How will artificial intelligence change our world within twenty years?
A WALL STREET JOURNAL, WASHINGTON POST, AND FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • “This inspired collaboration between a pioneering technologist and a visionary writer of science fiction offers bold and urgent insights.”—Yann LeCun, winner of the Turing Award; chief AI scientist, Facebook
“Amazingly entertaining . . . Lee and Chen take us on an immersive trip through the future. . . . Eye-opening.”—Mark Cuban
AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand-new forms of communication and entertainment. In liberating us from routine work, however, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order. Meanwhile, AI will bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up—both to AI’s radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it.
In this provocative, utterly original work, Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, teams up with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping short stories, they introduce readers to an array of eye-opening 2041 settings, such as:
• In San Francisco, the “job reallocation” industry emerges as deep learning AI causes widespread job displacement • In Tokyo, a music fan is swept up in an immersive form of celebrity worship based on virtual reality and mixed reality • In Mumbai, a teenage girl rebels when AI’s crunching of big data gets in the way of romance • In Seoul, virtual companions with perfected natural language processing (NLP) skills offer orphaned twins new ways to connect • In Munich, a rogue scientist draws on quantum computing, computer vision and other AI technologies in a revenge plot that imperils the world
By gazing toward a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insights into our collective future—while reminding readers that, ultimately, humankind remains the author of its destiny.“An invaluable and entertaining vision of the future.”—Ray Dalio, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Principles
“To say that AI 2041 is enlightening and valuable, is to understate its significance. . . . AI 2041’s scientific fiction gives us a way to open our eyes to what is actually going on all around us and where things are heading.”—John Kao, Forbes
“By blending imaginative storytelling and technical expertise, Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan bring to life a vision for AI that addresses both our curiosity and our fears. Read this captivating book to better understand how and when certain technologies are likely to mature, and what that could mean for all of us.”—Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
“We have reached a momentous inflection point with AI, and no other book I’ve read captures it with such stunning insight and imagination. Instead of wondering whether to trust AI, we must think of it as a tool—one that we humans are in charge of shaping. Kai-Fu Lee’s brilliant analysis in AI 2041 embodies this urgent mandate for humanity, while Chen Qiufan’s gripping stories reveal how AI can become a bridge between previously unsolvable problems and a future of new possibilities.”—Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO, Thrive Global
“AI 2041 is the perfect fusion of science and fiction, illuminating the pervasive impact artificial intelligence will have in our lives and the challenges we face in shaping a techno-future that benefits all of humanity.”—Marc Benioff, chair and CEO, Salesforce
“Applying AI to business usually means learning the technology first and then figuring out how to apply it. AI 2041 allows readers to take the exact opposite approach. Through amazingly entertaining stories, Lee and Chen take us on an immersive trip through the future and then zoom out with exceptionally clear explanations of the technology at work. The result is an enjoyable and eye-opening book for those trying to understand how to apply AI.”—Mark Cuban
“Making predictions about the future of AI is not for the faint of heart. This inspired collaboration between a pioneering technologist and a visionary writer of science fiction offers bold and urgent insights into how these technologies may impact our lives.”—Yann LeCun, winner of the Turing Award; chief AI scientist, Facebook
“Are we fit for the strange new world we seem determined to create? What is clear is that imagination-defying change is upon us. Less clear is what these changes will mean for humankind. Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan’s AI 2041 offers the most carefully and caringly considered visions of what is soon to come.”—Bennett Miller, Academy Award–nominated director of Moneyball and Foxcatcher
The highly anticipated collection of poems from the award-winning writer Ocean Vuong
How else do we return to ourselves but to fold The page so it points to the good part
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.145029889
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TEEN VOGUE
"A dark feminist tale spun with blood and gold. Must read!" –Dhonielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.
But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity–and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.
Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki–near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire's greatest threat.
Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she's ever known. But as she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she will discover that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be–not even Deka herself.
The start of a bold and immersive fantasy series for fans of Children of Blood and Bone and Black Panther.148552535 TEA BLK
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Book Lovers and Beach Read comes a sparkling novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations. Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.
Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven't spoken since.
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Newsweek ∙ Oprah Magazine ∙ The Skimm∙Marie Claire∙ Parade ∙ The Wall Street Journal∙ Chicago Tribune ∙PopSugar ∙ BookPage∙ BookBub ∙ Betches ∙ SheReads ∙ Good Housekeeping ∙ BuzzFeed∙Business Insider∙ Real Simple∙ Frolic∙ and more!“What Henry is especially skilled at is writing dialogue. The banter between Poppy and Alex is so natural, quick and witty that it would make Shonda Rhimes do a slow clap.” —The Associated Press
“Beach Read fans, assemble. Emily Henry is back with another smart, steamy romance….Warning: you will feel all the feels. And probably shed a few tears.” —The Skimm
“The strength of People We Meet on Vacation [is] the clever observations, the dialogue (which is laugh-out-loud funny) and, most particularly, the characters. Funny and fumbling and lovable, they’re most decidedly worth the trip." —The Wall Street Journal
“A delightful love story full of hilarious one-liners and winking asides, making it the perfect poolside companion.” —Real Simple
“Emily Henry is my newest automatic-buy author, and People We Meet on Vacation is the perfect getaway: a heartfelt, funny, tender escape that you wish could last forever.” —Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Two Ways
“People We Meet on Vacation is a gorgeous slow-burn romance, full of sexual tension and tantalizing possibility. I fell head over heels for Alex and Poppy, and loved travelling all over the world with them both.” —Beth O'Leary, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Flatshare
“This is a perfect rom com, and I completely adored it. I think Emily Henry might be our generation's answer to Nora Ephron. A witty, warm page turner.” —Sophie Cousens,New York Times bestselling author of GMA book club pick This Time Next Year
“Emily Henry is a STAR! Deeply emotional and starkly funny, People We Meet on Vacation cements Emily Henry as the Queen of Banter. Rom-com fans will swoon over this slow burn friends-to-lovers romance. Poppy and Alex are real and flawed and ultra-lovable, and their Summer Trips will scratch an itch for those of us who’ve missed traveling. A perfect summer read!” —Alexis Daria, bestselling author of You Had Me at Hola
“A compulsively readable book full of sparkling wit, dazzling prose and a romance that grabbed me by the heart and wouldn't let me go.” —Abby Jimenez, USA Today bestselling author of Life’s Too Short
“An absolute delight: swoony, legitimately moving, and packed with witty banter that makes Alex and Poppy jump off the page. We are already waiting impatiently for whatever Emily writes next.” —Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan,USA Today bestselling authors of The Royal We and The Heir Affair
“Henry’s biggest strength is in the sparkling, often laugh-out-loud-funny dialogue, particularly the banter-filled conversations between Poppy and Alex. The end result is a story that pays homage to classic romantic comedies while having a point of view all its own. A warm and winning When Harry Met Sally update that hits all the perfect notes.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Henry’s skills with sensory detail and lovable characters shine through. This is a strong choice for readers looking for a vicarious summer vacation of their own.” —Publishers Weekly
A woman trying to outrun her past is drawn to a coastal village in Maine—and to a string of unsolved murders—in this novel of romance and psychological suspense from New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen.
“Suspenseful, sexy, and soulful.”—J. R. Ward, bestselling author of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series
After an unspeakable tragedy in Boston, Ava Collette flees to a remote village in Maine, where she rents an old house named Brodie’s Watch.
In that isolated seaside mansion, Ava finally feels at peace . . . until she glimpses the long-dead sea captain who still resides there.
Rumor has it that Captain Jeremiah Brodie has haunted the house for more than a century. One night, Ava confronts the apparition, who feels all too real, and who welcomes her into his world—and into his arms. Even as Ava questions her own sanity, she eagerly looks forward to the captain’s ghostly visits. But she soon learns that the house she loves comes with a terrible secret, a secret that those in the village don’t want to reveal: Every woman who has ever lived in Brodie’s Watch has also died there. Is the ghost of Captain Brodie responsible, or is a flesh-and-blood killer at work? A killer who is even now circling closer to Ava?
Praise for The Shape of Night
“Gerritsen is at her atmospheric best in this spine-tingling tale of a lone woman, an old house, and all the secrets everyone tries to hide.”—Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“With a twisty mix of dangerous passion, obsession, and suspense, Tess Gerritsen reinvents the Gothic novel, giving it a razor-sharp, modern edge.”—Jayne Ann Krentz, New York Times bestselling author of Untouchable
“Curl up in your favorite reading chair and let Tess Gerritsen whisk you away to a coastal town reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier’s best settings. You are in for a dark and sexy night, and you will be up very late with Tess’s twisted, haunting tale.”—Iris Johansen, #1 New York Times bestselling author“This is one of Gerritsen’s best mysteries ever, with Ava Collette an unlikely heroine you’ll never easily forget. Pick up a copy—you might be left breathless and reeling, but you won’t be disappointed.”—Lisa Jackson, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“The Shape of Night is reading gold—thought-provoking, loaded with suspense, with an ending to knock your socks off.”—Catherine Coulter, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Reminiscent of the best of du Maurier, this modern gothic is eerie, tantalizing, spine-tingling, and sensual. . . . An altogether delicious read.”—Sandra Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“This book reminds me why I love reading. Tess Gerritsen is a writer I look up to!”—J. R. Ward, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“A captivating and seductive tale exploring the dark embrace of grief and guilt, reminding us that nothing can haunt us as insidiously as our personal demons.”—Sylvia Day, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“This supernatural thriller from bestseller Gerritsen ranks with the best of her crime fiction. . . . This magnetic haunted house story will keep readers riveted from the very first page.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A spellbinding thriller. . . Gerritsen shifts a murder mystery into a Gothic thriller, replete with an unsteady widow's walk, secret alcove, strange smells, ominous sensations, and the ghost. The prologue echoes the dream of Manderley from Du Maurier’s Rebecca. . . . This riveting Gothic thriller explores the limits of love, guilt, and punishment.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Gerritsen creates an atmospheric scene with the mansion and the Maine coastline, and readers will almost feel the breeze and hear the waves crashing against the rocks. The main story of Ava, who may—or may not—be descending into madness, is compelling, and a clever twist or two steers the narrative in unexpected ways. . . . Another winner for Gerritsen.”—Associated Press
“Tess Gerritsen has had the ‘it’ factor for a long time, and she continues to show that no matter what she pens, it will rock!” —Suspense
“Gerritsen is a masterful plotter and her talents honed in decades of crime fiction translate perfectly to the new form, with a slow, satisfying drip of secrets and revelations.”—CrimeReads
“The Shape of Night expertly blends mystery with romance and speculative fiction. Better yet, in a novel featuring death and the afterlife, this book is as comforting as a cup of cocoa on a winter’s day or a roaring fire in the midst of an October rainstorm.”—New York Journal of Books
“Fans . . . will follow Gerritsen’s . . . story through the realms of mystery, paranormal romance, erotica, and psychological suspense to its compelling conclusion.” —Library Journal
“A quick read that will appeal to fans of the genre.”—Booklist
“A haunting romantic thriller with an irresistible Gothic twist, this is one of Gerritsen’s best.” —BarnesandNoble.com
Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.
Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief—a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.116757900
“ONE OF THE MOST VISIONARY, ORIGINAL, AND QUIETLY INFLUENTIAL WRITERS CURRENTLY WORKING”* returns with a sharply imagined follow-up to the New York Times bestselling The Peripheral.
William Gibson has trained his eye on the future for decades, ever since coining the term “cyberspace” and then popularizing it in his classic speculative novel Neuromancer in the early 1980s. Cory Doctorow raved that The Peripheral is “spectacular, a piece of trenchant, far-future speculation that features all the eyeball kicks of Neuromancer.” Now Gibson is back with Agency—a science fiction thriller heavily influenced by our most current events.
Verity Jane, gifted app whisperer, takes a job as the beta tester for a new product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. “Eunice,” the disarmingly human AI in the glasses, manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and a canny grasp of combat strategy. Realizing that her cryptic new employers don’t yet know how powerful and valuable Eunice is, Verity instinctively decides that it’s best they don’t.
Meanwhile, a century ahead in London, in a different time line entirely, Wilf Netherton works amid plutocrats and plunderers, survivors of the slow and steady apocalypse known as the jackpot. His boss, the enigmatic Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and Eunice are her current project. Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice can’t: their own version of the jackpot, just around the corner, and the roles they both may play in it.
*The Boston Globe“Engaging, thought-provoking and delightful… [Gibson] can always be counted on to show us our contemporary milieu rendered magical by his unique insights, and a future rendered inhabitable by his wild yet disciplined imagination.”—The Washington Post
“Superb... Each sentence is a hand-turned marvel of compact characterization, world-building and sardonic wit, all used to illuminate his vivid milieus…Gibson has an inexhaustible supply of tricks, new stories and new ways of telling them that make him the most consistent predictor of our present, contextualizer of our pasts and presager of our possible futures.”—Los Angeles Times
“An immersive thriller, fueled by an intelligent, empathetic imagination.”—The Boston Globe
“A sensual, remarkably visual ride, vigorous with displays of conceptual imagination and humour.” —The Guardian (UK)
“Gibson blurs the line between real and speculative technology in a fast-paced thriller that will affirm to readers that it was well worth the wait.”—Booklist
“His language (half Appalachian economy, half leather-jacket poet of neon and decay) is all about friction and the gray spaces where disparate ideas intersect. His game is living in those spaces, checking out the view, telling us about it.” – NPR.org
“In Agency Gibson offers another of his uncannily plausible imaginings of near-future life and technology…with Gibson’s trademark panache, the story rattles along with great pace and suspense.” –The Sunday Times (UK)