Showing results by narrator "Aiello" in All Categories

Speed: the most demonized - and misunderstood - drug in the land. Deprived of the ingrained romantic mysticism of the opiate or the cosmopolitan chic of cocaine or the mundane tolerance of marijuana, there is no sympathy for this devil. Yet speed - crystal meth, amphetamines, Dexedrine, Benzedrine, Adderall; crank, spizz, chickenscratch, oblivious marching powder, the go-fast - is the most American of drugs: twice the productivity at half the cost, and equal opportunity for all.

Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.

When Samuel, a lonely linguistics lecturer, wakes up on New Year’s Day, he is convinced that the year ahead will bring nothing more than passive verbs and un-italicized moments - until an unexpected visitor slips into his Barcelona apartment and refuses to leave. The appearance of Mishima, a stray, brindle-furred cat, becomes the catalyst that leads Samuel from the comforts of his favorite books, foreign films, and classical music to places he’s never been (next door) and to people he might never have met (a neighbor with whom he’s never exchanged a word).

A young man's journey through the Philippines' most unlikely obsession: Basketball. In Pacific Rims, Rafe Bartholemew, journalist, New Yorker, and veteran baller, ventures through the Philippines to investigate the country's love of basketball. From street corners where diehards fashion hoops out of old car parts to the professional league where politicians exploit team loyalties to win elections, Pacific Rims gets the story - and gets in the game.

Gateway to the Galaxy, Part II contains Face Toward Enemy (book 4), Rise Up (book 5), and Do or Die (book 6 of the series). Just when you thought it was safe to explore the universe, a new enemy emerges from the darkness. You know the deal with these things: someone's always ready to put on the gauntlet and do the finger snap. All Frank wants to do is rebuild the Arilion Order and eat tacos. No such luck. A new enemy is going to give Frank and the rest of Marine Space Corps-1 a run for their money. A ghost from Frank's past has returned.

Sometimes to save a recruit, he’s got to break them. A pragmatic, battle-tested Knight recalls the savage fallout of the Chaos War. Sergeant Claymore leads his recruits through a brutal boot camp training and to an unexpected, bloody battle. They will admire him. They will fear him. And when it’s all over, they will remember him for the rest of their lives.

A unique blend of memoir, research, and cultural criticism, this is a searing and incisive examination into how we tell stories about mental illness, how that affects how we treat it, and how those with mental illness can begin to take control of their own stories through fantasy and fiction.

In the stories of Havana Noir, current and former residents of the city - some international sensations such as Leonardo Padura, others exciting new voices like Yohamna Despestre - uncover crimes of violence and loveless sex, of mental cruelty and greed, of self-preservation and collective hysteria.

In Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?, neuroscientists and zombie enthusiasts Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek apply their neuro-know-how to dissect the puzzle of what has happened to the zombie brain to make the undead act differently than their human prey. Combining tongue-in-cheek analysis with modern neuroscientific principles, Verstynen and Voytek show how zombism can be understood in terms of current knowledge regarding how the brain works.

This is the story of Pierre Tradivel, a scientist, and his complex battle against deadly illness, and ex-Nazi war criminal still hiding in the U.S., a crooked insurance company, and a plot to make Pierre and his wife the victims of a bizarre genetic experiment. Frameshift is hard science fiction at its best, full of complications and neat surprises.

In the penultimate book of the second series of Deadlocked, the High Rollers struggle to find their way after an enormous loss. They fell into the trap of a madman and the horde is closing in even as the town burns around them. Meanwhile, Hero is dealing with his contraction of what is known as the Tempest Strain, a virus capable of infecting any mammal. He knows that if the virus gets out, it could threaten every species on the planet, and he's ready to make the ultimate sacrifice if he has to.

This anthology, with an introduction by Robert Silverberg, offers a sweeping survey of robots as depicted throughout literature. Since the Iliad—in which we are shown golden statues built by Hephaestus “with minds and wisdoms”—humans have been fascinated by the idea of artificial life. From the Argonautica to the medieval Jewish legend of the Golem and Ambrose Bierce’s tale of a chess-playing robot, the idea of what robots are—and who creates them—can be drastically different.

Outside any city still standing, the Mechanical Circus Tresaulti sets up its tents. Crowds pack the benches to gawk at the brass-and-copper troupe and their impossible feats: Ayar the Strong Man, the acrobatic Grimaldi Brothers, fearless Elena and her aerialists who perform on living trapezes. War is everywhere, but while the Circus is performing, the world is magic. That magic is no accident: Boss builds her circus from the bones out, molding a mechanical company that will survive the unforgiving landscape.

With the ACA and Hive invasions successfully thwarted, Tranquility's newest colonists are struggling to rebuild. Peace has finally come to humanity's furthest colony, and life is finally starting to return to normal. The peace was not meant to be. After receiving a distress call from a distant scouting mission, Lander and the newly formed military find themselves deploying to a dead alien world, where the heart of the Hive lies in wait.

Twenty years have passed since the zombie apocalypse devastated the world. A single man is on a quest for revenge in search of the people responsible for the outbreak of the zombie virus. His journey leads him to a discovery in the western United States that will irrevocably change his goal. Meanwhile, a new world is revealed that is under the strict control of the same people that were responsible for the plague. Two innocent prisoners of this regime must escape and learn the truth about the world they never knew existed.

A medieval swindler gets caught with his proverbial pants down; a foolproof plan is put into place to pick up some cash via AI, until things take an unexpected and deadly turn; a legendary bodyguard is hired to protect precious cargo, but who will protect the cargo from him? The 14 brand-new stories deal with the complex idea of morality and will make listeners wonder what side is the right side.

Four years after his father died a hero's death fighting a fire, Tim Ginocchetti was behind bars for killing his mother. How one tragedy led to another is a true story that puts a horrifying twist on the familiar one of bullied gay teens. In this case, the bully was the teen's own mother, and instead of harming himself he killed her in a momentary but irreversible explosion of rage.

Falling in love wasn't the plan. But how could I resist his promises of hope? Of forgiveness? Of a future I had stopped dreaming of? We were shattered. We were scarred. We were something strange and beautiful. We were two lost souls holding on to the only thing that could keep us together. Each other.

The Hive is gone, but the queen’s effect on the world lingers. As the people of Tranquility rebuild, those touched by the alien creature struggle to come to grips with what was done to them and the pain they’d caused to their friends and family. Joel Lander is no stranger to their hardships, but with a new threat looming, they have precious little time to lose. The fight for Tranquility is not over.

To glimpse America’s future, one needs to look no further than its college campuses. Of those institutions, none holds more clout than Yale University, the hallowed “cradle of presidents”. In Sex and God at Yale, recent graduate Nathan Harden undresses perversity among the Ivy and ideology gone wild as the upper echelon of academia is mired in nothing less than a full-fledged moral crisis.