Check out what the Kansas Talking Books staff has been reading recently. Try making one of these your next read.
Michael Lang, Director
DB 95553 Orange world and other stories by Karen Russell
A collection of short fiction from the Pulitzer Prize finalist. A young man falls in love with a two-thousand-year-old girl from the bog. A new mother agrees to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller. 2019.
Dylan Calhoon, Patron Services Manager
DB 69250 Patient zero by Jonathan Maberry
Baltimore detective Joe Ledger shoots and kills Javad Mustapha, a suspected terrorist, during a police raid. When the covert Department of Military Sciences recruits Ledger, the detective finds himself facing Mustapha again, as well as a new breed of terrorist--zombies. Violence, strong language, and some descriptions of sex. 2009.
DB 75468 Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
Nineteen-year-old James Stark was a member of a magic circle until the leader, Mason Faim, sent him to Hell in exchange for power. Stark became one of Hell's most-feared hitmen. Eleven years later, he escapes Hell and returns to Earth for revenge. Violence and strong language. 2009.
Nataly Renfro, Machine Clerk
DB 66118 Dead witch walking by Kim Harrison
Bounty-hunting witch Rachel Morgan polices Cincinnati and its suburb the Hollows as part of a supernatural crime-fighting unit. When a misunderstanding leads to her dismissal--and a contract on her life--Rachel joins reformed vampire Ivy and pixy Jenks to elude assassins. Strong language, some descriptions of sex, and some violence. 2004.
Troy Arndt, Circulation Clerk
DB 43591 The adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
A comprehensive edition of Twain's 1885 tale about a boy who runs away from home and floats down the Mississippi on a raft with an escaping slave. Includes four episodes originally deleted from the first edition, an introduction by Twain biographer Justin Kaplan, and an addendum of explanatory and interpretive notes. Strong language. 1996.
Maggie Witte, Outreach Librarian/Lead Readers’ Advisor
DB 116405 The coming wave: technology, power, and the twenty-first century’s greatest dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman
"We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies. In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other. Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia? This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes "the containment problem"-the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies-as the essential challenge of our age." -- Provided by publisher. -- Commercial audiobook.
DB 109032 Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
"On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before." -- Provided by publisher. -- Some descriptions of sex, strong language, some violence. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller. 2022.