Too Like the Lightning

Too Like the Lightning
Author: Ada Palmer
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2016-05-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466858745

From the winner of the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Ada Palmer's 2017 Compton Crook Award-winning political science fiction, Too Like the Lightning, ventures into a human future of extraordinary originality Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer--a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away. The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life. And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life... Terra Ignota 1. Too Like the Lightning 2. Seven Surrenders 3. The Will to Battle At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Seven Surrenders

Seven Surrenders
Author: Ada Palmer
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466858753

*2018 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL CATEGORY* From 2017 John W. Campbell Award winner, Ada Palmer, the second book of Terra Ignota, a political SF epic of extraordinary audacity “A cornucopia of dazzling, sharp ideas set in rich, wry prose that rewards rumination with layers of delight. Provocative, erudite, inventive, resplendent.” —Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings In a future of near-instantaneous global travel, of abundant provision for the needs of all, a future in which no one living can remember an actual war...a long era of stability threatens to come to an abrupt end. For known only to a few, the leaders of the great Hives, nations without fixed locations, have long conspired to keep the world stable, at the cost of just a little blood. A few secret murders, mathematically planned. So that no faction can ever dominate, and the balance holds. And yet the balance is beginning to give way. Mycroft Canner, convict, sentenced to wander the globe in service to all, knows more about this conspiracy the than he can ever admit. Carlyle Foster, counselor, sensayer, has secrets as well, and they burden Carlyle beyond description. And both Mycroft and Carlyle are privy to the greatest secret of all: Bridger, the child who can bring inanimate objects to life. Shot through with astonishing invention, Ada Palmer's Seven Surrenders is the next movement in one of the great SF epics of our time. “Seven Surrenders veers expertly between love, murder, mayhem, parenthood, theology, and high politics. I haven't had this much fun with a book in a long time.” —Max Gladstone, author of Three Parts Dead Terra Ignota 1. Too Like the Lightning 2. Seven Surrenders 3. The Will to Battle At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Will to Battle

The Will to Battle
Author: Ada Palmer
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2017-12-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466858761

The Will to Battle—the third book of 2017 John W. Campbell Award winner Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series—a political science fiction epic of extraordinary audacity “A cornucopia of dazzling, sharp ideas set in rich, wry prose that rewards rumination with layers of delight. Provocative, erudite, inventive, resplendent.” —Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings The long years of near-utopia have come to an abrupt end. Peace and order are now figments of the past. Corruption, deception, and insurgency hum within the once steadfast leadership of the Hives, nations without fixed location. The heartbreaking truth is that for decades, even centuries, the leaders of the great Hives bought the world’s stability with a trickle of secret murders, mathematically planned. So that no faction could ever dominate. So that the balance held. The Hives’ façade of solidity is the only hope they have for maintaining a semblance of order, for preventing the public from succumbing to the savagery and bloodlust of wars past. But as the great secret becomes more and more widely known, that façade is slipping away. Just days earlier, the world was a pinnacle of human civilization. Now everyone—Hives and hiveless, Utopians and sensayers, emperors and the downtrodden, warriors and saints—scrambles to prepare for the seemingly inevitable war. “Seven Surrenders veers expertly between love, murder, mayhem, parenthood, theology, and high politics. I haven't had this much fun with a book in a long time.” —Max Gladstone, author of Three Parts Dead Terra Ignota Series 1. Too Like the Lightning 2. Seven Surrenders 3. The Will to Battle At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Perhaps the Stars

Perhaps the Stars
Author: Ada Palmer
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 854
Release: 2021-11-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 146685877X

From the 2017 John W. Campbell Award Winner for Best Writer, Ada Palmer's Perhaps the Stars is the final book of the Hugo Award-shortlisted Terra Ignota series. World Peace turns into global civil war. In the future, the leaders of Hive nations—nations without fixed location—clandestinely committed nefarious deeds in order to maintain an outward semblance of utopian stability. But the facade could only last so long. The comforts of effortless global travel and worldwide abundance may have tempered humanity's darkest inclinations, but conflict remains deeply rooted in the human psyche. All it needed was a catalyst, in form of special little boy to ignite half a millennium of repressed chaos. Now, war spreads throughout the globe, splintering old alliances and awakening sleeping enmities. All transportation systems are in ruins, causing the tyranny of distance to fracture a long-united Earth and threaten to obliterate everything the Hive system built. With the arch-criminal Mycroft nowhere to be found, his successor, Ninth Anonymous, must not only chronicle the discord of war, but attempt to restore order in a world spiraling closer to irreparable ruin. The fate of a broken society hangs in the balance. Is the key to salvation to remain Earth-bound or, perhaps, to start anew throughout the far reaches of the stars? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Lightning

Lightning
Author: Dean Koontz
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1440619883

#1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz’s brilliantly thrilling novel of suspense. In the midst of a raging blizzard, lightning struck on the night Laura Shane was born. And a mysterious blond-haired stranger showed up just in time to save her from dying. Years later, in the wake of another storm, Laura will be saved again. For someone is watching over her. Is he the guardian angel he seems? The devil in disguise? Or the master of a haunting destiny beyond all time and space? “A gripping novel…fast-paced and satisfying.”—People

Ball Lightning

Ball Lightning
Author: Cixin Liu
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2018-08-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0765394081

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Three-Body Trilogy, Cixin Liu's Ball Lightning is the story of what happens when the beauty of scientific inquiry runs up against the drive to harness new discoveries with no consideration of their possible consequences. When Chen’s parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of this mysterious natural phenomenon. His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station. The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier. While Chen’s quest for answers gives purpose to his lonely life, it also pits him against soldiers and scientists with motives of their own: a beautiful army major with an obsession with dangerous weaponry, and a physicist who has no place for ethical considerations in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge. "Wildly imaginative."—Barack Obama on The Three-Body Problem trilogy Tor books by Cixin Liu The Three-Body Problem Series #1 The Three-Body Problem #2 The Dark Forest #3 Death's End At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Lightning Flowers

Lightning Flowers
Author: Katherine E. Standefer
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2020-11-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316450359

This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises). What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator. In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshly wired into her heart, she becomes consumed with questions about the supply chain that allows such an ostensibly miraculous device to exist. So she sets out to trace its materials back to their roots. From the sterile labs of a medical device manufacturer in southern California to the tantalum and tin mines seized by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a nickel and cobalt mine carved out of endemic Madagascar jungle, Lightning Flowers takes us on a global reckoning with the social and environmental costs of a technology that promises to be lifesaving but is, in fact, much more complicated. Deeply personal and sharply reported, Lightning Flowers takes a hard look at technological mythos, healthcare, and our cultural relationship to medical technology, raising important questions about our obligations to one another, and the cost of saving one life.

My Side of the Mountain

My Side of the Mountain
Author: Jean Craighead George
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2001-05-21
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0593115007

"Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."—The New York Times Book Review Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods—all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever. “An extraordinary book . . . It will be read year after year.” —The Horn Book

Truly Like Lightning

Truly Like Lightning
Author: David Duchovny
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374722455

From the New York Times–bestselling author David Duchovny, an epic adventure that asks how we make sense of right and wrong in a world of extremes For the past twenty years, Bronson Powers, former Hollywood stuntman and converted Mormon, has been homesteading deep in the uninhabited desert outside Joshua Tree with his three wives and ten children. Bronson and his wives, Yalulah, Mary, and Jackie, have been raising their family away from the corruption and evil of the modern world. Their insular existence—controversial, difficult, but Edenic—is upended when the ambitious young developer Maya Abbadessa stumbles upon their land. Hoping to make a profit, she crafts a wager with the family that sets in motion a deadly chain of events. Maya, threatening to report the family to social services, convinces them to enter three of their children into a nearby public school. Bronson and his wives agree that if Maya can prove that the kids do better in town than in their desert oasis, they will sell her a chunk of their priceless plot of land. Suddenly confronted with all the complications of the twenty-first century that they tried to keep out of their lives, the Powerses must reckon with their lifestyle as they try to save it. Truly Like Lightning, David Duchovny’s fourth novel, is a heartbreaking meditation on family, religion, sex, greed, human nature, and the vanishing environment of an ancient desert.

Infomocracy

Infomocracy
Author: Malka Older
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2016-06-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0765385147

Read Infomocracy, the first book in Campbell Award finalist Malka Older's groundbreaking cyberpunk political thriller series The Centenal Cycle, a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Series, and the novel NPR called "Kinetic and gripping." • A Locus Award Finalist for Best First Novel • The book The Huffington Post called "one of the greatest literary debuts in recent history" • One of Kirkus' "Best Fiction of 2016" • One of The Washington Post's "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016" • One of Book Riot's "Best Books of 2016 So Far" It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line. With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain? Infomocracy is Malka Older's debut novel. THE CENTENAL CYCLE Book 1: Infomocracy Book 2: Null States Book 3: State Tectonics PRAISE FOR INFOMOCRACY “A fast-paced, post-cyberpunk political thriller... If you always wanted to put The West Wing in a particle accelerator with Snow Crash to see what would happen, read this book.” —Max Gladstone, author of Last First Snow "Smart, ambitious, bursting with provocative extrapolations, Infomocracy is the big-data-big-ideas-techno-analytical-microdemoglobal-post-everything political thriller we've been waiting for." —Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings "In the mid-21st century, your biggest threat isn’t Artificial Intelligence—it’s other people. Yet the passionate, partisan, political and ultimately fallible men and women fighting for their beliefs are also Infomocracy’s greatest hope. An inspiring book about what we frail humans could still achieve, if we learn to work together." —Karl Schroeder, author of Lockstep and the Virga saga At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.