Psychological Science

There is a small town in Oregon called Middle Falls. When people die there, one of three things happens to them: They pass on to what is next. They are recycled to an earlier point in their life. They become spirits who are tethered to the spot where they died. This is the story of a tethered spirit.

When her stepmother dies, Caro returns to her childhood home in the rural English countryside. She hadn’t seen Elizabeth in years, but the remote farmhouse offers refuge from a bad relationship and a chance to start again. But going through Elizabeth’s belongings unearths memories Caro would rather stay buried. In particular, the story her stepmother would tell her about two little girls and the terrible thing they do. As heavy snow traps Caro in the village, where her neighbours stare and whisper, Caro is forced to question why Elizabeth hated her so much and what she was hiding.

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.

Budo is lucky as imaginary friends go. He's been alive for more than five years, which is positively ancient in the world of imaginary friends. But Budo feels his age, and thinks constantly of the day when eight-year-old Max Delaney will stop believing in him. When that happens, Budo will disappear. Max is different from other children. Some people say that he has Asperger's Syndrome, but most just say he's "on the spectrum." None of this matters to Budo, who loves Max and is charged with protecting him from the class bully.

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....

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.

Detective Jacob Lev wakes one morning, dazed and confused: He seems to have picked up a beautiful woman in a bar the night before, but he can’t remember anything about the encounter, and before he knows it, she has gone. But this mystery pales in comparison to the one he’s about to be called on to solve. Newly reassigned to a Special Projects squad he didn’t even know existed, he’s sent to a murder scene far up in the hills of Hollywood Division. There is no body, only an unidentified head lying on the floor of a house.

“As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe.” So begins Alan Lightman’s playful and profound new novel, Mr. g, the story of Creation as narrated by God. Bored with living in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr. g creates time, space, and matter - then moves on to stars, planets, consciousness, and finally intelligent beings with moral dilemmas.

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.

Khristen is a teenager who, her mother believes, was marked by greatness as a baby when she died for a moment and then came back to life. After Khristen’s failing boarding school for gifted teens closes its doors, and she finds that her mother has disappeared, she ranges across the dead landscape and washes up at a “resort” on the shores of a mysterious, putrid lake the elderly residents there call “Big Girl.”

An underground classic, Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations. In this hallucinatory novel, the car provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways", experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister then the last.

Back in the 1960s, Mary Terrell shot and killed a man. A former member of the fanatical Storm Front Brigade - a splinter group of the notorious Weathermen - Terrell has stayed one step ahead of the FBI for decades. Living with numerous identities and menial jobs, Terrell's only constants in life have been LSD, psychotic delusions of motherhood, and murderous rage.

It is 1978, and John Lennon has escaped New York City to try to find the island off the west coast of Ireland he bought nine years prior. Leaving behind domesticity, his approaching 40s, his inability to create, and his memories of his parents, he sets off to find calm in the comfortable silence of isolation. But when he puts himself in the hands of a shape-shifting driver full of Irish charm and dark whimsy, what ensues can only be termed a magical mystery tour.

Seven-year-old Henry Day is kidnapped and renamed "Aniday" by changelings, ageless beings who inhabit the woods near his home. The changelings also leave behind one of their own, who flawlessly impersonates Henry except for one noteworthy detail: the new Henry is a prodigiously talented pianist.

Hart Tanner is a con man; a grifter who enjoys gaming people as much as he enjoys whatever ill-gotten gains he might receive. When he dies an embarrassing, pain-riddled death, he is beyond surprised to wake up at an earlier point in his life with all memories still intact. A con man with access to life after life with no real consequences, why would he ever change the way he lives? But Hart Tanner does change. No matter how stubbornly he clings to his own resistance.

You open your eyes for what you know is not the first time and you remember nothing. You find out that a catastrophic event known as the Kollaps has destroyed life as we know it. Something crucial has been stolen - but under no circumstances can you know what or why. You’ve got to get it back or something bad is going to happen. And you’ve got to get it back fast, so they can freeze you again before your own time runs out. Paralyzed from the waist down, you’re being carried around on the backs of two men who don’t seem anything like you at all.

The year is 2032, and five-year-old Jacob is opening the biggest gift, beneath the Christmas tree, which is labeled for him: his very first semi-automatic rifle—and he couldn't be prouder. He smiles to his parents who sit close by. They don't smile back. Their minds are stuck on earlier events of what should have been a magical day: the moment they found out Jacob was set to be a brother.

Menopause hit Darcey Steinke hard. First came hot flashes. Then insomnia. Then depression. As she struggled to understand what was happening to her, she slammed up against a culture of silence and sexism. Some books promoted hormone replacement therapy. Others encouraged accepting the coming crone. Beyond that, there was little that offered a path to understanding menopause in a complex, spiritual, and intellectually engaged way.

When Jamie and Kirsty move into their first home together, they are full of optimism. The future, in which they plan to get married and start a family, is bright. The other residents of their building seem friendly too, including the Newtons, a married couple who welcome them to the building with open arms. But then strange things start to happen. Dead rats are left on their doorstep. They hear disturbing noises, and much worse, in the night.

The Danes - the band known as the "Darlings of Detroit" - are washed up and desperate for inspiration, eager to once again have a number one hit. That is until an agent from the US Army approaches them. Will they travel to an African desert and track down the source of a mysterious and malevolent sound? Under the guidance of their front man, Philip Tonka, the Danes embark on a harrowing journey through the scorching desert - a trip that takes Tonka into the heart of an ominous and twisted conspiracy.