Echopraxia

Echopraxia
Author: Peter Watts
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2014-08-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 142994806X

Prepare for a different kind of singularity in Peter Watts' Echopraxia, the follow-up to the Hugo-nominated novel Blindsight It's the eve of the twenty-second century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans and soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off self-awareness during combat. And it's all under surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself. Daniel Bruks is a living fossil: a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational, a cat's-paw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he's turned his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out. Now he's trapped on a ship bound for the center of the solar system. To his left is a grief-stricken soldier, obsessed by whispered messages from a dead son. To his right is a pilot who hasn't yet found the man she's sworn to kill on sight. A vampire and its entourage of zombie bodyguards lurk in the shadows behind. And dead ahead, a handful of rapture-stricken monks takes them all to a meeting with something they will only call "The Angels of the Asteroids." Their pilgrimage brings Dan Bruks, the fossil man, face-to-face with the biggest evolutionary breakpoint since the origin of thought itself. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Enough Already

Enough Already
Author: Valerie Bertinelli
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0358567327

Beloved actress, Food Network personality, and New York Times bestselling author Valerie Bertinelli reflects on life at sixty and beyond. Behind the curtain of her happy on-screen persona, Valerie Bertinelli’s life has been no easy ride, especially when it comes to her own self-image and self-worth. She waged a war against herself for years, learning to equate her value to her appearance as a child star on One Day at a Time and punishing herself in order to fit into the unachievable Hollywood mold. She struggled to make her marriage to Eddie Van Halen — the true love of her life — work, despite all the rifts the rock-star lifestyle created between them. She then watched her son follow in his father’s footsteps, right up onto the stage of Van Halen concerts, and begin his own music career. And like so many women, she cared for her parents as their health declined and saw the roles of parent and child reverse. Through mourning the loss of her parents, discovering more about her family’s past, and realizing how short life really is when she and her son lost Eddie, Valerie finally said, “Enough already!” to a lifelong battle with the scale and found a new path forward to joy and connection. Despite hardships and the pressures of the media industry to be something she’s not, Valerie is, at last, accepting herself: she knows who she is, has discovered her self-worth, and has learned how to prioritize her health and happiness over her weight. With an intimate look into her insecurities, heartbreaks, losses, triumphs, and revelations, Enough Already is the story of Valerie’s sometimes humorous, sometimes raw, but always honest journey to love herself and find joy in the everyday, in family, and in the food and memories we share. “This thoughtful, bighearted book is sure to be a hit with Bertinelli fans and those with an appetite for stories of hard-won self-acceptance. A warmly intimate memoir.” – Kirkus Reviews “In a series of brutally frank essays, Bertinelli looks back on the emotional struggles and triumphs of her life. By turns raw and inspiring, this contains a little bit of wisdom for everyone.” – Publishers Weekly

Hate List

Hate List
Author: Jennifer Brown
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2009-09-01
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 031607120X

For readers of Marieke Nijkamp's This Is Where It Ends, a powerful and timely contemporary classic about the aftermath of a school shooting. Five months ago, Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets. Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends, and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life. Jennifer Brown's critically acclaimed novel now includes the bonus novella Say Something, another arresting Hate List story.

Chilling Effect

Chilling Effect
Author: Valerie Valdes
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2019-09-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062877240

“Jam-packed with weird aliens, mysterious artifacts, and lovable characters... a tremendous good time and an impressive debut.” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred) A hilarious, offbeat debut space opera that skewers everything from pop culture to video games and features an irresistible foul-mouthed captain and her motley crew, strange life forms, exciting twists, and a galaxy full of fun and adventure. Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom. But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead after she rejects his advances, and her sweet engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family. To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.

Valerie

Valerie
Author: Phil Gifford
Publisher: Hodder Moa
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 186971296X

Valerie Adams keeps no secrets as she tells her inspirational story of how a Tongan kid from Mangere, throwing the shot in bare feet, transformed herself into a double Olympic champion. She tells, in minute-by-minute detail, what really happened at the London Olympics. You?ll learn the full, true story of her split with coach Kirsten Hellier. She also reveals why the pain in her personal life made 2010 a nightmare for her. And why, to stay the best in the world, she?s been living on a mountaintop in Switzerland. Sir Murray Halberg says Valerie Adams may be on track to be our greatest ever athlete. Valerie ? honest, joyous and sometimes heartbreaking ? is the unvarnished story of a great athlete and a remarkable New Zealander.

Big Gal Yoga

Big Gal Yoga
Author: Valerie Sagun
Publisher: Seal Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2017-07-25
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1580056601

Social media star Valerie Sagun is a powerful voice in the body positive movement. With more than 100,000 avid followers on Instagram and a constant stream of highly engaged traffic on her website, fans adore Valerie for her fearless acceptance of her beautiful body, her encouragement of self-love, and her phenomenal yoga skills. Valerie, her yoga practice, and her body positive campaign have been featured in People, Glamour, Marie Claire, Buzzfeed, Redbook, and more, where she's been celebrated for her exciting messages about self-acceptance-both on the mat and off. Now, in this complete guide, Valerie provides both inspiration and customized instructions for yogis of all sizes and shapes, along with passionate encouragement to help readers discover newfound confidence through the transformative power of yoga.

Minnie McClary Speaks Her Mind

Minnie McClary Speaks Her Mind
Author: Valerie Hobbs
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2012-08-07
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0374324964

When quiet sixth-grader Minnie gets a new language arts teacher who makes her think and ask hard questions, she is inspired to stand up for what she believes in.

Bloodless Ties

Bloodless Ties
Author: Katie Wismer
Publisher: The Marionettes
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-11-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781958458013

I bargained with my life to save myself and everyone else, but maybe death would've been better than this... Taken away from her home and everyone she knows, Valerie Darkmore finds herself in the heart of a world she didn't know existed. Everyone she loves thinks she's dead. The people who want her dead are now charged with keeping her safe. As she learns the truth behind the attacks and the unrest that's been building for years, the time for their plans to come to fruition draws closer. The more she's drawn into their world, the less clear it becomes which side is the right one.  Bloodless Ties is the third installment in the dark fantasy romance series, The Marionettes.

SCUM Manifesto

SCUM Manifesto
Author: Valerie Solanas
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 92
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784784419

Classic radical feminist statement from the woman who shot Andy Warhol “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.” Outrageous and violent, SCUM Manifesto was widely lambasted when it first appeared in 1968. Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol, self-published the book just before she became a notorious household name and was confined to a mental institution. But for all its vitriol, it is impossible to dismiss as the mere rantings of a lesbian lunatic. In fact, the work has proved prescient, not only as a radical feminist analysis light years ahead of its time—predicting artificial insemination, ATMs, a feminist uprising against underrepresentation in the arts—but also as a stunning testament to the rage of an abused and destitute woman. In this edition, philosopher Avital Ronell’s introduction reconsiders the evocative exuberance of this infamous text.

A Little Life

A Little Life
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 833
Release: 2016-01-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0804172706

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.