Forty years ago, the world nearly ended. Be is an old robot who was there, and doesn’t want to think about what happened, or what role they played in that conflict. They have settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned ruins of an old mill in the former New York Botanical Gardens, disinterested in what has happened in the outside world since they stepped away from the war. Someone out there, though, has not forgotten about them, and when they are attacked, their person vandalized, and one of their leg stolen, they set out to find the thief accompanied by a cyborg dog and a human mechanic. The world has changed, but the recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle the old conflict and finish what was started. In order to stop them, Be needs to come to terms with both their own past and who they have become, and how everything and everyone else they knew has changed in their absence. Being left alone is no longer an option, and peace may be impossible. This is a story about coming to terms with your past, with who you’ve become and who you still want to be: a tale of resilence and hope, an ode to those struggling to become whole in a world half-broken.

USA Today Bestselling author Rebecca Thorne delights in a brand new cozy science-fiction series...for fans of Martha Wells and Olivia Waite! Features original inside art! Torian Razner finally bought a starship, and contrary to Amelia’s assessment, it was not “a meteoric sign of stupidity.” Sure, the alien starship may have been abandoned for a century, and it may be covered in moss now… but it’s Torian’s ticket to freedom, regardless of what her ex… ah, captain… said. Except Torian’s first flight reveals a surprise passenger: the moss is actually an organic computer with a snarky attitude and serious abandonment issues. The target of its loathing? The immortal alien who built it (and then parked the starship, with Moss inside, and forgot about it). The same alien who just found Torian and accused her of “stealing” the ship. It’s entirely possible that Amelia was right about this meteoric stupidity.

USA Today Bestselling author Rebecca Thorne delights in a brand new cozy science-fiction series...for fans of Martha Wells and Olivia Waite! Features original inside art! Torian Razner finally bought a starship, and contrary to Amelia’s assessment, it was not “a meteoric sign of stupidity.” Sure, the alien starship may have been abandoned for a century, and it may be covered in moss now… but it’s Torian’s ticket to freedom, regardless of what her ex… ah, captain… said. Except Torian’s first flight reveals a surprise passenger: the moss is actually an organic computer with a snarky attitude and serious abandonment issues. The target of its loathing? The immortal alien who built it (and then parked the starship, with Moss inside, and forgot about it). The same alien who just found Torian and accused her of “stealing” the ship. It’s entirely possible that Amelia was right about this meteoric stupidity.

I escaped my Council-ordered execution by the skin of my beak, only to be faced with an even worse situation. My father, the King of Serpent Court, will try to get to me by any nefarious means possible, including hurting my friends. Meanwhile, the mere presence of the five mates I’ve rejected torments me at every turn. Savage, the unhinged wolf who now seems besotted with me. Scythe, the mob-boss Great White shark whose icy eyes see right through my skin and Xander, the arrogant, sneering dragon. Then, there’s the powerful, moody Deputy Headmaster of Animus Academy who has his amber eyes fixed right on me. While he says one thing, his body language tells me something completely different. And then one day, I start to receive cryptic texts from a mysterious stranger who’s past-times include watching me sleep and stalking me. What’s a girl to do except hand their attitude problems right back to them? This is the second book in a New Adult MFMMMM 5 book contemporary fantasy romance series that must be read in order. The heroine has five fated mate love interests that will eventually form a bonded group. It is medium burn with 18+ spice starting from book 1. Each book has a cliffhanger ending but the series will finish with a HEA. Length: 150k Tropes: Academy, villains get the girl, fated mates, rejected mates, found family, hidden identity, hidden powers, mid-burn, forbidden romance

I escaped my Council-ordered execution by the skin of my beak, only to be faced with an even worse situation. My father, the King of Serpent Court, will try to get to me by any nefarious means possible, including hurting my friends. Meanwhile, the mere presence of the five mates I’ve rejected torments me at every turn. Savage, the unhinged wolf who now seems besotted with me. Scythe, the mob-boss Great White shark whose icy eyes see right through my skin and Xander, the arrogant, sneering dragon. Then, there’s the powerful, moody Deputy Headmaster of Animus Academy who has his amber eyes fixed right on me. While he says one thing, his body language tells me something completely different. And then one day, I start to receive cryptic texts from a mysterious stranger who’s past-times include watching me sleep and stalking me. What’s a girl to do except hand their attitude problems right back to them? This is the second book in a New Adult MFMMMM 5 book contemporary fantasy romance series that must be read in order. The heroine has five fated mate love interests that will eventually form a bonded group. It is medium burn with 18+ spice starting from book 1. Each book has a cliffhanger ending but the series will finish with a HEA. Length: 150k Tropes: Academy, villains get the girl, fated mates, rejected mates, found family, hidden identity, hidden powers, mid-burn, forbidden romance

A fresh, charming, socially conscious tour of the mysteries of space-time, from the award-winning author of The Disordered CosmosIn her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle physicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shed light on the entrenched injustices plaguing her field, while at the same time sharing with her audience her abiding sense of wonder at the cosmos from a Black feminist perspective. Now, in The Edge of Space-Time, she leans into that wonder, taking readers on a mind-altering journey to the boundaries of the universe, inviting us to spend time at the edge of what we know about space-time and about ourselves.Guided by her conviction that science is for everybody, Prescod-Weinstein renders accessible some of the most abstract concepts of theoretical physics and draws on poetry and popular culture—from Queen Latifah to Lewis Carroll to Big K.R.I.T. to Sun Ra and Star Trek— to tell fascinating stories about the fundamental quantum nature of space-time and everything inside of it. Here we meet the quantum cat that is both dead and alive, learn the difference between dark matter and dark energy, explore the inner workings of black holes, investigate the possibility of a unified theory of quantum gravity, and map out the meeting place of the unimaginably vast with the confoundingly small, following our guide out to the far reaches of the particle horizon and down to the tiniest (and queerest) neutrino. Prescod-Weinstein shows us how spending time with the cosmos is a vital human activity that enriches all our lives. Along the way, she calls on us to resist colonial approaches to space exploration and instead imagine a better path forward in our pursuit of humanity’s undeniable connection with the stars.Through Prescod-Weinstein’s clear-eyed and unique perspective, and informed by her deep knowledge of post-colonial history and Black feminist thought, The Edge of Space-Time argues that physics is an essential way for everyone to look at the universe and presents a compelling case that “the edge” is a powerful vantage point from which to see the big picture.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.” As Elizabeth Gilbert writes, Robin Wall Kimmerer is “a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.” The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us, all flourishing is mutual.”

There is a lifeform so strange and wondrous that it forces us to rethink how life works…Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space, and thrives amidst nuclear radiation. In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems. They can solve problems without a brain, stretching traditional definitions of ‘intelligence’, and can manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. In giving us bread, alcohol and life-saving medicines, fungi have shaped human history, and their psychedelic properties, which have influenced societies since antiquity, have recently been shown to alleviate a number of mental illnesses. The ability of fungi to digest plastic, explosives, pesticides and crude oil is being harnessed in break-through technologies, and the discovery that they connect plants in underground networks, the ‘Wood Wide Web’, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. Yet they live their lives largely out of sight, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented. Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into this hidden kingdom of life, and shows that fungi are key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel and behave. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.

With wonder and a sense of humor, 'NATURE OBSCURA' author Kelly Brenner aims to help us rediscover our connection to the natural world that is just outside our front door - we just need to know where to look. Through explorations of a rich and varied urban landscape, Brenner reveals the complex micro-habitats and surprising nature found in the middle of a city. In her hometown of Seattle, which has plowed down hills, cut through the land to connect fresh- and saltwater, and paved over much of the rest, she exposes a diverse range of strange and unknown creatures. From shore to wetland, forest to neighborhood park, and graveyard to backyard, Brenner uncovers how our land alterations have impacted nature, for good and bad, through the wildlife and plants that live alongside us, often unseen. These stories meld together, in the same way our ecosystems, species, and human history are interconnected across the urban environment.

In a world full of Vicious Beasts, if you are not a predator, you are prey. With my life going down in literal flames I ran from everything. From my father, from a forced marriage, from my mates . Now, charged with a crime I didn’t commit, they’re all hunting me . And they’re all furious. The dangerous deputy headmaster of Animus Academy manages to catch me and along with three of my five mates we’re taken back to the prison-school they use to teach feral beasts how to be civilised. Now I’m locked up with the very men I’ve been trying to avoid all my life. No one can know who my mates are. No one can know who I really am. Because if they do, it’s lights out for me. I’ll be chained up and bred until I die. And I refuse to allow that to happen.

Whalefall is a scientifically accurate thriller about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year. The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.

A leading activist museum director explains why museums are at the center of a political storm and how they can be reimagined. In an age of protest, culture and museums have come under fire. Protests against museum funding (like the Metropolitan Museum accepting Sackler family money) and boards (such as the Whitney appointing tear gas manufacturer Warren Kanders)—to say nothing of demonstrations over exhibitions and artworks—have roiled cultural institutions across the world, from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi to the Akron Art Museum. Meanwhile never have there been more calls for museums to work for social change. In this book, Raicovich shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions bearing an ideology of neutrality that masks their role in upholding capitalist values. And she suggests how museums can be reinvented to serve better, public ends.