John Burton Hanks

All of this was because of the dragon stone necklace I scavenged from that dead mage. I knew it was magic when I saw it. Well, it was and it wasn’t. Dragon stone, they call it, but what it actually is, is a dragon’s egg. When I touched it, I felt the need to put it around my neck for safekeeping. When I did, the necklace embedded itself inside my skin, making me the new dragon’s envoy. It has since been my duty to protect the egg until she’s ready to hatch. How do I know the egg is a she? Easy, she talks to me and is helping me to bring out my natural magic talents.

Is it easy to survive in the game world? You could say yes, if you didn't know what the additional conditions were. They are unusual: it's the real world in which you have lived all your life. The enemy, craving to destroy you. Your own class who couldn't care less about you. Are you still sure that survival is easy? Then welcome to The Game! It will prove you wrong.

Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.

More than a year after she helped save the world from the Sparnaxian invasion, Andrea Vernon is in a good place. Her boss is giving her greater responsibility and she’s getting to travel a lot (although her fill-in is hopeless at making coffee); things could be getting even more serious with her 8’ 4” superhero boyfriend, The Big Axe; and she has a really fun new BFF, Never More. Small issue, though, with that last item - Never More is a supervillain bent on world domination, and it looks as if nothing can stop her.

Rose Winter has enough problems. With a marriage going down the tubes and a dreaded anniversary party on the horizon, the last thing she needs is the zombie apocalypse. She wanted to get drunk and sing karaoke, not murder her undead neighbors. It’s clear the party’s over, however, now Rose has more problems - a missing husband, an overbearing houseguest, and keeping her family alive.

Two-hundred years after the world ends, their future begins. In 2157, a mysterious gas known as Variant spreads across the globe, killing or mutating most organic life. The surviving humans take refuge in an underground city, determined to return home. But after generations of failures and botched attempts, hope is beginning to dwindle. That is, until a young scientist makes a unique discovery - and everything changes. Suddenly, there's reason to hope again, and it rests within a group of genetically engineered children that are both human and Variant.

The Orion has fallen. After barely escaping with their lives, the crew of the Orion has scattered across an unknown world. With a diminishing hope of returning home, they have no choice but to band together. But between the local wildlife, lack of supplies, a missing crew, and a strange, ominous door that can't be opened, Dean and his new friends will need everything at their disposal to survive. This isn't the home they expected, but they didn't come this far to give up and die.

For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses map-like structures to build a model of the world - not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought.

When Van Tudor returns to his childhood home, he inherits more than the family farm. His grandfather used to tell him fantastic stories of spacemen and monsters, princesses and galactic knights. Little did Van realize, the old man's tales were more than fiction; they were real. Hidden beneath the old barn, Van’s legacy is waiting: a starship, not of this world. With his combat AI, an android bird named Perry, Van takes his first steps into the wider galaxy. He soon finds that space is far busier and more dangerous than he could have ever conceived.

A coup has thrown the kingdom of Farshores into turmoil, and one of the pretender’s first moves was to order mercenaries to invade the Mage District and put all its inhabitants - men, women, and children - to the sword. There is one survivor: Horace Stonecutter, the youngest son of the Stonecutter family. Consumed with anger and a hunger for retribution, he journeys out to find who ordered the murder of his family. Along his bloody journey, he meets kings, princes, princesses, noblemen - and not so noble men. May God have mercy on his enemies - because he won’t.