Genetic Science

The crew of the legendary Capricious are rich enough to retire in comfort for the rest of their days, but none of it matters if the galaxy is still in danger. Nilah and Boots, the ship's newest crew members, hear the word of a mysterious cult that may have links back to an ancient and all-powerful magic. To find it, hotheaded Nilah will have to go undercover and find the source of their power without revealing her true identity. Meanwhile, Boots is forced to confront the one person she'd hoped never to see again: her old turncoat treasure-hunting partner.

United States of Japan is set in a gripping alternate history where the Japanese Empire rules over America with huge robots. Is resistance possible in the form of subversive video games? Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible emperor, and nobody believes that Japan's conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons, a group of rebels fighting for freedom.

Joe begins seeing strange flashes. Ghosts of images, overlaid atop his own vision. Actions he could have taken but didn’t. Worse, the visions are increasing in scope and frequency. Believing he’s going mad, he confronts the scientist, only to discover the implant’s shocking origin.

Tony Platz had the respect of his peers, a career on the fast track, and the body of an Olympian. There was only one problem: It was an open secret he carried a torch for his already-married partner. When a raid put her in the hospital and finally exposed her husband's ongoing infidelity, Tony got shipped out to Oolytau. Tayra Manes worked hard, graduated the academy, and became the first of her kind to join the Non-Human Investigative Corps. There was only one problem: She was a griffin, and not everyone approved of her being allowed to serve in the previously all-human NHIC.

Why is the genome of a salamander 40 times larger than that of a human? Why does the avocado tree produce a million flowers and only a hundred fruits? Why, in short, is there so much waste in nature? In this lively and wide-ranging meditation on the curious accidents and unexpected detours on the path of life, Daniel Milo argues that we ask these questions because we’ve embraced a faulty conception of how evolution - and human society - really works.

Just a few hundred genes separate humans from chimpanzees. Imagine someone altering the chimp genome, splicing in human genes to increase the size of the cranium, reduce the amount of body hair, enable speech. What sort of creature would result? Sims takes place in the very near future, when the science of genetics is fulfilling its vaunted potential. A world where dangerous or boring manual labor is gradually being transferred to “sims”, genetically altered chimps who occupy a gray zone between simian and human.

In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Euan Ashley, Stanford professor of medicine and genetics, brings the breakthroughs of precision medicine to vivid life through the real diagnostic journeys of his patients and the tireless efforts of his fellow doctors and scientists as they hunt to prevent, predict, and beat disease.

The Genetics Investigation Team has been shut down. Section 17 and the Special Projects Animal Asset Division no longer exist. FDA Special Agent April Flowers and Memphis Police Department Sergeant Jake Jessup have gone their separate ways, each running from a troubled past, and each thinking they had seen the last of mutant apex predators. They were wrong. Very wrong.

She brought him back from death and made him live again. Dash thought himself alone, a soldier, a fighting machine and no more. Elizabeth made him realize he was a man. Danger surrounds the woman his soul marked as his mate, death and blood and a treachery that goes beyond even his worst nightmares. But he will protect her and what she claims as her own. He was created to kill, trained to do it efficiently, and only a man bound to her, heart and soul, will have the strength to save Elizabeth and her prized possession.

Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park is placed on the Deucalion, a survey ship headed to an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy. Her purpose is to observe the thirteen human crew members aboard the ship - all specialists in their own fields - as they assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. But frictions develop as Park befriends the androids of the ship, preferring their company over the baffling complexity of humans, while the rest of the crew treats them with suspicion and even outright hostility.

In 2004, Doctor Damien Howard's 131st birthday celebration took an unexpected turn. His personal SETI project detected an extraterrestrial signal directed at Earth. Unfortunately, Dr. Howard's long-hoped-for communication contained a message of dire warning rather than greeting. In 1945, humanity had become a species of galactic interest and was given 100 years to address the issue.

How does life work? How does nature produce the right numbers of zebras and lions on the African savanna, or fish in the ocean? How do our bodies produce the right numbers of cells in our organs and bloodstream? In The Serengeti Rules, award-winning biologist and author Sean B. Carroll tells the stories of the pioneering scientists who sought the answers to such simple yet profoundly important questions.

In these lively and fascinating essays, scientists from around the world weigh in on the latest advances in the search for intelligent life in the universe and discuss just what that might look like. Since 2000, science has seen a surge in data and interest on several fronts related to ET (extraterrestrials); AI (artificial intelligence); and SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence). The debate has intensified over whether life exists outside our solar system, what that life would look like, and whether we'll ever make contact.

Maya has died and been resurrected into countless cyborg bodies through the years of a dangerous long career with the infamous Dirty Dozen, the most storied crew of criminals in the galaxy, at least before their untimely and gruesome demise. Decades later, she and her diverse team of broken, diminished outlaws must get back together to solve the mystery of their disastrous last mission and to rescue a missing and much-changed comrade … but they’re not the only ones in pursuit of the secret at the heart of the planet Dimmuborgir.

What if our future lies 40,000 years in our past? Subject Twenty-One is an astonishing debut novel in which a young woman's refusal to accept the status quo opens her eyes to the lies her society is built on. Elise's world is forever changed when she is given the opportunity of a lifetime - to work at the Museum of Evolution and be a companion to the Neanderthal, Subject Twenty-One. As a Sapien, a member of the lowest order of humans, she and others like her are held responsible for the damages inflicted on the world by previous generations.

The Martians explores the CIA's top-secret search for the Martians, multiple photos of strange anomalies, and the latest revelations about the environment and water on Mars. And most tantalizing of all: Did an ailing Martian race come to Earth in past eons and were they confused with gods? The questions concerning life on Mars - then and now - are many. The answers are astounding.

In his eye-opening new book, Perv, the award-winning columnist and psychologist Jesse Bering argues that we are all sexual deviants on one level or another. As Bering takes us into the lives of a woman who falls madly in love with the Eiffel Tower, a young man addicted to seductive sneezes, and a pair of deeply affectionate identical twins, among others, he challenges us to move beyond our judgments and attitudes toward "deviant" sex and consider the alternative: What would happen if we rise above our fears and revulsions and accepted our true natures?

J-817 would never forgive himself for the terrible mistake he had made - a mistake which resulted not only in his conversion to a cyborg but caused the same fate for his young private. Determined to atone for his failings, he protects B-669 during the long hard years terraforming Mars and even agrees to try his hand at mining the new planet. Frantic to get away from Earth, Daisy seizes the opportunity to become part of the Martian mail order bride program, even though it means a dangerous new planet and an unknown husband.

In Origin Story, medical historian Howard Markel recounts the two-year period (1858 to 1860) of Darwin's writing of On the Origin of Species through its spectacular success and controversy. Simultaneously, Markel delves into the mysterious health symptoms Darwin developed, combing the literature to emerge with a cogent diagnosis of a case that has long fascinated medical historians.

The novelization of the cult horror film Re-Animator, H.P. Lovecraft’s wildly outrageous tale of grisly horror that has become a modern cult-classic overnight, comes to audiobook to haunt, thrill, and delight the mad scientist in us all. Reanimation, the science of bringing dead creatures back to life, is Herbert West’s dream. West tests his secret life-rejuvenating potion on some cooperative corpses at a local morgue.