Higher Worlds

Building on her critically acclaimed novel The Last Days of California and her biting collection Always Happy Hour, Miller slyly transports listeners to her unapologetic corner of the South - this time, Biloxi, Mississippi, home to 63-year-old Louis McDonald, Jr. His wife of 37 years left him, his father has passed - and he has impulsively retired from his job in anticipation of an inheritance check that may not come. One day, he stops at a house advertising free dogs and meets overweight mixed-breed Layla.

Filled with tales of adventure and astounding reversals of fortune, The Rise of Athens celebrates the city-state that transformed the world - from the democratic revolution that marked its beginning through the city's political and cultural golden age to its decline into the ancient equivalent of a modern-day university town. Anthony Everitt constructs his history with unforgettable portraits of the talented, tricky, ambitious, and unscrupulous Athenians who fueled the city's rise.

Renowned magazine writer Michael Kaplan has penned dozens of stories on “advantage players,” who employ various high-level techniques to beat the casinos and racetracks at their own games. You’ll meet the undisputed world’s greatest “AP,” poker and baccarat “machines,” the table-game player who beat Atlantic City for $15 million, the founder of the famed MIT blackjack team, the world’s greatest sports-betting furniture salesman, golf hustlers extraordinaire, and many more. But The Advantage Player isn’t limited to gambling. It also examines the AP strategies used by ...

The characters in Tasting the Past include a young Swiss scientist who set out to decode the DNA of every single wine grape in the world; Middle Eastern researchers who seek to discover the wines that King David drank; and a University of Pennsylvania academic who has spent decades analyzing wine remains. The science illuminates wine in ways no critic can, and demolishes some of the most sacred dogmas of the industry: well-known French grapes aren't especially noble.

The Nameless Baron is gravely displeased. Viktor had once heard that time healed all wounds. Whoever had come up with that saying had clearly never gotten into a physical altercation with a werewolf, but at least Adelstrad's least favourite executioner still has most of his limbs. That said, while his witch problems may have been solved, battle has finally joined in the Adelstradian countryside as Nordling warbands meet Adelstradian fighting men in the field and blood flows like wine. Viktor finds himself in a more precarious position than ever before, caught between the rapidly forming ...

At the start of World War II, Jack and Sadie Rosenblum flee Berlin for London with their baby daughter, Elizabeth. Upon arrival, Jack receives a pamphlet from the German Jewish Aid Committee on how to act like a proper Englishman. He follows it to the letter -Saville Row suits, the BBC, trips to Covent Garden, a Jaguar - and it works like a charm. The Rosenblums settle into a prosperous new life.

Darwin developed the theory of sexual selection to explain why the animal world abounds in stunning beauty, from the brilliant colors of butterflies and fishes to the songs of birds and frogs. He argued that animals have "a taste for the beautiful" that drives their potential mates to evolve features that make them more sexually attractive and reproductively successful. But if Darwin explained why sexual beauty evolved in animals, he struggled to understand how.

In the late 2000s, Molly Bloom, a twenty something petite brunette from Loveland Colorado, ran the highest stakes, most exclusive poker game Hollywood had ever seen - she was its mistress, its lion tamer, its agent, and its oxygen. Everyone wanted in, few were invited to play. Hundreds of millions of dollars were won and lost at her table. Molly's game became the game for those in the know - celebrities, business moguls, and millionaires.

For one little boy, however, life had become anything but "normal." To all appearances, he and his family lived an almost idyllic life. The father was a respected professor, the mother a witty and elegant lady, someone everyone loved. They were parents to three bright, smiling children: two boys and a girl. They lived on a sunny street in a small college town nestled neatly in a leafy valley. They gave parties, hosted picnics, went to church - just like their neighbors. To all appearances, their life seemed ideal. But it was, in fact, all appearances.

In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations is nothing short of extraordinary. This breathtaking work of nature writing also introduces listeners to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.

Tech Generation: Raising Balanced Kids in a Hyper-Connected World guides parents in teaching their children how to reap the benefits of living in a digital world while also preventing its negative effects. Dr. Mike Brooks and Dr. Jon Lasser, psychologists with extensive experience working with kids, parents, and teachers, combine cutting-edge research and expertise to create an engaging and helpful guide that emphasizes the importance of the parent-child relationship.

The Ascension arc begins—and not everyone will make it out alive. After surviving the siege of Bastion, Alec West—Arcane Warden and Architect Nodebearer—receives a new directive: locate the First Pillar of Ascension. His team’s next destination? The ruins of Atlantis City. But they’re not alone. Another Nodebearer walks the earth—chosen by the Harbingers. And as rival factions clash beneath the broken skyline, Alec’s mission turns into a brutal three-way conflict: deadly Tier 2 monstrosities, PvP-enabled Harbinger elites, and the Obelisk’s own Warforged constructs. Inside ...

Sometimes the past leaves you no choice but to fight for a future.Immerse yourself in the heart-stopping world of World War II, where duty collides with morality and survival demands more than courage — it requires sacrifice. With two of their men wounded a company of English soldiers takes shelter in a convent. Also seeking sanctuary there is Joliane, a young Frenchwoman who is wanted by the local Marquis for supposedly collaborating with the Gestapo. Discovering that when they leave, she will be taken away and shot, Albert Clemens, the company sergeant, decides to take her with them. ...

The year was 1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous - the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls. As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses.

In the middle of climate-change crises, there is no mood for space-exploration stunts - but Reid Malenfant, elderly, once a shuttle pilot and frustrated would-be asteroid miner, decides to go take a look anyway. Nothing more is heard of him. But his ex-wife, Emma Stoney, sets up a trust fund to search for him the next time the Kernel returns...By 2570 Earth is transformed. A mere billion people are supported by advanced technology on a world that is almost indistinguishable from the natural, with recovered forests, oceans, ice caps.

Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects on matters ranging from women's rights to world peace reached a crescendo. Yet in the same breath, an undercurrent of reaction was growing, one that would surge ahead with the outbreak of war and its aftermath. In this sweeping work of history, Tara Zahra examines how nationalism, rather than internationalism, came to ensnare world politics in the early twentieth century.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.

In Parallel Worlds, world-renowned physicist and best-selling author Michio Kaku - an author who "has a knack for bringing the most ethereal ideas down to earth" (Wall Street Journal) - takes listeners on a fascinating tour of cosmology, M-theory, and its implications for the fate of the universe.

Everything changed the day a faerie fell into my tomatoes. I thought I had my life planned out. My farm was prosperous, and I was on the verge of proposing to my childhood sweetheart. I'd have a family. A normal life. And then the Eagle Lord crashed into my crops—a giant bird with a broken wing. I foolishly tried to save him from the monster who was stalking him, and he repaid me by giving me immortality. Sounds good, doesn't it? Except immortality isn't free, even when it's a gift. Taryn Savagas wants me to fight beside him. To give up everything I have and everything I am to be his ...

War of the Worlds never happened. It was a science fiction novel written by Herbert George Wells. That's what history tells us. And it's a lie! Made up by G One, a powerful international organization after they alter the memories of the world, to cover the fact that our world was invaded and almost perished beneath the conquering Martians who landed here. We didn't defeat them. Mother Nature did! But now, the aliens are back. Stronger, more powerful, and more cunning. And only one organization can possibly defeat them...G-ONE. And the action and adventure only gets better and better in the ...