Men can’t be wizards. Everyone knows that. But everyone is wrong. Conryu has his life all planned out. Then the wizard exam arrives. He passes. The first man ever. His carefully laid plans die in an instant. His hopes for a simple life gone forever. Some consider him a monster. Others a threat. Can Conryu survive long enough to make it to wizard school? It’s going to be a long summer. Try The Impossible Wizard for free.

How the scientific study of magic reveals intriguing—and often unsettling—insights into the mysteries of the human mind. What do we see when we watch a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat or read a person's mind? We are captivated by an illusion; we applaud the fact that we have been fooled. Why do we enjoy experiencing what seems clearly impossible, or at least beyond our powers of explanation? In Experiencing the Impossible, Gustav Kuhn examines the psychological processes that underpin our experience of magic. Kuhn, a psychologist and a magician, reveals the intriguing—and often unsettling—insights into the human mind that the scientific study of magic provides.Magic, Kuhn explains, creates a cognitive conflict between what we believe to be true (for example, a rabbit could not be in that hat) and what we experience (a rabbit has just come out of that hat!). Drawing on the latest psychological, neurological, and philosophical research, he suggests that misdirection is at the heart of all magic tricks, and he offers a scientific theory of misdirection. He explores, among other topics, our propensity for magical thinking, the malleability of our perceptual experiences, forgetting and misremembering, free will and mind control, and how magic is applied outside entertaiment—the use of illusion in human-computer interaction, politics, warfare, and elsewhere. We may be surprised to learn how little of the world we actually perceive, how little we can trust what we see and remember, and how little we are in charge of our thoughts and actions. Exploring magic, Kuhn illuminates the complex—and almost magical—mechanisms underlying our daily activities.

Book Three of the Magic Kingdom of Landover Series It all began when the half-able wizard Questor Thews announced that finally he could restore the Court Scribe Abernathy to human form. It was his spell that had turned Abernathy into a Wheaten Terrier—though with hands and able to talk. All went well—until the wizard breathed the magic dust of his spell and suddenly sneezed. Then, where Abernathy had stood, there was only a bottle containing a particularly evil imp. It had been in the collection of Michael Ard Rhi, former King of Landover, now exiled to Earth. Abernathy must now be a part of that collection! High Lord Ben Holiday set forth for Earth, taking his green but beautiful love, Willow, with him. Unfortunately, they were long in returning. And without the soil in which to root as a tree at times, Willow could not long survive. That left it up to Questor Thews to save them. Grimly he set out to seek help, knowing himself to be incompetent. And to make things worse, the imp had escaped and sought the help of the evil witch Nightshade, now back from exile in Faerie. Questor's only idea seemed impossible, but . . .

DIVDIVComputer programmer Joanna Sheraton must rescue an imprisoned wizard to save the universe from destruction/divDIV /divDIVThere was a time when Joanna Sheraton knew nothing of the Void. She was an ordinary computer programmer, toiling in a cubicle in air-conditioned Southern California comfort, unaware that sinister forces had penetrated her universe. But from across the interdimensional divide, an evil mage had put in motion a scheme for eternal life, by transferring himself into a computer that feeds on Earth’s life force. Called upon to help by the wizard Antryg, Joanna could do nothing more than delay. At the end of her first sojourn across the Void, Antryg was imprisoned and their task seemed hopeless./divDIV /divDIVNow she must depart from Earth once more, to rescue Antryg and save humanity. She is friendless, and the dark mage’s forces hound her every step. But a good hacker is not easily deterred./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Barbara Hambly, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection./divDIV /div /div

“The story of one of the most prolific, independent, and iconoclastic inventors of this century…fascinating.”—Scientific American Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), credited as the inspiration for radio, robots, and even radar, has been called the patron saint of modern electricity. Based on original material and previously unavailable documents, this acclaimed book is the definitive biography of the man considered by many to be the founding father of modern electrical technology. Among Tesla’s creations were the channeling of alternating current, fluorescent and neon lighting, wireless telegraphy, and the giant turbines that harnessed the power of Niagara Falls. This essential biography is illustrated with sixteen pages of photographs, including the July 20, 1931, Time magazine cover for an issue celebrating the inventor’s career. “A deep and comprehensive biography of a great engineer of early electrical science--likely to become the definitive biography. Highly recommended.”--American Association for the Advancement of Science “Seifer's vivid, revelatory, exhaustively researched biography rescues pioneer inventor Nikola Tesla from cult status and restores him to his rightful place as a principal architect of the modern age.” --Publishers Weekly Starred Review “[Wizard] brings the many complex facets of [Tesla's] personal and technical life together in to a cohesive whole....I highly recommend this biography of a great technologist.” --A.A. Mullin, U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense Command, COMPUTING REVIEWS “[Along with A Beautiful Mind] one of the five best biographies written on the brilliantly disturbed.”--WALL STREET JOURNAL “Wizard is a compelling tale presenting a teeming, vivid world of science, technology, culture and human lives.”-

Thirteen-year-old Gabriel Salvador has dreams about the future and his dreams always come true. When he dreams one night that he will drown, he knows upon waking it is only a matter of time before his dream becomes reality. Plucked from the timeline of history at the moment of his death, Gabriel becomes an apprentice time mage and part of an elite team of wizards who travel throughout history to fight the War of Time and Magic. Victorian London, the Aztec temples of 1487, the Greek island of Samos in 320 BCE, Scotland in the Middle Ages, and the battle fields of Alexander the Great are only some of the adventures in time that await Gabriel as he learns to become a time mage and joins the battle to protect the timeline of history in THE WIZARD OF TIME.

From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493--an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world. In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups--Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity faces--food, water, energy, climate change--grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.