Science Winning

As the first new godling born in thousands of years - and the heir presumptive to Sieh the Trickster - Shill's got big shoes to fill. She's well on her way when she defies her parents and sneaks off to the mortal realm, which is no place for an impressionable young god. In short order she steals a demon's grandchild, gets herself embroiled in a secret underground magical dance competition, and offends her oldest and most powerful sibling. But for Eino, the young Darren man whom Shill has befriended, the god-child's silly games are serious business.

The popular adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, a clever and outlandish science fiction hero for the modern era, continue in these three tales. In The Mountains of Mourning, Miles is dispatched to a back-country region of Barrayar, where he must act as detective, judge, and executioner in a controversial murder case. In Labyrinth, Miles adopts his alternate persona as Dendarii Mercenary Admiral Naismith for an undercover mission to rescue an important research geneticist from Jackson’s Whole. And in the title story, Miles infiltrates an escape-proof Cetagandan POW camp.

For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes listeners on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life forms that are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life's diversity. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the parasite-riddled war zone of southern Sudan, Zimmer introduces an array of amazing creatures that invade their hosts, prey on them from within, and control their behavior.

Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. Barrayaran Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan can hardly disapprove—he’s been cheating death his whole life, on the theory that turnabout is fair play. But when a Kibou-daini cryocorp—an immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown future—attempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran Empire, Emperor Gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter, Miles, to check it out.

Ursula K. Le Guin has enthralled fans with her imagination, clarity, and moral vision. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, this renowned writer has created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in The Birthday of the World, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.

Non-Stop is Grand Master of Science Fiction and Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Brian W. Aldiss's debut novel. Written in response to Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky and published in the late 1950s, it is set in a primitive world, home to tribes of inhabitants who endure their harsh and stunted lives in a maze of corridors. Though legends exist that they're actually on a ship traveling through the universe, no one really believes it.

Since its original publication in 1996, Holy Land has become an American classic. In "quick, translucent prose" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) that is at once lyrical and unsentimental, D. J. Waldie recounts growing up in Lakewood, California, a prototypical post-World War II suburb. Laid out in 316 sections as carefully measured as a grid of tract houses, Holy Land is by turns touching, eerie, funny, and encyclopedic in its handling of what was gained and lost when thousands of blue-collar families were thrown together in the suburbs of the 1950s.

Don't make deals with the paranormal. They're better at it than you, and they never play fair. Paranormal investigator and soul-without-a-body Vincent Graves did just that - a deal made in desperation. Now it's coming back to bite him in the middle of a case. He has 57 hours to investigate a string of deaths involving people who've made some devilish bargains. Too bad devils don't deal in good faith.

The renowned biologist Paul Nurse has spent his career revealing how living cells work. In What Is Life?, he takes up the challenge of describing what it means to be alive in a way that every listener can understand. It is a shared journey of discovery; step-by-step Nurse illuminates five great ideas that underpin biology - the Cell, the Gene, Evolution by Natural Selection, Life as Chemistry, and Life as Information.

In 1963, a female student was attending a lecture given by Nobel Prize winner James Watson, then tenured at Harvard. At nineteen, she was struggling to define her future. She had given herself just ten years to fulfill her professional ambitions before starting the family she was expected to have. For women at that time, a future on the usual path of academic science was unimaginable—but during that lecture, young Nancy Hopkins fell in love with the promise of genetics. Confidently believing science to be a pure meritocracy, she embarked on a career.

The circus comes to town . . . and a man gets to go to the stars. A young girl on a vacation at the sea meets the man of her dreams. Who just happens to be dead. And an immortal pirate. A swordfighter pens his memoirs . . . and finds his pen is in fact mightier than the sword. Welcome to Gene Wolfe's playground, a place where genres blend, and a genius's imagination straps you in for the ride of your life. The Wolfe at the Door is a brand-new collection from one of America's premiere literary giants, showcasing some material been seen before

What do shadows darting across the walls, cryptic writing, black fog, and a little girl who can see ghosts have in common? Paranormal investigator and soul without a body Vincent Graves has 44 hours to find out. To make matters worse, his years of body-hopping and monster-hunting are catching up with him. He's losing his mind. An old contact has shut him out. To top it all off, something's skulking through an asylum, killing patients.

Thirteen is when a Beaumont’s savvy hits - and with one brother who causes hurricanes and another who creates electricity, Mibs Beaumont is eager to see what she gets. But just before the big day, Poppa is in a terrible accident. And now, all Mibs wants is a savvy that will save him. In fact, Mibs is so sure she’ll get a powerful savvy that she sneaks a ride to the hospital on a rickety bus with her sibling and the preacher’s kids in tow. After this extraordinary adventure - full of talking tattoos and a kidnapping - not a soul on board will ever be the same.

Ravaged by the Change, an island nation in a time very like our own has built the Wall - an enormous concrete barrier around its entire coastline. Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls who are trapped amid the rising seas outside and are a constant threat. Failure will result in death or a fate perhaps worse: being put to sea and made an Other himself.

When a missing person case lands in the lap of Black Knight Investigations, Jimmy Black and his partner, Greg Knightwood, jump back into action - until their missing person rises as an uncontrollable vampire and all signs point to a supernatural coup orchestrated by an unknown vampire of immense power. With the case going sideways, more missing girls, and a new cop in town way too curious about Jimmy's perennial youth, life in Charlotte is about to get interesting again.

Long ago, Ritakhou was a flourishing empire filled with light, life, and magic. Then came the Schism. Now the kingdom is called Rimbaku and is a pale shadow of its former self, a land stripped of its glory and its power. The only magic left comes from aitachi, the Relicant Touch - the ability to absorb skills and memories by consuming aishone: the bones of the dead.

Dillon has the terrifying power to create massive amounts of destruction with the slightest tweak of his will. Deanna is so consumed by fear, it has become like a black hole, drawing to her the very things that terrify her. Then, when the glare of a supernova 16 light-years away illuminates the night sky, they have a vision: There are six of them out there, all teenagers, and all suffering from supernatural afflictions that disfigure their bodies and souls.

Frank Compton is glad he's finally back on his home planet of Earth—galaxy-hopping aboard the Quadrail on his continuing mission to prevent the Modhri group mind from ruling the universe is exhausting business—but hadn't expected to find a young woman waiting for him in his New York apartment with a loaded gun in her hand. Ignoring her demands that he rescue her ten-year-old sister, the former Western Alliance Intelligence agent sends his unwelcome guest packing—only to find himself under arrest the following day for her brutal murder.

Miriam Beckstein is a young, hip, business journalist in Boston. She discovered in The Family Trade and The Hidden Family that her family came from an alternate reality, that she was very well-connected, and that her family was too much like the mafia for comfort. She found herself caught in a family trap in The Clan Corporate and betrothed to a brain-damaged prince, and then all hell broke loose. Now, in The Merchants' War, Miriam has escaped to yet another world and remains in hiding from both the Clan and their opponents.

A brilliant book by Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind - our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions - and how mind and brain relate to art.