Psychological Science

In a world where science has conquered mortality, humanity is promised a new era of endless life. Dylan Marin, the charismatic and infallible CEO of EternityNow, introduces the ImmortaCell vaccine, a medical marvel that promises to eradicate death and suffering forever. As the world embraces this new "immortal age," one family, the Callahans, feels a chilling spiritual dread. Guided by a deep faith, they refuse the vaccine, seeing it as a counterfeit promise. Their quiet dissent quickly turns into a desperate struggle for survival.

After several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the US as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, a cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for existing.

Hugo and Nebula Award winner Joe Haldeman ranks among the greatest science fiction authors to ever live. This thrilling entry from his Marsbound saga finds the mysterious alien Others prohibiting humans from space travel by destroying Earth’s fleet of starships in a display of unimaginable power. But Carmen Dula, the first human to encounter the Others, is determined to find a way to reclaim the future that has been stolen from humankind.

Ever since they were orphaned, Tyler has kept close tabs on his sister, Shannon. He has to, considering her weird and risky obsessions. Now she has a new one: an inexplicable crush on an odd-looking stranger. And what Shannon wants from her unwitting “honey boy,” Tyler can’t begin to fathom. Not until he follows his sister into the darkest corners of her desires.

Seventeen-year-old Lorelei Patio is the adopted daughter of 200-year-old vampire Sergio Patio. She never realized why her family has had to move so often or why she is not permitted to get too friendly with other young people. In fact, except for one shocking moment that seemed more like a dream, Lorelei never fully realized who and what her father was nor what her sisters were brought up to do for him. But one day, that all changed.

The universe has been explored - and humanity has all but given up on finding other intelligent life. Then an alien satellite orbiting a distant star sends out an unreadable signal. Is it the final programmed gasp of an ancient, long-dead race? Or the first greeting of an undiscovered life form?

A novel about life and death and a quest for moral purpose, by the acclaimed author of word-of-mouth bestseller The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. "Wholly original and hauntingly beautiful." -- Kirkus "Funny, ambitious, immensely humane and full of philosophical panache." -- Sunday Times...

After drinking an elixir that bestows immortality upon him, a young Indian named Flapping Eagle spends the next 700 years sailing the seas with the blessing - and ultimately the burden - of living forever. Eventually, weary of the sameness of life, he journeys to the mountainous Calf Island to regain his mortality. There he meets other immortals obsessed with their own stasis and sets out to scale the island's peak, from which the mysterious and corrosive Grimus Effect emits.

A terrifying locked-room mystery from the author of Exiles and William—this time set in a cutting-edge autonomous car. Jamie Newcross wants to disappear. His wife and baby girl have abandoned him, and his only wish is to retreat from society. Because, as it turns out, Jamie Newcross is also...

Six months after she left, Dee is struggling to manage her rage toward the people who ordered the nuclear strike that destroyed Earth. She's trying to find those responsible, but she's not getting very far alone. A dedicated gamer, Dee is endeavoring to discover a mersive good enough to enable her to escape her trauma. When she is approached by a designer who asks her to play test his new game, she hopes it will be what she needs - but it isn't like any mersive she's played before.

An insightful look at the cognitive science of explanation, using science and stories to reveal surprising truths about how we make sense of ourselves and the world Humans are explanation-seeking creatures. We wonder why there’s traffic, why a friend behaved a certain way, why the sky is blue...

In the near future, a terrifying new form of dementia is affecting victims of all ages. Dr. Gillian Ryan is on the cutting edge of research and desperately determined to find a cure. She’s already lost her husband to the disease, and now her young daughter is slowly succumbing as well. After losing her funding, she is given the unique opportunity to expand her research. She will travel with a NASA team to a space station where the crew has been stricken with symptoms of a similar inexplicable psychosis—memory loss, trances, and violent, uncontrollable impulses.

In this reality-bending thriller from the author of The Shining Girls, a grieving daughter’s search for her mother becomes a journey across alternate realities.It was a game they played; the other worlds, the other lives. It was part of her mom’s grand delusions. It wasn’t real. Unless it...

It's 2035: A fledging synthetic consciousness “wakes up” in a lab. Jenny, the lead developer, determined to nurture this synthetic being like a child, trains it to work with people at the border of the American Protectorate of Canada. She names it Julian. Two years later, Slaton, a therapist at a university, is framed by a student for arranging an illegal abortion. She follows the student to America and is detained at the border, where she meets Julian in virtual space.

Harry Potter has provided a portal to the wizarding world for millions of listeners, but an examination of Harry, his friends, and his enemies will take us on yet another journey: through the psyche of the muggle (and wizard!) mind. In The Psychology of Harry Potter, leading psychologists delve into the ultimate Chamber of Secrets, analyzing human mind and motivation by examining the themes and characters that make the Harry Potter books the best-selling fantasy series of all time.

A powerful dystopian vision of a world where money reigns supreme, from a World Fantasy Award-winning author. "An extraordinary novel that stands with the best of dystopian fiction, with dashes of The Handmaid's Tale." -- -Cory Doctorow The penalty for Dani Cumali's murder: $84,000. Theo works...

In 1994, after many years of movies and television portraying the evil side of the human psyche, Dr. David Canter published Criminal Shadows. Two decades on, its revolutionary descriptions of psychological profiling still helps to explain the actions of serial killers and psychopaths. These techniques can help police precisely identify and locate murderers and rapists, even those who have alluded capture for years.

In this enthralling vampire novel, V.C. Andrews returns to the story of a beautiful girl desperate to escape her secret family legacy - bred to be a lure for unwitting victims of her father's blood appetites. Determined to break free and embrace a life outside the shadows, Lorelei runs away from the only world she's ever known. In a quiet rooming house, she finds refuge among the tenants of elderly Mrs. Winston, and the beginnings of a new love with Liam, her landlady's handsome grandnephew. But Lorelei soon discovers that burying her past is not so easy.

From Victorian India to near-future New York, The Calcutta Chromosome takes listeners on a wondrous journey through time as a computer programmer trapped in a mind-numbing job hits upon a curious item that will forever change his life. When Antar discovers the battered I.D. card of a long-lost acquaintance, he is suddenly drawn into a spellbinding adventure across centuries and around the globe, into the strange life of L. Murugan....

The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America, and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.