Psychological Science

The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.

Lestat speaks. Vampire-hero, enchanter, seducer of mortals - for centuries he has been a courted prince in the dark and flourishing universe of the living dead. Lestat is alone. And suddenly, all his vampire rationale - everything he has come to believe and feel safe with - is called into question. In his overwhelming need to destroy his doubts and his loneliness, Lestat embarks on the most dangerous enterprise he has undertaken in all the danger-haunted years of his long existence.

Evan Sanderson seems to be living a charmed life. He is a successful doctor, much respected in the community, and has a beautiful wife. Evan accomplished what he had because he had a burning ambition to achieve, to be the best. At the end of his life, he wonders if he did enough. He has a terrible feeling he has not. Evan lives in Middle Falls, where second—and third—chances abound, so perhaps he will be able to get to where he longs to be after all. Or will his ambition turn in new directions?

Hailed as a classic when it first appeared in 1972, Michael Murphy's novel combines an amiable Zen mysticism with what many consider the very mystical - and sometimes downright frustrating - sport of golf. At its center is the charming guru of the Scottish links, Shivas Irons, whose instruction is as pertinent in life as it is on the course. After a long wait, this shamanic golf pro reappeared for the follow-up novel, The Kingdom of Shivas Irons.

The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is “one of those tech demi-gods with whom we’re all on a first name basis.” Bix is forty, with four kids, restless, and desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious”—which allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes.

Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different....

Alexandra Horowitz’s brilliant On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes shows us how to see the spectacle of the ordinary - to practice, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it, "the observation of trifles". On Looking is structured around a series of eleven walks the author takes, mostly in her Manhattan neighborhood, with experts on a diverse range of subjects, including an urban sociologist, the well-known artist Maira Kalman, a geologist, a physician, and a sound designer. She also walks with a child and a dog to see the world as they perceive it.

Harry Benson suffers from violent seizures. So violent that he often blacks out when they take hold. Shortly after severely beating two men during an episode, the police escort Benson to a Los Angeles hospital for treatment. There, Dr. Roger McPherson, head of the prestigious Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, is convinced he can cure Benson with an experimental procedure that would place electrodes deep in his brain's pleasure centers.

When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck - enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother - meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane. Instead, she got Em. Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition.

An enormous snow-covered mountain has appeared in the Pacific Ocean. No one knows when exactly it showed up, precisely how big it might be, or how to explain its existence. When Harold Tunmore is contacted by a shadowy organization to help investigate, he has no idea what he is getting into as he and his team set out for the mountain. The higher Harold’s team ascends, the less things make sense. Time moves differently, turning minutes into hours, and hours into days.

Once upon a time, I was your average spunky redhead with the lamest employment history ever, a shaky relationship with my only family member, and no idea what I was doing with my life. Now, I'm a pseudo mythic with the best bartending job in the world, the most amazing (and hot) best friends I never knew I needed, and a guild of misfit magic-users who've become my extended family. And I'm about to lose it all. In my desperation to save Ezra, I stumbled into a web of ruthless deception - and seriously pissed off a sleeping hydra.

Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be. And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband. Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and both Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up. Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.

In the idyllic town of Middle Falls, Oregon, a peculiar phenomenon unfolds—those who die but are not prepared to move on open their eyes again at a pivotal juncture in their past lives, all memories of their first life intact. That includes Hattie Kildare. After dying in 2008, Hattie awakens as a teenager in 1943, back in a world gripped by the chaos of World War II. Amidst the echoes of conflict and the specter of loss, she is reunited with Jimmy, her beloved first boyfriend lost to the war in her first life.

Abbie awakens in a daze with no memory of who she is or how she landed in this unsettling condition. The man by her side claims to be her husband. He’s a titan of the tech world, the founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most innovative start-ups. He tells Abbie that she is the perfect wife. He says she had a terrible accident five years ago and that, through a huge technological breakthrough, she has been brought back from the abyss. But as Abbie pieces together memories of her marriage, she begins to question her husband’s motives - and his version of events.

One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep - and doesn't wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town.

Connie Ramos is a Mexican American woman living on the streets of New York. Once ambitious and proud, she has lost her child, her husband, her dignity - and now they want to take her sanity. After being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a time of sexual and racial equality, environmental purity, and unprecedented self-actualization. But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a society of grotesque exploitation.

The accident came quickly. With no warning. In the dead of night, a precipitous plunge into a freezing river trapped everyone inside the bus. It was then that Army veteran John Reiff’s life came to an end. Extinguished in the sudden rush of frigid water. There was no expectation of survival. None. Let alone waking up beneath blinding hospital lights. Struggling to move, or see, or even breathe. But the doctors assure him that everything is normal. That things will improve. What they haven’t told him… is that he is the first person to be successfully revived from a cryonic sleep.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages and seems to be from her computer-genius niece, Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost 20 years ago. As Scarpetta watches she begins to learn frightening secrets about her niece. That film clip and others sent soon after raise dangerous legal implications that increasingly isolate Scarpetta and leave her confused, worried, and not knowing where to turn.

In a world of social media and 24/7 news, screen addiction is a very real problem...but with the right guidance, you can escape its clutches and reclaim your life. Up to 47 percent of US citizens admit to being addicted to their cell phones. Perhaps you’ve even said it of yourself, laughing it off as a light addiction—like saying you’re addicted to Pringles or your favorite song.

Iris was born twenty-eight years ago during the unrest, when every birth required a life to be sacrificed. Since then, fertile women’s rights have been curtailed in further attempts to reduce the population. Deemed as a dangerous nuisance, restrictions are in place on where fertile women can work and socialise, as well as what internet access they are allowed. Iris has been a good citizen and has followed every rule imposed upon her. But when new and even more sinister methods to reduce the population are enforced, Iris can’t accept it any more.