The #1 bestselling economist shows how capitalism has been replaced by a more exploitative system, technofeudalism, in which the owners of big tech have become the world's feudal overlords. * A GUARDIAN BEST FORTHCOMING BOOK OF 2023 * THE TIMES BIGGEST BOOKS OF AUTUMN 2023 * ‘What an amazing piece of work this is. The dark, scary, exciting song of our age. 100 out of 100’ IRVINE WELSH In his boldest and most far-reaching book yet, world-famous economist Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism is dead and a new economic era has begun. Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies in the wake of the financial crisis and the pandemic have ended up supercharging big tech's hold over every aspect of the economy. Capitalism's twin pillars - markets and profit - have been replaced with big tech's platforms and rents. Meanwhile, with every click and scroll, we labour like serfs to increase its power. Welcome to technofeudalism. Drawing on stories from Greek Myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men , Varoufakis explains this revolutionary how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power and ultimately what it will take overthrow it. 'Utterly accessible, deeply humane and startlingly original' NAOMI KLEIN on Talking To My Daughter

An Instant New York Times Bestseller“Excellent and deeply reported.” —Tim Wu, The New York Times“Startling and intensely researched . . . an essential account of how OpenAI and ChatGPT came to be and the catastrophic places they will likely take us.” —Vulture“Hao’s reporting inside OpenAI is exceptional, and she’s persuasive in her argument that the public should focus less on A.I.’s putative ‘sentience’ and more on its implications for labor and the environment.” —Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New YorkerFrom a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzyWhen AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations?Spoiler it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too—as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.

A repressed lesbian werewolf and her oblivious best friend go on a trip to a secluded forest cabin—what could go wrong?Olivia Lane has always been the good girl—smart, careful, and most of all, straight. Or at least, good at pretending. But when she joins her best friend Charlie for a summer trip to her childhood cabin, Olivia starts to notice something's off. Charlie is hiding something. Olivia isn't just curious—she's obsessed.Charlie Reed has spent her life hiding what she really is. Being a werewolf is bad enough. Being in love with her straight best friend? That's a secret she's sworn to take to her grave. But with the full moon approaching, and her true nature becoming harder to bury, Charlie is changing—and she's losing control, fast.When their summer trip spirals into both of their worst nightmares, Olivia must face the truth about Charlie—and herself. And if they can't? They'll lose more than just each other.She Changes is a sapphic monster romance novella for fans of erotic horror, WLW yearning, and transformation as metaphor. Expect emotionally devastating spice and a hard-won HEA.

From the internationally bestselling author of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop comes a warm and reflective collection of essays inviting us to reflect on our relationship with reading. Why do we read? What is it that we hope to take away from the intimate, personal experience of reading for pleasure? Rarely do we ask these profound, expansive questions of ourselves and of our relationship to the joy of reading. In each of the essays in Every Day I Read, Hwang Bo-reum contemplates what living a life immersed in reading means. She goes beyond the usual questions of what to read and how often, exploring the relationship between reading and writing, when to turn to a bestseller vs. browse the corners of a bookstore, the value of reading outside of your favorite genre, falling in love with book characters, and more. Every Day I Read provides many quiet moments for introspection and reflection, encouraging book-lovers to explore what reading means to each of us. While this is a book about books, at its heart is an attitude to life, one outside capitalism and climbing the corporate ladder. Lifelong and new readers will take away something from it, including a treasure trove of book recommendations blended seamlessly within.

A layered exploration of family secrets, sibling misconceptions, and an unsolved murder in this chilling debut set in New York’s Dutchess County. When Marlowe, an illustrator living in New York City, returns to her family’s bewitching Hudson Valley estate for the holidays, she discovers a murder on the property that draws her back into the haunting case of her teenage best friend’s disappearance twenty years earlier. Marlowe soon finds herself unraveling the tangled dynamics of this small town and the legacy of a summer home that holds both secrets and scars. What follows is a gripping mystery that weaves between past and present as Marlowe confronts the fallibility of her own memory, the shocking truth about her lost friend, and an ultimatum that will change the course of her life. In this chilling debut novel, Julie Doar parses themes of family loyalty, class tension, friendship, and identity, building toward a dramatic payoff that keeps readers guessing until its final moment.

An unforgettable debut, For Human Use is a twisted tale of modern love that bends every genre, sears itself into your brain, and presents a horrific romantic comedy unlike anything you’ve ever read before.Modern dating is dead. Finding a human connection online has become impossible. Enter a dating app that matches people with dead bodies. Somehow, it has taken the world by storm. Millions of users are convinced that life with a corpse presents a better alternative to conventional relationships.  Flailing against Liv’s popularity, venture capital superstar Tom Williamson—whose company is funding Liv —isn’t buying it. Mostly because dating an embalmed cadaver, let alone monetizing it, is obscene. Believing that Liv is the future, Auden White, the insufferable “visionary” behind the app begins demanding more and more funding, quickly making enemies with Tom. It's no secret that Tom struggles with people, dead or alive, but when he has a chance meeting with the woman who knows Auden (and his secrets) best, Mara Reed, he realizes everything is about to change for all three of them. With Liv’s userbase growing by the day, the need for cadavers rapidly increases. Humanity might not want to connect with other living, breathing people anymore, but they do want to connect with something. What could go wrong?

For fans of Karen Russell and Carmen Maria Machado, The Age of Calamities is a genre-defying, mind-bending collection of absurdist, funny, and speculative short stories. In this bold and enchanting collection Senaa Ahmad takes license with history and its players, sending the reader on a thrilling ride. In “Let’s Play Dead,” Henry VIII wants Anne Boleyn gone, but there’s a tiny problem―she keeps coming back to life no matter what he does. “Choose Your Own Apocalypse” hurls readers back to 1945, where they assume the role of a technician for the Manhattan Project, surrounded by labyrinthine paths and harrowing outcomes. And “Inside the House of the Historian” invites us to a dinner party turned murder mystery full of figures like Nefertiti, Queen Victoria, John Adams, and Marilyn Monroe. These stories and others entice readers to confront the past, the present, and themselves all at once. Zany and haunting, inviting and brilliant, each poignant tale delves into surreal nature of today through the lens of yesterday, charting the tragicomic yet hopeful act of living. The Age of Calamities is an evocation of life and death on history’s unsteady margins, of how to reckon with the blunt-force trauma of ill-fated times. Fiercely clever and wildly inventive, this debut establishes Senaa Ahmad as a literary force.

After a price-fixing scandal at her prestigious New York auction house, Josie Prescott moves to the New Hampshire coast to restore her reputation--and perhaps a few antiques along the way. As an antiques dealer, Josie knows how to make an honest assessment, and she's about to land her largest account. But when the owner of the collection is found stabbed to death, Josie's fingerprints are all over his possessions…and the murder weapon. Suddenly Josie's innocence appears as tarnished as an old relic. Everybody's got their eyes on her, especially the local police chief who may or may not be in love with her. Now it's just a matter of time before Josie can produce enough evidence to clear her name--or fall into the clutches of the real killer and find herselfCONSIGNED TO DEATH

The third in the witty and captivating series following bestselling author Eleanor Dash, who once again has to swap her sun hat for her detective hat, when a body is found at a murder mystery writing conference in the Bahamas.Eleanor Dash can never catch a break. Not only has she had to solve two real-life murder plots in the past year, but both times it was when she was meant to be on vacation. Now she’s finally got a ticket to a relaxing weekend—an all-inclusive resort at the Bahamas where she’s speaking at a conference for murder mystery writers—but she arrives to find a body on the floor of her hotel room. Because of course she does.With plenty of familiar faces at the resort, any one of them could have been the intended target or the culprit behind it all. Was it Oliver Forrest, Eleanor’s dashing boyfriend who’s in danger of getting dropped by his publisher because his sales are dwindling? Or Connor Smith, Eleanor’s infuriating ex-lover-turned-bestselling-rom-com-author with a sordid past of his own? Or her sister Harper, whose own stilted writing career has been a sore point for years as Eleanor’s has soared? Perhaps it’s one of the other writers also in attendance, as friends, frenemies and foes from Eleanor’s past all seem to be invited to the island.Surrounded by mystery writers who know all too well the many ways to craft the perfect crime, Eleanor is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery and do whatever it takes to get out of this weekend alive.

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.”

Three times the holiday magic. Three times the chaos.     As strangers and seatmates Maryam Aziz and Anna Gibson fly to Toronto over the holidays—Maryam to her sister’s impromptu wedding, and Anna to meet her boyfriend’s wealthy family for the first time—neither expect that severe turbulence will scare them into confessing their deepest hopes and fears to one another. At least they’ll never see each other again. And the love of Maryam’s life, Saif, wasn’t sitting two rows behind them hearing it all. Oops.     An emergency landing finds Anna, Saif, Maryam, and her sister’s entire bridal party snowbound at the quirky Snow Falls Inn in a picture-perfect town, where fate has Anna’s actor-crush filming a holiday romance. As Maryam finds the courage to open her heart to Saif, and Anna feels the magic of being snowbound with an unexpected new love—both women soon realize there’s no place they’d rather be for the holidays.

A reluctant necromancer, a man killed before his time, and the crime that brings them together. Felipe Galvan’s life as an investigator for the Paranormal Society has been spent running into danger. Returning home from his latest case, Felipe struggles with the sudden quiet of his life until a mysterious death puts him in the path of the enigmatic Oliver Barlow. Oliver has two secrets. One, he has been in love with the charming Felipe Galvan for years. Two, he is a necromancer, but to keep the sensible life he’s built as a medical examiner, he must hide his powers. That is until Oliver finds Felipe murdered and accidentally brings him back from the dead. But Felipe refuses to die again until he and Oliver catch his killer. Together, Felipe and Oliver embark on an investigation to uncover a plot centuries in the making. As they close in on his killer, one thing is certain: if they don’t stop them, Felipe won’t be the last to die.