"Good SciFi comedy is as rare as hen's teeth. This was a fun read." Kelly Frank is EarthCent's top diplomat on Union Station, but her job description has always been a bit vague. The pay is horrible and she's in hock up to her ears for her furniture, which is likely to end up in a corridor because she's behind on rent for her room. Sometimes she has to wonder if the career she has put ahead of her personal life for fifteen years is worth it. When Kelly receives a gift subscription to the dating service that's rumored to be powered by the same benevolent artificial intelligence that runs the huge station, she decides to swallow her pride and give it a shot. But as her dates go from bad to worse, she can only hope that the supposedly omniscient AI is planning a happy ending.

Start series with the first book, Date Night on Union StationThe first carnival to take place on Union Station since humanity joined the galactic community is coming, and the ambassadors of the different species are all entered in the election to become Carnival King or Queen. It's not a job that Kelly wants, and fortunately for her, the humans get a late start at electioneering.

Read Double Living first! After spending their lives in a closed society of gamers and hackers, the anarchists from Bits seize the opportunity to explore new options on an alien colony ship contracted by EarthCent to visit a circuit of sovereign human communities. The members of Mouser's gaming group rebuild their lives on Flower, but not everybody is happy abiding by the rules. Can a group of independent people adapt to being manipulated by alien artificial intelligence for the greater good, or will they split up an go their own ways. Bits of Flower and Double Living both take place on the sentient colony ship, Flower, with overlapping timelines and characters. But Bits of Flower ends second, so it contains spoilers for Double Living.

Science super-sleuths Drake Doyle and Nell Fossey are back—this time in a never-before-published addition to the popular series! They’ve got an exciting collection of cases, too: Are ghosts and ghouls keeping Edgar Glum awake? Have aliens invaded Mossy Swamp? What’s the crooked game everyone’s losing at the carnival? And why is the town bridge going bananas? Kids will have fun following the clues—and learning about such real scientific principles as amplification, ecosystems, magnetic fields, and more. Plus, budding Doyles and Fosseys will find actual experiments to try!

The Carnival Campaign tells the fascinating story of the pivotal 1840 presidential campaign of General William Henry Harrison and John Tyler—"Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." Pulitzer Prize–nominated former Wall Street Journal reporter Ronald Shafer relates in a colorful, entertaining style how the campaign marked a series of "firsts" that changed politicking forever: the first campaign as mass entertainment; the first "image campaign," in which strategists portrayed Harrison as a poor man living in a log cabin sipping hard cider (he lived in a mansion and drank only sweet cider); the first time big money was a factor; the first time women could openly participate; and more. While today's electorate has come to view campaigns that emphasize style over substance as a matter of course, this book shows voters how it all began.

This provocative history of the largest annual Chinese celebration in the United States—the Chinese New Year parade and beauty pageant in San Francisco—opens a new window onto the evolution of one Chinese American community over the second half of the twentieth century. In a vividly detailed account that incorporates many different voices and perspectives, Chiou-ling Yeh explores the origins of these public events and charts how, from their beginning in 1953, they developed as a result of Chinese business community ties with American culture, business, and politics. What emerges is a fascinating picture of how an ethnic community shaped and was shaped by transnational and national politics, economics, ethnic movements, feminism, and queer activism.