Showing results by narrator "Raphael Corkhill" in All Categories

In the popular imagination, superhuman artificial intelligence is an approaching tidal wave that threatens not just jobs and human relationships, but civilization itself. Conflict between humans and machines is seen as inevitable and its outcome all too predictable. In this groundbreaking audiobook, distinguished AI researcher Stuart Russell argues that this scenario can be avoided, but only if we rethink AI from the ground up. Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines.

From tuberculosis to bird flu and HIV to coronavirus, these infectious diseases share a common origin story: Human interaction with animals. Otherwise known as zoonotic diseases for their passage from animals to humans, these pathogens - both pre-existing ones and those newly identified - emerge and re-emerge throughout history, sparking epidemics and pandemics that have resulted in millions of deaths around the world. How did these diseases come about? And what - if anything - can we do to stop them and their fatal march into our countries, our homes, and our bodies?

The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face. It is a novel both immediate and impactful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written.

The prequel to Dracula, inspired by notes and texts left behind by the author of the classic novel, Dracul is a supernatural thriller that reveals not only Dracula's true origins but Bram Stoker's - and the tale of the enigmatic woman who connects them. It is 1868, and a 21-year-old Bram Stoker waits in a desolate tower to face an indescribable evil. Armed only with crucifixes, holy water, and a rifle, he prays to survive a single night, the longest of his life. Desperate to record what he has witnessed, Bram scribbles down the events that led him here.... 

Selected testimonies to living history-speeches, letters, poems, songs-offered by the people who make history happen, but are often left out of history books: women, workers, nonwhites. Featuring introductions to the original texts by Howard Zinn. New voices featured in this 10th Anniversary Edition include Chelsea Manning, speaking after her 35-year prison sentence; Naomi Klein, speaking from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Liberty Square; a member of Dream Defenders, a youth organization that confronts systemic racial inequality; and more.

Jonathan Lambshead stands to inherit his deceased grandfather's overstuffed mansion - a veritable cabinet of curiosities - once he and two schoolmates catalog its contents. But the three soon discover that the house is filled with far more than just oddities: It holds clues linking to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where the notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley has stormed back to life on a magic-fueled rampage across a surreal, through-the-looking-glass version of Europe replete with talking animals (and vegetables). 

Fasten your falx knives and grab the reins of your quadriga: Rivals 2! More Frenemies Who Changed the World is the funniest look at people who benefited the world through their hatred. This audiobook has it all: death beams, chariot races, flaming costumes, ear-munchers, party fleas, and whatever the opposite of epic poetry is.... No fact is too bizarre, no segue too surreal, and no sequitur is too non for this riotous sequel.

The young warrior and bard Liobhan has lost her brother to the Otherworld. Even more determined to gain a place as an elite fighter, she returns to Swan Island to continue her training. But Liobhan is devastated when her comrade Dau is injured and loses his sight in their final display bout. Blamed by Dau's family for the accident, she agrees to go to Dau's home as a bond servant for the span of one year. There, she soon learns that Oakhill is a place of dark secrets. The vicious Crow Folk still threaten both worlds. And Dau, battling the demon of despair, is not an easy man to help.

The year is 1924. Only a few years removed from the trenches of Flanders, Lieutenant Eric Peterkin has just been granted membership in the most prestigious soldiers-only club in London: the Britannia. But when a gentleman's wager ends with a member stabbed to death, the victim's last words echo in the lieutenant's head: that he would "Soon right a great wrong from the past".  Eric is certain one of his fellow members is the murderer. But who?

From tuberculosis to bird flu and HIV to coronavirus, these infectious diseases share a common origin story: human interaction with animals. Otherwise known as zoonotic diseases for their passage from animals to humans, these pathogens - both preexisting ones and those newly identified - emerge and reemerge throughout history, sparking epidemics and pandemics that have resulted in millions of deaths around the world. How did these diseases come about? And what - if anything - can we do to stop them and their fatal march into our countries, our homes and our bodies?

Jack Gee, hiking the New Zealand mountains, is blissfully unaware of the Hemorrhage virus sweeping the world. A desperate message from his wife, Dee, alerts him, and he must return to Hamilton. On the way, he is captured by flesh-eating Variants and taken to their meat locker. To escape, he will need to draw on all his experience as an outdoorsman, but first, he must find the will to survive. Surrounded by Variants, Dee is trapped in her Hamilton basement with a group of survivors. With Jack missing, and dwindling food supplies, she must leave the basement, her only defense a katana.

Wilson has blended H. P. Lovecraft's dark vision with his own revolutionary philosophy and unique narrative powers to produce a stunning, high-tension story of vaulting imagination. A professor makes a horrifying discovery while excavating a sinister archaeological site. For over 200 years, mind parasites have been lurking in the deepest layers of human consciousness, feeding on human life force and steadily gaining a foothold on the planet. Now they threaten humanity's extinction.

England, 1191. King Richard is half a world away, fighting for God and his own ambition. Back home, his country languishes, bankrupt and on the verge of anarchy. People with power are running unchecked. People without are growing angry. And in Nottingham, one of the largest shires in England, the sheriff seems intent on doing nothing about it. As the leaves turn gold in the Sherwood Forest, the lives of six people - become intertwined. And a strange story begins to spread....

Living in New Zealand, Jack Gee thought he was safe. The isolated country had always provided a sense of security. When a virus begins to spread across the globe, he is on a hiking trip in the mountains, blissfully unaware. A message from his wife Dee alerts him to the viral threat that turns humans into apex predators with one purpose - to kill. The country collapses as Jack races to get home, and when he finally does make it out of the mountains he finds his peaceful life has been shattered. Banding with other survivors, they must quickly learn how to survive in this new world.

One day in the City of Lights. One night in search of lost time. Paris between the wars teems with artists, writers, and musicians, a glittering crucible of genius. But amidst the dazzling creativity of the city’s most famous citizens, four regular people are each searching for something they’ve lost. Told over the course of a single day in 1927, The Paris Hours takes four ordinary people whose stories, told together, are as extraordinary as the glorious city they inhabit. 

George Murray Levick was the physician on Robert Falcon Scott's tragic Antarctic expedition of 1910. Marooned for an Antarctic winter, Levick passed the time by becoming the first man to study penguins up close. His findings were so shocking to Victorian morals that they were quickly suppressed and seemingly lost to history.

The Hemorrhage Virus tore through America and swept the globe, leaving no country untouched. New Zealand was no exception. Those infected mutated into monsters, monsters that became known as Variants. Seven weeks have passed since Jack and Dee's quiet world shattered. Along with a small band of survivors, they fled to Mayor Island. Determined to help stem the Variant scourge, they volunteer for what remains of the army. Led by Captain Ben Johns, a grizzly retired NZ SAS soldier, they are sent on a dangerous mission to rescue a scientist. 

Seven months after the Hemorrhage virus swept across the world, Jack, his wife, Dee, his friend Boss, and the Renegades, a ragtag collection of civilian and military personnel, have been sent on two missions. Jack likes the first: recon. The second is insane: reenter the laboratory they barely escaped from a few months back and retrieve a logbook, a logbook that could provide the cure to end the madness. 

From the acclaimed military history author, this action-packed World War II history describes the Allies' brutal naval engagements and daring harbor raids to destroy the backbone of Hitler's surface fleet. 

A reckless wager between a tennis pro with a fading career and a drunken party guest - the stakes are an antique motorcycle and an heiress's diamond necklace - launches a narrative odyssey that braids together three centuries of aspiration and adversity. In The Maze at Windermere Gregory Blake Smith weaves these intersecting worlds into a brilliant tapestry, charting a voyage across the ages into the maze of the human heart.