New Science

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history - Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story.

Antoine Lavoisier reinvented chemistry, overthrowing the long-established principles of alchemy and inventing an entirely new terminology, one still in use by chemists. Madison Smartt Bell’s enthralling narrative comes across like a race to the finish line, as the very circumstances that enabled Lavoisier to secure his reputation as the father of modern chemistry—a considerable fortune and social connections with the likes of Benjamin Franklin—also caused his glory to be cut short by the French Revolution.

C. P. Ellis grew up in the poor white section of Durham, North Carolina, and as a young man joined the Ku Klux Klan. Ann Atwater, a single mother from the poor black part of town, quit her job as a household domestic to join the civil rights fight. During the 1960s, as the country struggled with the explosive issue of race, Atwater and Ellis met on opposite sides of the public school integration issue. Their encounters were charged with hatred and suspicion.

In January 2023, bestselling author Johann Hari started to inject himself once a week with Ozempic, the diabetes drug that produces significant weight loss. He wasn’t alone—credible predictions suggest that in two years, a quarter of the U.S. population will be taking this class of drug. Proponents say that this is a biological solution to a biological problem. While 95 percent of diets fail, the average person taking one of the new drugs will lose a quarter of their body weight in six months, and keep it off for as long as they take it.

Megan Crewe has received both critical accolades and popular acclaim for her young adult novels. The Way We Fall launches a new series featuring 16-year-old Kaelyn, whose island community is quarantined after the outbreak of a deadly virus. Before long, people begin to turn against each other as they fight for dwindling supplies. Remarkably, in the midst of this chaos, Kaelyn discovers both an unlikely ally and a surprising love interest. And with prospects for survival growing dimmer with each passing moment, she will need all the help she can get.

When the Blackout arrives, Dax Harper finds himself alone and fighting for survival on the chaotic streets of New Orleans. He is on the run, desperately searching for his estranged sister as the riots intensify. An unexpected encounter with his ex-girlfriend thrusts Dax into a leadership position - one he's not sure he can accept. As the hours pass, the city floods, pitting Dax in an epic battle against time and a mysterious new enemy threatening the future of humankind.

Like his fellow lunarnauts - otherwise known as Moonies - living on Moon Base Alpha, twelve-year-old Dashiell Gibson is famous the world over for being one of the first humans to live on the moon. And he's bored out of his mind. Kids aren't allowed on the lunar surface, meaning they're trapped inside the tiny moon base with next to nothing to occupy their time - and the only other kid Dash's age spends all his time hooked into virtual reality games.

Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists.

In The Social Leap, William von Hippel lays out a revolutionary hypothesis, tracing human development through three critical evolutionary inflection points to explain how events in our distant past shape our lives today. From the mundane, such as why we exaggerate, to the surprising, such as why we believe our own lies and why fame and fortune are as likely to bring misery as happiness, the implications are far-reaching and extraordinary.

Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage - and escape from horrific punishment.

The New York Times best-selling Mortal Instruments continues - and so do the thrills and danger for Jace, Clary, and Simon. Can the lost be reclaimed? What price is too high to pay for love? Who can be trusted when sin and salvation collide? Darkness threatens to claim the Shadowhunters in the harrowing fifth book of the Mortal Instruments series.

Elaine's mission through the fairy ring went horribly wrong, and she finds herself in Pallos once again—over 20,000 years in the future. All she has are her friends, her magic, and the clothes on her back. Fighting their way out of the wilderness, they quickly meet Iona, a wandering paladin of the Valkyrie order. She's heading to the School of Sorcery and Spellcraft, and Elaine joins her: To learn wizardry. To figure out her place in the world and where she wants to go next. To get her third class. To kiss cute women. To eat some tasty mangos. To read books, at long last.

While Spartans get all the glory, no soldier - not even the legendary Master Chief - wins a war on his own. Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck and his team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODSTs) played a major role in saving the Earth from all-out invasion at the end of the Covenant War - acts of bravery and ingenuity that did not go unnoticed by the United Nations Space Command.

We all dream of being celebrated, rewarded, and recognized - in short, of being great. But so few people actually attain greatness. Why? In The Science of Being Great, legendary success writer Wallace D. Wattles demonstrates exactly how you can move from merely thinking of yourself as great to really being great in the world. In this book is the one principle that leads to greatness.

Listeners return to the world of Severian, now the Autarch of Urth, as he leaves the planet on one of the huge spaceships of the alien Hierodules to travel across time and space to face his greatest test, to become the legendary New Sun or die. The strange, rich, original spaceship scenes give way to travels in time, wherein Severian revisits times and places which fill in parts of the background of the four-volume work, that will thrill and intrigue particularly listeners who enjoyed the earlier books.

Bounty hunting is rewarding, but nobody ever said it was easy. When your partner is a powerful dark witch with anger issues, it can get downright terrifying. Good thing Matt Bordelon is up for a challenge because the weather isn’t the only thing heating up in the Big Easy. A cabal of dark witches and wizards will do anything to control magic. A powerful, idealistic, and extremely misguided politico can only make things worse. As if that wasn’t enough, something evil is snatching people from the New Orleans area.

The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity - by chewing, brewing, and snorting - some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze Age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings.

Too many CEOs tell a simple story about the future of work: If a machine can do what you do, your job will be automated. They envision everyone from doctors to soldiers rendered superfluous by ever-more-powerful AI. They offer stark alternatives: Make robots, or be replaced by them. Another story is possible. In virtually every walk of life, robotic systems can make labor more valuable, not less. Frank Pasquale tells the story of nurses, teachers, designers, and others who partner with technologists, rather than meekly serving as data sources for their computerized replacements.

Our trio of madcap mercenaries have brought peace to Mugh-9, but it turns out that peace is bad for business. What is a merc to do but head out into the galaxy and find some work? There’s always someone in need of a steady hand, a strong arm, and a propensity toward violence, right? Our trio hit the jackpot when they are approached by a representative from a crumbling regime.

While the DEMC haven’t gone native, they’re finding that their particular brand of varied vector violence is appreciated in the Bast Station populace. Deck by deck, meter by meter, they are leading the efforts at reclamation. Remarkably, they’ve found the rough-and-ready inhabitants of the station rallying around them. That’s before other mercenaries come to Coil Cove, drawn by the DEMC’s success. The more the merrier, right? Except these newcomers threaten to throw the hard-won balance into chaos.