Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Read: The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein

Title: The Door Into Summer

Author: Robert A. Heinlein

Release Date: 1957

Genre: Science Fiction

Book Description: It is 1970, and electronics engineer Dan Davis has finally made the invention of a lifetime: a household robot with extraordinary abilities, destined to dramatically change the landscape of everyday routine. Then, with wild success just within reach, Dan's greedy partner and even greedier fiancée steal his work and leave him penniless, and trick him into taking the long sleep—suspended animation for thirty years.

They never imagine that the future time in which Dan awakens has a very limited form of time travel, just enough that Davis can travel back and recover his research. He then again undergoes suspended animation, and awakens again in the high-tech future of the year 2000, with his reputation, fortune, and his sweetheart.



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Author Bio:

Robert Anson Heinlein was an American novelist and science fiction writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction writers", he is one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of "hard science fiction".

He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was the first SF writer to break into mainstream, general magazines such as "The Saturday Evening Post", in the late 1940s. He was also among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern, mass-market era.

 
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Friday, May 23, 2014

Read: Have Space Suit—Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein

Title: Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Author: Robert A. Heinlein

Release Date: 1958

Genre: Science Fiction

Book Description: Kip from midwest Centerville USA works the summer before college as a pharmacy soda jerk, and wins an authentic stripped-down spacesuit in a soap contest. He answers a distress radio call from Peewee, scrawny rag doll-clutching genius aged 11. With the comforting cop Mother Thing, three-eyed tripod Wormfaces kidnap them to the Moon and Pluto.


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Author Bio:

Robert Anson Heinlein was an American novelist and science fiction writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction writers", he is one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of "hard science fiction".

He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was the first SF writer to break into mainstream, general magazines such as "The Saturday Evening Post", in the late 1940s. He was also among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern, mass-market era.

 
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Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Read: Sphere by Michael Crichton

Title: Sphere

Author: Michael Crichton

Release Date: 1997

Genre: Science Fiction

Book Description:  A group of American scientists are rushed to a huge vessel that has been discovered resting on the ocean floor in the middle of the South Pacific. What they find defines their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently, undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old....
 

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Author Bio:

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) was one of the most successful novelists of his generation, admired for his meticulous scientific research and fast-paced narrative. He graduated summa cum laude and earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1969. His first novel, Odds On (1966), was written under the pseudonym John Lange and was followed by seven more Lange novels. He also wrote as Michael Douglas and Jeffery Hudson. His novel A Case of Need won the Edgar Award in 1969. Popular throughout the world, he has sold more than 200 million books. His novels have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and thirteen have been made into films.
 
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Monday, May 19, 2014

Read: The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1) by Robert Galbraith aka J.K. Rowling

Title: The Cuckoo's Calling

Series: Cormoran Strike #1

Author: Robert Galbraith aka J.K. Rowling

Release Date:  2013

Genre:  Crime

Book Description:  After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, thelegendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.



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Author Bio:

This is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy.
 
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Friday, May 16, 2014

Read: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Title: The Night Circus

Author: Erin Morgenstern

Release Date: 2011

Genre: Fantasy

Book Description:  The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance.

 

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Author Bio:

Erin Morgenstern is a writer and a multimedia artist, who describes all her work as "fairy tales in one way or another." She grew up in Marshfield, Massachusetts. She currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts with two very fluffy cats.
 
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Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Read: Jack Glass by Adam Roberts

Title: Jack Glass

Author: Adam Roberts

Release Date: 2012

Genre: Science Fiction

Book Description:  Jack Glass is the murderer. We know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel tells the story of three murders committed by Glass the reader will be surprised to find out that it was Glass who was the killer and how he did it. And by the end of the book our sympathies for the killer are fully engaged.

Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, JACK GLASS is another bravura performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain and JACK GLASS has some wonderfully gruesome moments, is built around three gripping HowDunnits and comes with liberal doses of sly humour.

Roberts invites us to have fun and tricks us into thinking about both crime and SF via a beautifully structured novel set in a society whose depiction challenges notions of crime, punishment, power and freedom. It is an extraordinary novel.


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Author Bio:

Adam Roberts (born 1965) is an academic, critic and novelist. He also writes parodies under the pseudonyms of A.R.R.R. Roberts, A3R Roberts and Don Brine. He also blogs at The Valve, a group blog devoted to literature and cultural studies.

He has a degree in English from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD from Cambridge University on Robert Browning and the Classics. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Adam Roberts has been nominated twice for the Arthur C. Clarke Award: in 2001, for his debut novel, Salt, and in 2007, for Gradisil.

 
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Monday, May 12, 2014

Read: Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire #1) by Mark Lawrence

Title: Prince of Thorns

Series: The Broken Empire #1

Author: Mark Lawrence

Release Date:  2011

Genre:  Fantasy

Book Description:  When he was nine, he watched as his mother and brother were killed before him. At thirteen, he led a band of bloodthirsty thugs. By fifteen, he intends to be king...

It's time for Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath to return to the castle he turned his back on, to take what's rightfully his. Since the day he hung pinned on the thorns of a briar patch and watched Count Renar's men slaughter his mother and young brother, Jorg has been driven to vent his rage. Life and death are no more than a game to him--and he has nothing left to lose. But treachery awaits him in his father's castle. Treachery and dark magic. No matter how fierce his will, can one young man conquer enemies with power beyond his imagining?



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Author Bio:

Mark Lawrence is married with four children, one of whom is severely disabled. His day job is as a research scientist focused on various rather intractable problems in the field of artificial intelligence. He has held secret level clearance with both US and UK governments. At one point he was qualified to say 'this isn't rocket science ... oh wait, it actually is'.

Between work and caring for his disabled child, Mark spends his time writing, playing computer games, tending an allotment, brewing beer, and avoiding DIY.

 
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Friday, May 9, 2014

Read: The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books #1) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Title: The Shadow of the Wind

Series: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books #1

Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Release Date:  2001

Genre: Contemporary, Literary, Fantasy

Book Description: Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.



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Author Bio:

Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a Spanish novelist. Born in Barcelona in 1964, he has lived in Los Angeles, United States, since 1994, and works as a scriptwriter aside from writing novels.

His first novel, El príncipe de la niebla (The Prince of Mist, 1993), earned the Edebé literary prize for young adult fiction. He is also the author of three more young-adult novels, El palacio de la medianoche (1994), Las luces de septiembre (1995) and Marina (1999).

In 2001 he published the novel La sombra del viento ("The Shadow of the Wind"), his first "adult" novel, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. Since its publication, La sombra del viento has garnered critical acclaim around the world and has won numerous international awards. Ruiz Zafón's works have been published in more than 40 countries and have been translated into more than 30 languages.

 
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Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Read: Falling Free (Vorkosigan Saga #1) by Lois McMaster Bujold

Title: Falling Free

Series:  Vorkosigan Saga #1

Author: Lois McMaster Bujold

Release Date:  1988

Genre: Science Fiction

Book Description: Leo Graf was an effective engineer...Safety Regs weren't just the rule book he swore by; he'd helped write them. All that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat. Leo was profoundly uneasy with the corporate exploitation of his bright new students till that exploitation turned to something much worse. He hadn't anticipated a situation where the right thing to do was neither save, nor in the rules...

Leo Graf adopted 1000 quaddies, now all he had to do was teach them to be free.



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Author Bio:

One of the most respected writers in the field of speculative fiction, Lois McMaster Bujold burst on to the scene in 1986 with Shards of Honor, the first of her tremendously popular Vorkosigan Saga novels. She has received numerous accolades and prizes, including two Nebula Awards for Best Novel (Falling Free and Paladin of Souls), four Hugo Awards for Best Novel (Paladin of Souls, The Vor Game, Barrayar, and Mirror Dance), as well as the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novella The Mountains of Mourning. She has, in fact, won more Hugo Awards for Best Novel than any other author with the exception of Robert A. Heinlein. The mother of two, Bujold lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Friday, May 2, 2014

Spotlight: 99 activities & VERY SIMPLE crafts to do for ALL DADS who want SPEND TIME with THEIR CHILD by Alex Richards

Title: 99 activities & VERY SIMPLE crafts to do for ALL DADS who want SPEND TIME with THEIR CHILD

Author: Alex Richards

Release Date: 2014

Genre: How To Guide

Book Description:  What kid in you? (Yes, yes, he's there!)

Be the companion of your child's play, to build a satisfying relationship with him! 

Being a good parent is a difficult thing. But there are various way to be a good dad. One of them revolves across the game if in addition to taking time for yourself, you are taking the opportunity to provide time to your child in moments of shared complicity? 

This practical guide will allow all dads who wish to create a long-lasting bond with their child, play with him via 99 activities and crafts to do together from 5 years. 

No DIY, writer, father of 2 children, offer simple to build projects to be able to captivate your kid (catapult marshmallows, explosive bag, miniature crossbow...). Activities, largely free, are diverse both indoors and outdoors, round 9 themes (it's sunny, raining, moving...). 

You wish to read this ebook if:

·         you need to create a long-lasting relationship father-youngster
·         you search of ideas to make activities and crafts
·         you want to play together with your child on a restricted budget

Buy Link: Amazon
Free between May 2nd - May 6th 2014! 

Author Bio:

RICHARDS Alex lives in France and his books translated into English. He old about forty years, and is the father of two children: a daughter born in 2005 and a boy born in 2008 He worked at home since 2008 and can therefore involve 100% in the education of his children.

Why a guide for fathers ? Simply because we are talking about what we know.

The author had the opportunity to do many activities being young, but always independently without much paternal presence. His father was of the generation of fathers who can do everything by yourself, but that is not capable of interacting with their children before they reach (at least) adulthood.

For the author, this is quite different! It is almost incapable of making anything complex, but was very present in the lives of her children. In the quest facing each father in activities and crafts to do with a child, it happens sooner or later we find ourselves frustrated by his lack of knowledge about something to do.

To circumvent this problem, and continue to be a superdad, same model manual dexterity in the eyes of his children, he had to think exclusively in activities for Dummies DIY , for those who like him, shuddering at the thought to open a toolbox and discover the instruments it contains...

Dummies fathers will therefore find yourself in this ebook about 99 ideas for activities and crafts to make with their children, who do not ask to buy a jigsaw risk losing fingers.
 
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