Pills and Starships
Title | Pills and Starships PDF eBook |
Author | Lydia Millet |
Publisher | Akashic Books |
Pages | 210 |
Release | 2014-05-19 |
Genre | Young Adult Fiction |
ISBN | 1617752843 |
A teenage girl and her brother fight for their family’s future in a world devastated by climate change: “Thrillingly scary . . . There is much here to enjoy” (The Washington Post). In a dystopian future brought about by global warming, seventeen-year-old Nat and her hacker brother, Sam, have come by ship to the Big Island of Hawaii for their parents’ Final Week. The few Americans who still live well also live long—so long that older adults bow out not by natural means but by buying death contracts from the corporates who now run the disintegrating society, keeping the people happy through a constant diet of “pharma.” Nat’s family is spending their pharma-guided last week at a luxury resort complex called the Twilight Island Acropolis. Deeply conflicted about her parents’ decision, Nat spends her time keeping a record of everything her family does in the company-supplied diary that came in the hotel’s care package. While Nat attempts to come to terms with her impending parentless future, Sam begins to discover cracks in the corporates’ agenda—and eventually rebels against the company his parents have hired to handle their last days. Now Nat will have to choose a side, in this moving and suspenseful novel by a National Book Award–nominated author. Winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People “A deep read, but fast; it lingers in your mind long after it’s been read.” —New York Journal of Books “A brilliant dystopian novel . . . Beautifully written, dark but ultimately hopeful.” —The Buffalo News “The details are terrific . . . and as the tension mounts it becomes a real page turner.” —The Independent “Vivid, moving . . . Will attract mature teen fans of Divergent, Hunger Games, and similar apocalyptic survival stories.” —Midwest Book Review
Love in Infant Monkeys
Title | Love in Infant Monkeys PDF eBook |
Author | Lydia Millet |
Publisher | Catapult |
Pages | 106 |
Release | 2009-08-27 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 1593763816 |
Animals and celebrities share unusual relationships in these hilarious satirical stories by an award-winning contemporary writer. Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants—all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture in a wildly inventive collection of stories that “evoke the spectrum of human feeling and also its limits” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review). While in so much fiction animals exist as symbols of good and evil or as author stand-ins, they represent nothing but themselves in Millet's ruthlessly lucid prose. Implacable in their actions, the animals in Millet’s spiraling fictional riffs and flounces show up their humans as bloated with foolishness yet curiously vulnerable, as in a tour-de-force, Kabbalah-infused interior monologue by Madonna after she shoots a pheasant on her Scottish estate. Millet treads newly imaginative territory with these charismatic tales. “These incredibly crafted stories, with their rare intelligence, humor, and empathy, describe the furious collision of nature and science, man and animal, everyday citizen and celebrity, fact and fiction. Lydia Millet’s writing sparkles with urgent brilliance.” —Joe Meno
Fight No More
Title | Fight No More PDF eBook |
Author | Lydia Millet |
Publisher | National Geographic Books |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2018-06-19 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0393635481 |
Twelve interlocking stories set in Los Angeles describe a broken family through the homes they inhabit. In her first story collection since Love in Infant Monkeys, which became a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Lydia Millet explores what it means to be home. Nina, a lonely real-estate broker estranged from her only relative, is at the center of a web of stories connecting fractured communities and families. She moves through the houses of L.A.’s wealthy elite and finds men and women both crass and tender, vicious and desperate. With wit and intellect, Millet offers profound insight into human behavior from the ordinary to the bizarre: strong-minded girls are beset by the helpless, myopic executives are tormented by their employees, and beastly men do beastly things. Fresh off the critical triumph of Sweet Lamb of Heaven (longlisted for the National Book Award), Millet is pioneering a new kind of satire—compassionate toward its victims and hilariously brutal in its depiction of modern American life.
The Mote in God's Eye
Title | The Mote in God's Eye PDF eBook |
Author | Larry Niven |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Pages | 596 |
Release | 1974 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0671741926 |
Science fiction-roman.
The Fires Beneath the Sea
Title | The Fires Beneath the Sea PDF eBook |
Author | Lydia Millet |
Publisher | Small Beer Press |
Pages | 257 |
Release | 2011-07-26 |
Genre | Juvenile Fiction |
ISBN | 1931520410 |
Cara's mother has disappeared. Her father isn't talking about it. Her big brother Max is hiding behind his iPod, and her genius little brother Jackson is busy studying the creatures he collects from the beach. But when a watery specter begins to haunt the family's Cape Cod home, Cara and her brothers realize that their scientist mother may not be who they thought she was—and that the world has much stranger, much older inhabitants than they had imagined. With help from Cara's best friend Hayley, the three embark on a quest that will lead them from the Cape's hidden, ancient places to a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea. They're soon on the front lines of an ancient battle between good and evil, with the terrifying "pouring man" close on their heels. Packed with memorable characters and thrilling imagery, Lydia Millet weaves a page-turning adventure even as she brings the seaside world of Cape Cod to magical life. The first in a series of books about the Sykes children, The Fires Beneath the Sea is a rip-cracking middle-grade novel that will make perfect beach reading—for readers of any age! Lydia Millet is the author of six previous novels, including My Happy Life, which won the 2003 PEN-USA Award for Fiction, and Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, which was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Her short story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
The Age of Em
Title | The Age of Em PDF eBook |
Author | Robin Hanson |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 522 |
Release | 2016 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 0198754620 |
Robots may one day rule the world, but what is a robot-ruled Earth like? Many think that the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or "ems." Robin Hanson draws on decades of expertise in economics, physics, and computer science to paint a detailed picture of this next great era in human (and machine) evolution - the age of em.
How the Dead Dream
Title | How the Dead Dream PDF eBook |
Author | Lydia Millet |
Publisher | Catapult |
Pages | 241 |
Release | 2024-10-22 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 1593767900 |
A young Los Angeles real estate developer consumed by power and political ambitions finds his orderly, upwardly mobile life thrown into chaos by the sudden appearance of his nutty mother, who's been deserted by T.'s now out–of–the–closet father After his mother's suicide attempt and two other deaths, T. finds himself increasingly estranged from his latest project: a retirement community in the middle of the California desert. As he juggles family, business, and social responsibilities, T. begins to nurture a curious obsession with vanishing species. Soon he's living a double life, building sprawling subdivisions by day and breaking into zoos at night to be near the animals. A series of calamities forces T. to a tropical island, where he takes a Conrad–esque journey up a river into the remote jungle. Millet's devastating wit, psychological acuity, and remarkable empathy for flawed humankind contend with her vision of a world slowly murdering itself.