The Ninth Life of Louis Drax packs an irresistibly twisted wallop . . . An exhilarating, darkly inventive read. -Elle Now a major feature film starring Jamie Dornan and Aaron Paul Nine-year-old Louis Drax is a problem child: bright, precocious, deceitful, and dangerously accident-prone. Every year something violent seems to happen to him. His psychologist is baffled, and his mother lives in constant panic. He has always managed to survive-to land on his feet, like a cat. But cats have only nine lives, and Louis has used up eight, one for every year.. When he falls off a cliff during a picnic, the accident seems almost predestined. Louis miraculously survives-but the family has been shattered. Louis' father has vanished, his mother is in shock, and Louis lies in a deep coma from which he may never emerge. In a renowned coma clinic, a specialist tries to coax Louis back to consciousness. But the boy defies medical logic, startling the doctor out of his safe preconceptions, and drawing him inexorably into the dark heart of Louis' buried world. Only Louis holds the key to the mystery surrounding his fall-and he can't communicate. Or can he? The Ninth Life of Louis Drax is the story of a family falling apart, told in the vivid voices of its comatose son and Dr. Dannachet as he is drawn into the Draxes' circle. Full of astonishing twists and turns, this is a masterful tale of the secrets the human mind can hide.

The Ballad of Halo Jones meets Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers by way of 3:10 to Yuma; a clash of law and lawlessness, storytelling and truth in a headlong romp across the stars. After forty years of wreaking havoc across the galaxy, the outlaw Nine Lives – AKA Former General Gabriella Ortiz – has finally run out of lives. Shot down into a backwater at the system’s edge, she is rescued by Deputy Air Marshall Havemercy Grey. Hav is a true soul, trying to uphold what is right in the heedless wastes. Hav is determined to see justice done. And Hav could sure use that 20-million bounty... But escorting the most dangerous fugitive in the system across the stars is no easy task, especially when decades of fire and destruction are catching up with her, and every gutspill with a pistol wants that payday. So when Ortiz offers a deal – to keep them both alive, as long as Hav listens to the stories of her lives – Hav can't refuse. There's just one catch: everywhere they go, during every brawl and gunfight and explosive escape, people say the same thing – don't let her talk...

William, an old cat who has lived happily with an old woman, is given a chance to pick a new life for himself.

Proceedings from the ninth International Conference on Artificial Life; papers by scientists of many disciplines focusing on the principles of organization and applications of complex, life-like systems. Artificial Life is an interdisciplinary effort to investigate the fundamental properties of living systems through the simulation and synthesis of life-like processes. The young field brings a powerful set of tools to the study of how high-level behavior can arise in systems governed by simple rules of interaction. Some of the fundamental questions include: What are the principles of evolution, learning, and growth that can be understood well enough to simulate as an information process? Can robots be built faster and more cheaply by mimicking biology than by the product design process used for automobiles and airplanes? How can we unify theories from dynamical systems, game theory, evolution, computing, geophysics, and cognition? The field has contributed fundamentally to our understanding of life itself through computer models, and has led to novel solutions to complex real-world problems across high technology and human society. This elite biennial meeting has grown from a small workshop in Santa Fe to a major international conference. This ninth volume of the proceedings of the international A-life conference reflects the growing quality and impact of this interdisciplinary scientific community.

Good vs. Wicked. Willoughby vs. Darkmoore. And Eveline caught in the middle... She's spent her whole life on the outside, not just an outcast bullied for being an unwelcome child of both sides, but the law states she shouldn't even be allowed to live. Whatever compulsion has both matriarchs of her families on the fence about her existence hasn't done Eveline Willoughdark any favors. Can't they make up their minds already? Carving out a life as a private investigator serving everyone but her bloodlines hasn't been easy. When she's asked to investigate a curse from a ninth-life familiar dedicated to solving his former mistress's power loss, Eveline almost says no, sure she will wish she had. Yeah, fate obliges, having her stumbling on a body and enough intrigue to make her wonder--should she investigate after all or walk away and leave the families who abandoned her to whatever fate might bring? Find out in 9th Life Strife, book one of the Wicked Witch Case Files! KEYWORDS: paranormal cozy murder mystery, paranormal cozy mystery, cozy murder mystery, cozy mystery, murder mystery, cozy cat mystery, witch cozy mystery

An account of the trial, imprisonment and execution of Caryl Chessman.

Everything changes for a teenaged girl with a perfectly controlled life when she falls for the hot new first-ever interspecies transfer student, a pterodactyl named Pyke.