When Tom and Sandy visit the Apogee, the world's first space hotel, Tom begins to notice strange happenings and when the billionaire guest of the hotel goes missing, Tom suspects foul play.

What Tom's about to find is truly out of this world! It's the grand opening of APOGEE, the world's first space hotel, an orbital space station designed expressly for the tourist trade. As Swift Enterprises is a major investor in the project, and provided much of the necessary technology, Tom and Sandy have been invited to be among the first guests to visit! When they arrive at the APOGEE they experience weightlessness, learn about the high-tech nature of the hotel (including the robotic wait and cleaning staff), and play a game of zero-gravity badminton. But as Tom explores the ship he begins to notice some strange happenings. And when a billionaire guest of the hotel turns up missing,Tom suspects foul play....

The Hotel: Occupied Space explores the hotel as both symbol and space through the concept of “occupancy.” By examining the various ways in which the hotel is manifested in art, photography, and film, this book offers a timely critique of a crucial modern space. As a site of occupancy, the hotel has provided continued creative inspiration for artists from Monet and Hopper, to genre filmmakers like Hitchcock and Sofia Coppola. While the rich symbolic importance of the hotel means that the visual arts and cinema are especially fruitful, the hotel’s varied structural purposes, as well as its historical and political uses, also provide ample ground for new and timely discussion. In addition to inspiring painters, photographers, and filmmakers, the hotel has played an important role during wartime, and more recently as a site of accommodation for displaced people, whether they be detainees or refugees seeking sanctuary. Shedding light on the diverse ways that the hotel functions as a structure, Robert A. Davidson argues that the hotel is both a fundamental modern space and a constantly adaptable structure, dependent on the circumstances in which it appears and plays a part.

In Boyle Heights, gateway to East Los Angeles, sits the 1889 landmark “Hotel Mariachi,” where musicians have lived and gathered on the adjacent plaza for more than half a century. This book is a photographic and ethnographic study of the mariachis, Mariachi Plaza de Los Angeles, and the neighborhood. The newly restored brick hotel embodies a triumphant struggle of preservation against all odds, and its origins open a portal into the Mexican pueblo’s centuries-old multiethnic past. Miguel Gandert’s compelling black-and-white images document the hotel and the vibrant mariachi community of the “Garibaldi Plaza of Los Angeles.” The history of Hotel Mariachi is personal to Catherine López Kurland, a descendant of the entrepreneur who built it, and whose family’s Californio roots will fascinate anyone interested in early Los Angeles or Mexican American history. Enrique Lamadrid explores mariachi music, poetry, and fiestas, and the part Los Angeles played in their development, delving into the origins of the music and offering a deep account of mariachi poetics. Hotel Mariachi is a unique lens through which to view the history and culture of Mexicano California, and provides touching insights into the challenging lives of mariachi musicians.

Sandeep Sanghavi, the mixed-race son of an Indian businesswoman and a famous American astronomer lives a nomadic albeit mundane life traveling the country with his mother's hotel consulting firm. His life becomes more interesting when various lost objects suddenly begin to reappear. Then a stranger calls and claims responsibility for the returned objects in exchange for an introduction to Sandeep’s astronomer father, the rebellious and eccentric Van Ray, who has no phone, email or qualms about having abandoned his son twenty years ago. Van Ray shows up broke with his pregnant ex-wife astronaut in tow, claiming to have discovered a big secret that will change their lives forever; a new discovery guaranteed to change him from “science famous” to “famous famous.” With his family together for the first time in years, Sandeep must juggle his father’s scientific search, his mother’s failing business and the tension of having family all together for the first time in decades.

A noted space expert explains the current revolution in spaceflight, where it leads, and why we need it. A new space race has begun. But the rivals in this case are not superpowers but competing entrepreneurs. These daring pioneers are creating a revolution in spaceflight that promises to transform the near future. Astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin spells out the potential of these new developments in an engrossing narrative that is visionary yet grounded by a deep understanding of the practical challenges. Fueled by the combined expertise of the old aerospace industry and the talents of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, spaceflight is becoming cheaper. The new generation of space explorers has already achieved a major breakthrough by creating reusable rockets. Zubrin foresees more rapid innovation, including global travel from any point on Earth to another in an hour or less; orbital hotels; moon bases with incredible space observatories; human settlements on Mars, the asteroids, and the moons of the outer planets; and then, breaking all limits, pushing onward to the stars. Zubrin shows how projects that sound like science fiction can actually become reality. But beyond the how, he makes an even more compelling case for why we need to do this--to increase our knowledge of the universe, to make unforeseen discoveries on new frontiers, to harness the natural resources of other planets, to safeguard Earth from stray asteroids, to ensure the future of humanity by expanding beyond its home base, and to protect us from being catastrophically set against each other by the false belief that there isn't enough for all.

Hotel Modernity explores the impact of corporate space on the construction and texture of modern fiction and film. It centres the hotel and corporate space as key sites of modern experience and culture. Examining architectural and financial records, hotel trade journals, travel journalism, advertisements and cinematic and literary representations, it charts the rise of hotel culture from 1870 to 1939. From Henry James to Elizabeth Bowen and Charlie Chaplin, from the ecstatic Waldorf to the ephemeral Ritz, from upstate New York to the Italian Riviera, the book considers the effects of hotel space on bodies, selves and communities.