Urban City

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes listeners on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii in Italy, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and ice-cold Marlboro Reds that they keep in their freezer. Yet over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men.

A former soldier turned PI solves crime in a world that's lost its magic in this brilliant sequel to actor Luke Arnold's debut The Last Smile in Sunder City. The name's Fetch Phillips -- what do you need? Cover a Gnome with a crossbow while he does a dodgy deal? Sure. Find out who killed Lance...

Three years after the Monster Massacre, members of Rebecca’s old wolf pack have begun to go missing without a trace. The world has undergone many changes in the years since monsters came out of the shadows. An anti-monster group known as the Black Hand has started to organize across the United States. In response, pro-monster organizations have been growing in numbers and militancy. Targeted killings of suspected monsters and their allies, monsters spirited away in the dead of night, and the beginnings of pro-monster legislation are all signs of a cosmic shift on the horizon.

Thousands of people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City. This audiobook is about them, the so-called mole people, living alone and in communities, in subway tunnels, and below subway platforms. It is about how and why people move underground, who they are, and what they have to say about their lives and the "topside" world they've left behind.

Life is complicated. I mean, life has always been complicated, but there's a difference between monsters-are-trying-to-kill-you complications and monsters-are-in-love-with-you complications. I'm still not sure which is more dangerous. G'day. I'm Pet. Two-thirds of a pet, anyway: The vampire isn't claiming ownership these days, but he's definitely encroaching. On the list of other encroaching complications is the threat of heirling trials, a certain fae lord, and a mysterious librarian - not to mention the thing that's killing people on Hobart's waterfront....

G'day. I'm still here. Still Pet. Well, I'm only two thirds of a Pet these days, but you might as well call me Pet anyway. Everyone does: everyone but the vampire, that is. Life is more unbalanced these days - cases are cutting closer to home than usual. I thought I was the only one, but there are others like me: kids whose parents were murdered just like mine. Stuff that never fit into place before is beginning fall into place.

Don't get too close to humans. That's rule number one. Well, it is if you're an emotionally constipated fae lord. As far as I'm concerned, the vampire could do a better job of keeping his distance, but he's never been that good at following the rules. G'day. I'm Pet. Schrödinger's Pet, these days; depends who's asking. I'm human, but when you hang around with enough Behindkind, it starts getting dangerous for the other humans around you. Humans like my friend Morgana. I tried to stay away, but now she needs my help and don't-get-too-close-to-humans isn't exactly gunna cut it anymore.

My life once centered around justice. As a trained warrior for the people of Shadow City, I never questioned what I was taught...until now. My preordained mate and I are finally on the same side, with our list of enemies growing. All we have learned has changed our very foundation and put a target on both our backs. A war that has been brewing for over a millenium is on the horizon. One that could change the course of the Earth forever. It’s up to our friends to find a way to stop it...but Fate has a way of forcing her hand.

The day Stacey Grant loses her job feels like the last day of her life. Or, at least, the only life she'd ever known. For who was she if not a City high-flyer, Senior Partner at one of the top private equity firms in London? As Stacey starts to reconcile her old life with the new - one without professional achievements or meetings but instead long days at home with her dog and ailing mother, waiting for her successful husband to come home - she at least has The Girls to fall back on. Beth, Melissa and Gaby.

Half of all 7,000-plus human languages may disappear over the next century, and when they're gone, it will be forever. Ross Perlin, a linguist and codirector of the Manhattan-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, is racing against time to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history: contemporary New York.

Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it's dumb and harmless until it's too late to think otherwise. Then there's Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighbourhood wrongs through acts of violence.

G'day. I'm Pet. Not, not Pet - I am a pet. Well, I was a pet: I used to belong to two fae and a stroppy vampire. Now I'm homeless. I mean, I was always technically homeless, but this time it's different. I just got used to having some kind of family, and now we're back to everyone wanting to kill each other - and guess who the weak link is? I'll give you a hint: it's not the vampire, and it's sure as heck not the fae.

Two fae is company, but a company of fae is trouble. Which is exactly what we've got. Trouble, I mean. Well, and fae. Lots of fae. Something or someone is stalking and killing high-level fae around Hobart-tearing out hearts and leaving a trail of bloody bodies behind. Fae don't like it when they're the ones getting killed, so of course they came to hire my owners. Owners, you ask? Hi. I'm Pet. No, that's not my name. I am a pet. My owners? They're fae. Well, two fae and one stroppy vampire. Welcome to the world Between.

On a December morning in 1982, the courtyard of a Beijing siheyuan - a lively quadrangle of homes - begins to stir. Auntie Xue’s son Jiyue is getting married today, and she is determined to make the day a triumph. Despite Jiyue’s woeful ignorance in matters of the heart - and the body. Despite a chef in training tasked with the onerous responsibility of preparing the banquet.

The preeminent sociologist Richard Sennett traces the anguished relation between how cities are built and how people live in them, from ancient Athens to twenty-first-century Shanghai. He shows how Paris, Barcelona, and New York City assumed their modern forms; rethinks the reputations of Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, and others; and takes us on a tour of emblematic contemporary locations, from the backstreets of Medellin, Colombia, to Google headquarters in Manhattan.

The unforgettable narrator of this compelling, thought-provoking debut goes by two names in his two worlds. At the university he attends, he’s Gabriel, a seemingly ordinary, partying student learning about morality at a distance. But in his life outside the classroom, he’s Snoopz, a hard-living member of London’s gangs, well-acquainted with drugs, guns, stabbings, and robbery. Navigating these sides of himself, dealing with loving parents at the same time as treacherous, endangering friends and the looming threat of prison, he is forced to come to terms with who he really is.

Some things are better left forgotten. Dreams taunt me, filling me with questions even more so than the supernatural world I’d only just learned about. Making matters worse, a vampire attacked me while I was alone in the middle of the night. Death was imminent until a silver wolf saved me. A silver wolf who shifted into the most gorgeous man I'd ever seen, and no matter how hard I try to ignore it, there’s something pulling me toward him. Secrets come to light, and nothing is as it seemed.

Stumbling upon a group of escaped demons changed everything, and the responsibility falls on me to protect Shadow City. As the battle rages on, a tug radiates from my soul, drawing me toward a sexy, mocha-eyed demon. Though he voluntarily surrenders, I don't trust him. He's become the catalyst for even more demon attacks, but I can't give him up. Every moment we'd spent together strengthened the bond between us, and now, I'll do whatever it takes to keep him safe. He's my enemy...my mate. And he's either destined to be my future...or to destroy it.

New York Times best-selling investigative journalist Ron Suskind based this book on his Pulitzer Prize winning articles about Cedric Jennings, a Black youth struggling to survive one of D.C.'s toughest school districts. A moving portrait of inner city life, A Hope in the Unseen offers a view of life through the eyes of someone trying desperately to make his way up from the bottom.