Science Reality

Continue Meena's incredible journey as she returns to Broken Wand Academy after crossing over to the Academy of Shifters to help Remi.

Composed from exhaustive research and hundreds of personal interviews, the Stay Awhile and Listen series divulges the fated meeting that brought the two Blizzards together, the clashes that tore them apart, and their transformation from grassroots democracy to corporate empire. At the center of it all - Diablo, a hack-and-slash adventure through the darkest recesses of Hell that changed online gaming forever.

The intellectual adventure story of the "double-slit" experiment, showing how a sunbeam split into two paths first challenged our understanding of light and then the nature of reality itself - and continues to almost 200 years later. Through Two Doors at Once celebrates the elegant simplicity of an iconic experiment and its profound reach. With his extraordinarily gifted eloquence, Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world, through history and down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have yet fathomed. It is the most fantastic voyage you can take.

Heralded as the most significant technological innovation since the smartphone, virtual reality is poised to transform our very notions of life and humanity. Though this tech is still in its infancy, to those on the inside, it is the future. VR will change how we work, how we experience entertainment, how we feel pleasure and other emotions, how we see ourselves, and most importantly, how we relate to each other in the real world. And we will never be the same. Peter Rubin, senior culture editor for Wired and the industry's go-to authority on the subject, calls it an "intimacy engine".

When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself.

Half-norn event planner Anders Skuldsson is under strict orders from Asgard not to meddle with Fate. But with Enchanted Occasions’ latest booking - the competition for the hand of Faerie’s one true prince - crashing around his ears, it’s really, really, really difficult to toe that particular line. So...if Andy just happens to pose as a contender for the prince? It’s an emergency, damn it. Besides, it’s only temporary, so Odin can hardly blame him. Right?

When disaster strikes a cargo flight over the arctic, pilot Andre decides it's time to upload. He pays to have his brain sliced and scanned so his mind can live in the computerized, virtual world of Talespace. Since Talespace runs on the logic of a game, Andre takes full advantage. He becomes a high-flying pegasus learning the magic of the sky and battling monsters for the Night Queen. He's even in time for a fun little war.

For a physicist, all the world is information. The universe and its workings are the ebb and flow of information. We are all transient patterns of information, passing on the recipe for our basic forms to future generations using a four-letter digital code called DNA. In this engaging and mind-stretching account, Vlatko Vedral considers some of the deepest questions about the universe and considers the implications of interpreting it in terms of information.

A Fae prince, a guardian angel, twin dragon shifters, a vampire.... And that's only the beginning. Now that the truth is out about the supernaturals, things are starting to get interesting. With 10 bachelors remaining, Kimmie-Jayne needs to get her head in the game. But with a murder investigation underway on set, listening to her heart only complicates matters. To make things worse, the mysterious accidents that were supposed to end with the big supernatural reveal are back with a vengeance.

The charges of white privilege and systemic racism that are tearing the country apart fIoat free of reality. Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: American Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have different violent crime rates and different means and distributions of cognitive ability.

Some folk stories endure generation after generation because, although they are not literal, they resound in truths on a human scale. Folktales remind us of wisdom so elemental it is often lost in the rush of everyday life, so that "sometimes common sense makes no sense at all." The six wonder tales on this audiobook are gems of the genre. They have a "long ago and far away" quality.

Instead of enjoying the game, I found myself trapped inside my character's dead body. Now the only way I can save myself is by procuring the Scroll of Rebirth. The problem is my chances of getting it are slim. I'm an undead: an outlaw with no friends, only fickle allies and plenty of enemies. Who are only waiting for their chance to strike. My undead hangman character has to tread a razor's edge, with only the support of his fellow players preventing his imminent plunge into the abyss. But are they who they claim they are?

Once there were hundreds of members of the Oversight, the brave souls who guard the borders between the mundane and the magic. Now there are only five. When a vagabond brings a screaming girl to the Oversight's London headquarters, she could answer their hopes for new recruit, or she could be the instrument of their downfall.

For the past week, Boyd's life has been a whirlwind of action. But Glorith City's chaos was just the beginning. Joined by his Devoted, Boyd ventures into uncharted territory—the Wild Lands, where enigmatic creatures wield Powers rivaling their own. In this untamed wilderness, hiding from the forces that hunt him becomes a crucible of training and teamwork. New Bonds are forged in peril, and his team flourishes amidst the danger. Yet even as their strength grows, Boyd is forced to expose his closest allies to the unpredictable dangers of the Wild Lands

Braving Britannia is an oral history of the groundbreaking PC video game, Ultima Online, which launched in 1997 and still operates today. The audiobook features interviews with players as they share how the game affected their lives. In a fantasy world of limitless potential, the only thing players seem to enjoy more than playing the game is talking about it, and yet, the true stories behind the avatars have largely gone unpublished for the past 20 years. Until now.

In the tradition of Neil Postman's masterpiece Amusing Ourselves to Death, Audience of One shows how American media have shaped American society and politics, by interweaving two crucial stories. The first story follows the evolution of television from the three-network era of the 20th century, which joined millions of Americans in a shared monoculture, into today's zillion-channel, internet-atomized universe, which sliced and diced them into fractious, alienated subcultures. The second story is a cultural critique of Donald Trump.

Bridging the gap between tech mania and the experience of being inside the human body, Dawn of the New Everything is a look at what it means to be human at a moment of unprecedented technological possibility. Through a fascinating look back over his life in technology, Jaron Lanier, an interdisciplinary scientist and father of the term virtual reality, exposes VR's ability to illuminate and amplify our understanding of our species and gives listeners a new perspective on how the brain and body connect to the world.

I've spent my entire life running from my past and staying out of trouble. That's how I've kept alive ever since my parents were killed by the Black Dragon, who's ruled the world under her oppressive talons for as long as anyone can remember. But it's hard to keep a low profile when four handsome strangers turn up in your village claiming you're destined to save the world. According to them, they've been chosen by the gods to become elemental dragons--and I'm their mate.

A barely employed tech worker has never felt they belonged. Not in society, not even in their own family. Their days are filled with loneliness, a struggle to survive and a desperate search for connection—even if that connection is merely virtual. Now, a black-market hacker promises to open a new world for them, and it works—in ways no human has ever experienced. They find a world of wonder, of possibilities and of danger—where their new virtual reality could mean the end of their physical reality. And what they discover could change the fate of humankind—forever.

The time has come to pick The One. With one bachelor missing and chaos in her heart, Kimmie-Jayne must find the strength to choose the final two. Once that terrible decision is made, she's sure things will be easier. But she's wrong. When jealousy flares within the manor, the producers sequester the final two bachelors. As Kimmie-Jayne battles her fracturing heart, torn between two men, news of a surprise visit home sends her hopes soaring. But it's short-lived. Disaster hits while she's at home, leading Kimmie-Jayne to make a startling discovery about her past.