The U.S.S. Enterprise is assigned to the planet K'Trall -- a planet just coming out rom under the heel of barbarous suppression. When the planet's newly emerging freedom is threatened by a rouge ship attacking Federation shipping, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew put their lives on the line to protect K'Trall from the raids.But the planet itself holds a deadly secret, one that could lead to a ressurgence of the despotic cruelty they have suffered for centuries. With ti...

Hermeticus 2 -- a planet so shrouded in secrecy that few in the Federation even know of its existence. When a Romulan spy learns of the world, it becomes the centerpiece of a far-reaching Romulan plan.On routine patrol neat the border of the Neutral Zone, the Starship Enterprise discovers an advanced Romulan Warbird prototype drifing lifeless in space. Investigating the vessel, Captain Picard isa dreawn into a plaot that threatens the very foundation of the Federation. Now...

My name is Hood, of R. Hood & Associates. That's what it says on the business cards. The "R" stands for Robin. Yeah, I know. I get it all the time. I've got four associates. Three of them are human. The fourth one isn't. That doesn't mean I value her any less than my human associates. And yes, she's female. Well, not technically. Technically, she's a machine, although you certainly wouldn't know it to look at her. Her name is Marian and she's an Io (pronounced "Eye-oh"), which is short for...

In a tech-noir future, AIs are an integral part of society, controlling buildings, transportation, weapons, traffic and security, while advances in Artificial Intelligence have created Ios, Inorganics, AIs that are human in appearance, with citizenship rights. Marian Fitzwalter is an Io who has left her job as a sexbot and now someone has put out a contract on her. Robin Hood and his associates are on the case.

Robin Hood thought he was done with Military Intelligence when he left the Army to start his own detective agency, but when he receives a call from Scott Forrest, his old commanding officer, now a highly successful attorney, he discovers that they had both been reactivated to deal with a top-secret military project that has gone disastrously wrong.A humanoid AI known as an Io (short for Inorganic) has been weaponized and turned into a vampire, to create terror and destruction behin...

Essential listening for all those who want to understandthe universe in which we liveStephen Hawking is one of the most influential thinkers of our time, an intellectual icon, known not only for the adventurousness of his ideas but also for the clarity with which he expresses them. Seeking to uncover the holy grail of science: the elusive Theory of Everything that lies at the heart of the cosmos, Professor Hawking takes us the cutting edge of theoretical physics, where truth is often stran...

A fierce storm sweeps Zamir and his cat Pepper Masalah away upon their ancient carpet. After flying far from home, they crash-land in the Arabian Peninsula.Pepper and Zam make a friend but it’s not enough to escape the local camel traders.How will they escape? Can they make the carpet fly again?Explore fantasy, friendship and daring escapades as Pepper and Zam take flight on a journey around the world.

Pepper Masalah’s flying carpet lands in Ancient Egypt where Pepper and Zam are taken to a temple full of cats by a girl called Tabia. Pepper is in danger as the people want to make her into a mummy as she is so special.To make it worse the carpet has floated away on the Nile and Pepper and Zam are stuck in time.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Thirteen extraordinary essays shed new light on the mystery of the universe—and on one of the most brilliant thinkers of our time.“[Hawking] sprinkles his explanations with a wry sense of humor and a keen awareness that the sciences today delve not only into the far reaches of the cosmos, but into the inner philosophical world as well.”—The New York Times Book ReviewIn his phenomenal bestseller ...

This is the inside account of the battle over the true nature of black holes—with nothing less than our understanding of the entire universe at stake.What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed that it did—and in doing so, put at risk everything we know about the fundamental laws of the universe. Leonard Susskind and Gerard ’t Hooft realized the threat and responded w...

In 2000, Martin Bojowald, then a twenty-seven-year-old post-doc at Pennsylvania State University, used a relatively new theory called loop quantum gravity—a cunning combination of Einstein’s theory of gravity with quantum mechanics—to create a simple model of the universe. Loop quantum cosmology was born, and with it, a theory that managed to do something even Einstein’s general theory of relativity had failed to do—illuminate the very birth of the universe.Ever since, loop quantum...

This is the story of a grand scientific quest: the quest for a unifying theory of nature—one that can explain forces as different as the cohesion inside the atom and the gravitational tug between the sun and the earth. Writing with dazzling elegance and clarity, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Weinberg retraces the steps that have led modern scientists from relativity theory and quantum mechanics to the notion of superstrings and the idea that our universe may coexist with others. Alo...