Download or read book MEG Primal Waters written by Steve Alten and published by Forge Books. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Steve Alten's Meg: Primal Waters continues his thrilling action adventure series--the basis for the feature film The Meg, starring Jason Statham as Jonas Taylor. Eighteen years have passed since Angel, the Megalodon shark broke free of the Tanaka Lagoon and returned to the Mariana Trench. Meanwhile, Jonas Taylor-adventurer, has become Jonas Taylor, middle-aged father of two, overwhelmed by mountains of bills and the daily strife of raising a family. But life is about to change. A Hollywood television producer wants Jonah to join his new survival series: Daredevils. For the next six weeks, two teams of crazy daredevils on a South Pacific Ocean voyage on-board a replica of a Spanish Galleon will try to outperform one another in front of the cameras. Jonas needs the money, and the job seems easy enough-doing color commentary. But behind the scenes, someone else is pulling the strings. And before it's over, Jonas, Terry, and Mac will again come face to face with the most dangerous creatures ever to stalk the Earth. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book The Circle written by Dave Eggers and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our lives—a “compulsively readable parable for the 21st century” (Vanity Fair). When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

Download or read book The Nature of Fear written by Daniel T. Blumstein and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Open Letters Review Best Book of the Year A leading expert in animal behavior takes us into the wild to better understand and manage our fears. Fear, honed by millions of years of natural selection, kept our ancestors alive. Whether by slithering away, curling up in a ball, or standing still in the presence of a predator, humans and other animals have evolved complex behaviors in order to survive the hazards the world presents. But, despite our evolutionary endurance, we still have much to learn about how to manage our response to danger. For more than thirty years, Daniel Blumstein has been studying animals’ fear responses. His observations lead to a firm conclusion: fear preserves security, but at great cost. A foraging flock of birds expends valuable energy by quickly taking flight when a raptor appears. And though the birds might successfully escape, they leave their food source behind. Giant clams protect their valuable tissue by retracting their mantles and closing their shells when a shadow passes overhead, but then they are unable to photosynthesize, losing the capacity to grow. Among humans, fear is often an understandable and justifiable response to sources of threat, but it can exact a high toll on health and productivity. Delving into the evolutionary origins and ecological contexts of fear across species, The Nature of Fear considers what we can learn from our fellow animals—from successes and failures. By observing how animals leverage alarm to their advantage, we can develop new strategies for facing risks without panic.

Download or read book The Gone Away World written by Nick Harkaway and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-09-02 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilarious, action-packed look at the apocalypse that combines a touching tale of friendship, a thrilling war story, and an all out kung-fu infused mission to save the world. “A flat-out ferociously good novel.... Reads like a surrealist smashup of Pynchon and Pratchett, Vonnegut and Heller.” —Austin Chronicle Gonzo Lubitch and his best friend have been inseparable since birth. They grew up together, they studied kung-fu together, they rebelled in college together, and they fought in the Go Away War together. Now, with the world in shambles and dark, nightmarish clouds billowing over the wastelands, they have been tapped for an incredibly perilous mission. But they quickly realize that this assignment is more complex than it seems, and before it is over they will have encountered everything from mimes, ninjas, and pirates to one ultra-sinister mastermind, whose only goal is world domination.

Download or read book Predator Upon a Flower written by Douglass H. Morse and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-06 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The crab spider is an ideal species on which to test basic questions of lifetime fitness, but ecologists had previously lacked experimental data needed to comprehensively test individuals making foraging decisions. This book recounts Morse's influential experimental discoveries, moving from individuals to communities to ecosystems.

Download or read book Meg written by Steve Alten and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 1997 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If Michael Crichton and Clive Cussler were to combine their talents to create the ultimate summer read, MEG would be the result--a jaw-dropping and terrifying page-turner of the deep. On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean's deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he's sure he saw but still can't prove exists--"Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds. Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life. With a Ph.D. in paleontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub. Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he's never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time. Steve Alten holds a master's degree in sports medicine and has a Ph.D. from Temple University. An avid amateur oceanographer, Alten has been studying Megalodons for over ten years. He lives with his wife and three children in South Florida. "MEG is his first novel.

Download or read book Engineering Animals written by Mark Denny and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-16 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The alarm calls of birds make them difficult for predators to locate, while the howl of wolves and the croak of bullfrogs are designed to carry across long distances. From an engineer's perspective, how do such specialized adaptations among living things really work? And how does physics constrain evolution, channeling it in particular directions? Writing with wit and a richly informed sense of wonder, Denny and McFadzean offer an expert look at animals as works of engineering, each exquisitely adapted to a specific manner of survival, whether that means spinning webs or flying across continents or hunting in the dark-or writing books. This particular book, containing more than a hundred illustrations, conveys clearly, for engineers and nonengineers alike, the physical principles underlying animal structure and behavior. Pigeons, for instance-when understood as marvels of engineering-are flying remote sensors: they have wideband acoustical receivers, hi-res optics, magnetic sensing, and celestial navigation. Albatrosses expend little energy while traveling across vast southern oceans, by exploiting a technique known to glider pilots as dynamic soaring. Among insects, one species of fly can locate the source of a sound precisely, even though the fly itself is much smaller than the wavelength of the sound it hears. And that big-brained, upright Great Ape? Evolution has equipped us to figure out an important fact about the natural world: that there is more to life than engineering, but no life at all without it.

Download or read book Lost Memory of Skin written by Russell Banks and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone and The Sweet Hereafter returns with a very original, riveting mystery about a young outcast, and a contemporary tale of guilt and redemption. The perfect convergence of writer and subject, Lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion. Suspended in a modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the centre of Russell Banks's uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to go near where children might gather. He takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders. Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent. Enter the Professor, a university sociologist of enormous size and intellect who finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research. But when the Professor's past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men's relationship shifts. Banks has long been one of our most acute and insightful novelists. Lost Memory of Skin is a masterful work of fiction that unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical.

Download or read book Concealing Coloration in Animals written by Judy Diamond and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Color can attract mates, intimidate enemies, and distract predators. But it can also conceal animals from detection. It is an adaptation to the visual features of the environment but also to the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of other organisms. Judy Diamond and Alan Bond reveal factors at work in the evolution of concealing coloration.

Download or read book Athens of America written by John Ross Jr. and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ATHENS OF AMERICA: A Play in Two Acts with and Epilogue is inspired by and loosely based upon, Il giaco delle parti (Rules of the Game) by Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936). Set in a popular Italian neighborhood simply known as: Boston’s North End, Athens of America explores marital betrayal, worshipful jealousy and boyhood rivalry. Midst Emily Dickenson, foreboding Latin phrases, the paranormal and pious ritual, this new work unites the immortal leitmotifs of classic Pirandellian drama. Here, illusion, hope, individualism and psychological exploitation meet head-on with Jim Morrison, NASA, art galleries and the meticulous niceties of gourmet cooking. The play’s entire ensemble is persistently gripped by the trials of bewildered identities, contrived fantasies and the outcomes of their own distorted self-images. In this new play, we immediately recognize how oftentimes our own sense of self may solely exist in relation to others and their own premeditated and controlling cosmologies. Each character is habitually trapped by shifting facets of overwhelming desire, ones shrouding themselves in a consuming abyss of delusion, deceit and duplicity. This is a play of verbal pretext, ominous revelation and ultimate tragic vengeance. * * * * * * * * * A lesser known moniker for the city Boston is “The Athens of America”, used mainly in literary circles during the first half of the 20th Century. One of the alleged sources is to be found in a letter written in 1764 by Samuel Adams (along with many other suspected sources of imprecise origin.) * * * * * * * * * “Just to be in Boston, in Cambridge, on a Monday night was very horrifying to me. It frightens me . . . All the stores closing up by 5 or 6, coffeehouses being open maybe until 11, just the sense that the world shuts down and you're left with yourself.” –Ann Douglas

Download or read book The Fruit the Tree and the Serpent written by Lynne A. Isbell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global prominence of snakes in religion, myth, and folklore underscores our deep connection to them—but why, when few of us have firsthand experience? The answer, Isbell suggests, lies in snakes’ singular impact on primate evolution; predation pressure from snakes is ultimately responsible for the superior vision and large brains of primates.

Download or read book Sixpence and Selkies written by Tilly Wallace and published by Tilly Wallace. This book was released on 2021-04-09 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heart as lonely as the ocean… Hannah and Wycliff arrive at his ancestral estate in Dorset as tragedy strikes the coastal village. A young woman has lost her life to the tempestuous ocean, but only Hannah suspects the woman’s death is anything but a horrible accident. As Hannah learns more about life in the closeknit community, she discovers two other women lost their lives to the sea. Or did they? A rift grows between the young couple, as Wycliff refuses to believe another hand was responsible for the deaths. With her husband consumed by the needs of the long neglected estate, Hannah is left to her own devices and finds herself walking the same lonely path as the dead women. Can Hannah and Wycliff heal the chasm in their relationship, or will Hannah succumb to the call of the ocean…?

Download or read book Asian Honey Bees written by Benjamin P. Oldroyd and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The familiar European hive bee, Apis mellifera, has long dominated honey bee research. But in the last 15 years, teams in China, Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand began to shift focus to the indigenous Asian honey bees. Benjamin Oldroyd, well known for his work on the genetics and evolution of worker sterility, has teamed with Siriwat Wongsiri, a pioneer of the study of bees in Thailand, to provide a comparative work synthesizing the rapidly expanding Asian honey bee literature. After introducing the species, the authors review evolution and speciation, division of labor, communication, and nest defense. They underscore the pressures colonies face from pathogens, parasites, and predators--including man--and detail the long and amazing history of the honey hunt. This book provides a cornerstone for future investigations on these species, insights into the evolution across species, and a direction for conservation efforts to protect these keystone species of Asia's tropical forests.

Download or read book Out Of Control written by Kevin Kelly and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-04-30 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of Control chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the machines and systems that drive our economy are so complex and autonomous as to be indistinguishable from living things.

Download or read book Jirvania written by Jan Anderegg and published by Gatekeeper Press. This book was released on 2021-05-10 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jack thought he was an ordinary boy, until he found a dragon egg, and befriended the beautiful dragon, Julu, who introduced him to his true home, the magical world of Jirvania, birthplace of all imagination. As future Guardian of The Great Library, Jack must change the story to save Jirvania from the evil creatures intent on destroying imagination, but how? With his friends, he sets out to find the answer but each action he takes causes a ripple effect and time is running out. Soon the black hole of emptiness will swallow both our worlds. No pressure Jack, but you’re our only hope! Jirvania, Book 2 in the Julu series, is perfect for readers of all ages who love to pick up a book and escape to a different world.

Download or read book The Trench written by Steve Alten and published by Pinnacle Books. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Master of suspense Steve Alten always takes readers to the edge with his non-stop, adrenaline-charged novels. Just in time for the movie, this new edition of his New York Times and USA Today bestselling sequel to MEG shows just how deep fear can run when you don’t know what lurks beneath the surface… Its appetite is ravenous. Its teeth, scalpel-sharp. For the first time, the captive 20-ton Megalodon shark has tasted human blood, and it wants more… On the other side of the world, in the silent depths of the ocean, lies the Marianas Trench, where the Megalodon has spawned since the dawn of time. Paleobiologist Jonas Taylor once dared to enter this perilous cavern. He alone faced a Megalodon shark and cut its heart out. Now, as the body count rises and the horror of a monster’s attack grips the California coast, Jonas must begin the hunt again, and return to the waking nightmare of…

Download or read book Manners and Monsters written by Tilly Wallace and published by Tilly Wallace. This book was released on with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lady never reveals the true extent of her decay... Hannah Miles lives a quiet existence, helping her parents conduct research into a most terrible affliction - until a gruesome murder during her best friend's engagement party pulls her from the shadows. With her specialist's knowledge and demure disposition, Hannah is requested to aid the investigation. Except Hannah discovers her role is to apologise in the wake of the rude and disgraced man tasked with finding the murderer. The obnoxious Viscount Wycliff thinks to employ Hannah purely as a front to satisfy Whitehall, but she'll have none of that. The two must work together to find the murderer before the season is ruined. But the viscount is about to meet his greatest challenge, and it's not a member of the ton with a hankering for brains. Perfect for fans of CJ Archer, Deanna Raybourn, Lynn Messina and Pearl Goodfellow. Keywords: historical fantasy, gaslamp, Regency mystery, historical mystery, paranormal cozy, ghosts, witches, zombies, cozies.