back to iron and horsepower. Eva Hyllis and her ancestors became healers because they could feel the insides of their patients with their talents. Then they enter a kingdom where practicing the art of healing is forbidden. Treating patients brings her into conflict with a powerful king.

When deep-space travel altered the genes of the first interstellar colonists, Earth abandoned them. But some of the colonies survived, and a new civilization of mental and physical “Variants” has been established, centered around clusters of space stations known as the outworlds. Now the unthinkable has happened: a suicide assault has destroyed the life support system of a major waystation. All that is known about the young men responsible is that in their last living moments they were receiving messages from an uninhabited sector of space and were playing a virtual reality game.

Series finale! The starship Pioneer’s voyage is coming to an end, and it won’t be like anything the passengers or crew could have imagined. If any of them survive to see it. Pioneer needs to reach the Forge, but the Forge is surrounded by the enemy’s massive fleet, which is preparing to launch an assault that could leave the station in ruins. Keesha works to repel the attack, mounting a defense she can only hope will keep them all alive. Light-years away, Joseph and Max have located Preslan and Tyson. While finding them was relatively easy, getting to them won’t be.

On May 1st, 2067, the world fell. One thing Zebadiah Pratt - or Zee to his friends - won’t abide, though, is slavery, even in a Fallen World. So when friends of his find a shipment of gene-modified child slaves, he knows something must be done. There’s only one problem: The slaves came from an island owned by the infamous Dr. Laroue, a noted geneticist and the creator of many of the imprints the Obsidian Corporation used to create its super-soldiers. He’s going to need help.

The circus is in town, and on the planet Boon, that’s big - potentially riotous - news. The delicate, decaying political balance maintained by the cloned human grands at the expense of the uplifted dog and cat populations is in danger of toppling under the influence of mysterious forces both outer and inner.

Esme lost the one thing that made her time in captivity with the Grutex bearable. Even now, after her escape from the labs and her tormentor, the memory of those days haunt her. Yet from the depths of her darkest dreams, something precious calls out to her, something she thought she would never have. Esme will risk everything, even her own life, to answer the call and find out what fate has in store for her.

Hella is a planet where everything is oversized. The trees are mile-high, the dinosaur herds are huge, and the weather is extreme - so extreme, the colonists have to migrate twice a year to escape the blistering heat of summer and the atmosphere-freezing cold of winter. Kyle is a neuro-atypical young man, emotionally challenged, but with an implant that gives him real-time access to the colony's computer network. When an overburdened starship arrives, he becomes the link between the established colonists and the refugees from a ravaged Earth.

When enigmatic billionaire Burton Sykes walks into Re-Gene-eration, a bespoke reproduction assistance clinic run by Raina and Cedric, two disgraced genetic engineers struggling to get by, they know they have a very unusual client. When Sykes asks them to genetically engineer a way for humanity to survive the coming ecological apocalypse, Raina is tempted. Bees are dying, crops are failing, and she knows her research is partly to blame. Could she help in some way?

In infancy, Junior Thibodeaux is encoded with a prophesy: a comet will obliterate life on Earth in thirty-six years. Alone in this knowledge, he comes of age in rural Maine grappling with the question: Does anything I do matter? While the voice that has accompanied him since conception appraises...

Perfect People is a compelling and thought-provoking thriller from bestselling Peter James. John and Naomi are grieving the death of their four-year-old son from a rare genetic disorder. They desperately want another child, but they realize the odds of their next child contracting the same...