Showing results by narrator "Michael Braun" in All Categories

Nvidia is the darling of the age of artificial intelligence: the company’s chips are powering the generative-AI revolution, and demand is insatiable. For all the current interest and attention, however, Nvidia is not of our time. Founded more than three decades ago in a Denny’s in East San Jose, for years it was known primarily in the then-niche world of computer gaming. In fact, the company’s leather-jacketed leader, Jensen Huang, is the longest-serving CEO in an industry marked by near constant turmoil and failure.

Zero, Nyx, and the other Pathfinder colonists have adjusted to life on Kaguya. But Earth has built much faster starships-the Dreamcatcher arrives 10 years early, and the Stargazer arrives so early it actually got there before the Pathfinder did! Now the Stargazer is a lost shipwreck, and the race is on to find it, and who should show up looking for it but Nyx's dangerous family: Big Mama, Jim, and Kratt. Nyx and Zero will face kidnappers, pirates, shipwrecks, warlords, dragons, and maybe a new ally or two on their way to save the day once again.

As the head of a prestigious movie studio for nearly two decades, Andy Westfield has had every conceivable professional luxury: a stunning office on the forty-fourth floor, a loyal assistant who can all but read his mind, access to a private jet and company cars. The son of Hollywood royalty, Andy always put his career before his marriage, and now, besides his daughter and young grandchildren, it’s the only thing he truly loves. But then Andy’s world is upended. The studio is sold, and the buyer’s son demands the top seat. Out of a job and humiliated, Andy spirals.

Eileen was happy to set aside her own dreams to raise a family with her husband, Paul. Together they built an ordinary life in a Connecticut town, the perfect place for their kids to grow up. But when Eileen discovers that Paul's late nights in the city are hiding an affair with a younger woman, she begins to question all those years of sacrifice and compromise. On the brink of 40, is it too late to start over? Meanwhile, as Paul is thrust back into the role of suburban fatherhood, his girlfriend, Olivia, is in Manhattan, struggling in the shadow of her mother, a famous actress....

Faith Ferguson is New York's most in-demand wedding planner, an arbiter of taste for elegant affairs, lavish ceremonies, and exclusive fêtes. She appreciates a simple celebration as much as a dazzling event, for she knows that a dream wedding is not necessarily the most expensive one. As much as Faith enjoys her work, her two failed engagements leave her with no desire to get married herself. She finds fulfillment in her close relationship with her twin sister, Hope, her role as a mentor for her assistant, Violet, and her career.

In 1974, Dennis Lynn Rader stalked and murdered a family of four in Wichita, Kansas. Since adolescence, he had read about serial killers and imagined becoming one. Soon after killing the family, he murdered a young woman and then another, until he had 10 victims. He named himself “B.T.K.” (bind, torture, kill) and wrote notes that terrorized the city. He remained on the loose for 30 years.

It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in Sørlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar; the journalist Jostein is out on the town; and his wife, Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is.

Think you've had a bad day at work? Marcus definitely takes the cake. First, he had a horrible customer during his shift. Then he got fired by his boss. And after that, he got shot to death during a robbery. To top it all off, he awakened within the body of a weak and strange creature in a fantasy world full of deadly monsters. And that's just Monday!

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

Molly McKenzie's bright personality and on-trend fashion and beauty advice have earned her an impressive social-media following, as well as a shiny monthly paycheck. When her manager-turned-boyfriend tells her of an upcoming audition to host a makeover show for America's underprivileged youth, all her dreams finally seem to be coming true. There's just one catch: She has little experience interacting with people in need.

Oscar-winning actress Ardith Law is a Hollywood icon. Radiant at sixty-two, she is the epitome of glamour and a highly respected artist. But her success has come at a price: she has a strained relationship with her daughter, Morgan, who at thirty-eight still blames Ardith for putting her career before being a mother. Morgan is a successful plastic surgeon in New York City—and the distance from Ardith's Bel Air mansion is not lost on either of them. Ardith became a single mother when Morgan was seven, after her unfaithful husband died in a helicopter accident.

Over the last 20 years, New York City has been convulsed by enormous challenges: terrorist attack, blackout, hurricane, recession, pandemic. New Yorkers is a grand portrait of the irrepressible city and a hymn to the vitality and resilience of its people. Craig Taylor spent years meeting New Yorkers - rich and poor, old and young, native and immigrant - and getting them to share indelible true tales.

Antonia Adams is the product of a loveless marriage between a beautiful young model and an aristocrat. As a child, she is abandoned in the abyss that yawns between them, blamed by her mother, ignored by her father, and neglected by both. Unprotected and unloved, she learns that the only way to feel safe is to hide from the dangers around her, drawing as little attention as possible to herself, to be "invisible".

Collected together for the first time, this action-packed omnibus is filled with secrets, lies, and the silver smile of the deadly Xenomorphs. Across three epic novels, see how the Xenomorph doctrine of Weyland-Yutani and Venture is a short and angry road to hell.

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017.

When Tom is invited to the reading of a will of a great-uncle he’s never heard of, there’s no way to know what to expect. But on the long list of possible things to inherit, a travelling carnival ghost train is the very last on the list. To get his full $10 million inheritance, all Tom has to do is run the antique ride until his 18th birthday. Easy. Except for a strange caped-creep he’s never met, who’s trying to con him out of the money...and the actual ghosts and ghouls who call the ride home.

Fourteen-year-old Tom Röschenberg has inherited a ghost train and its members of the undead are very lively! And it's a suspenseful time for our young Ghostsitter: Vlarad the vampire has consumed too much hamster blood and has now turned into one, and Wombie the Zombie's hundredth deathday is coming right up. But the ritual for celebrating Wombie's deathday is no easy task: It requires a voodoo dagger, a magic ring, and an enchanted cauldron, and if Tom and his undead friends don't perform the ritual in time, Wombie will turn to dust.

Spencer Brooke always knew she was destined to be CEO of her grandfather’s business—the most respected and luxurious department store in New York City. Brooke’s has been at the center of every happy memory she has, but it hasn’t been an easy journey. Seven years after her father’s death, her life is very different from the days when she walked through the store with her grandfather as a young girl. She may be the owner of Brooke’s, but she’s also now a divorced single mother of twin boys.

With the failure of Hadley's Hope, Weyland-Yutani has suffered a devastating setback - the loss of the Aliens they aggressively sought to exploit. Yet there's a reason the Company has risen to the top of the food chain. True to form, they have a redundancy already in place: the facility known as "The Cold Forge". Remote station RB-232 has become their greatest asset in weaponizing the Xenomorphs. However, when Dorian Sudler is sent to RB-232 to assess their progress, he discovers that there's a spy aboard - someone who doesn't necessarily act in the company's best interests.

In the fourth installment of Germany’s popular Ghostsitter series, famous best-selling author Tiffany Shuster wants to promote her latest vampire romance novel, so she decides Tom’s Ghost Train is the best place for a photo shoot. But when she and Vlarad the vampire suddenly disappear, Tom and his team of monsters must investigate and rescue them. All leads seem to point toward rival carnival attraction Zoracz's House of Mirrors. Will Tom and his friends find Vlarad and Tiffany before they are accused of kidnapping?