Flower Science

It has been centuries since the Draconic Army took wing, almost extinguishing humankind. Marosa Vetalda is a prisoner in her own home, controlled by her cold father, King Sigoso. Over the mountains, her betrothed, Aubrecht Lievelyn, rules Mentendon in all but name. Together, they intend to usher in a better world. A better world seems impossibly distant to Estina Melaugo, who hunts the Draconic beasts that have slept across the world for centuries. And now the great wyrm Fýredel is stirring, and Yscalin will be the first to fall....

The city of Celum is not much like Liscor at all. While Erin is surrounded by familiar, human faces, she’s far from home and without her inn. At the same time, a certain ill-tempered Lyonette is squatting in Erin’s inn, and Goblins are on the move. The Goblin Lord’s threat reaches across the entire region, and the Redfang tribe has rallied against him with the Floodplains tribe, although their Chieftains do not agree on some crucial matters. This winter, there is only snow, Goblins, magic, and iambic pentameter.

Charlie Gordon knows that he isn't very bright. At 32, he mops floors in a bakery and earns just enough to get by. Three evenings a week, he studies at a center for mentally challenged adults. But all of this is about to change for Charlie. As part of a daring experiment, doctors are going to perform surgery on Charlie's brain. They hope the operation and special medication will increase his intelligence, just as it has for the laboratory mouse, Algernon.

Still new to her duties as Lady Vorkosigan, Ekaterin is working together with expatriate scientist Enrique Borgos on a radical scheme to recover the lands of the Vashnoi exclusion zone, lingering radioactive legacy of the Cetagandan invasion of the planet Barrayar. When Enrique's experimental bioengineered creatures go missing, the pair discover that the zone still conceals deadly old secrets.

Princess Madalina and her twin sister, Inessa, were born attached at the hand and separated right after. That’s the only time the sisters ever held hands. The girls’ personalities have been shaped in the Sinet family’s drive to make their kingdom more than what it is: unrespectable and loathsome, a damp place where deceit fills the palace walls like mold. Madalina is different from her family. She’s considered the weak one and only finds peace in the garden, tending her magical flowers, which are pejoratively called grave flowers because they are ideal for torture and torment.

Today is the day that I, Luciano Fjorborn, First Paladin of Berella, go out into Yurnip County to push back the forces of darkness with a few vigorous thrusts of my mighty lance! Who’s Berella? Why, she’s the goddess of love, tenderness, and hot rumpy-pumpy, of course! As her loyal servant, it is my mission to go out of my cloister and show the world Berella’s divine love. Repeatedly. And in multiple positions! But it’s a cruel world out there, especially for a Paladin who doesn’t believe in violence.

It has been centuries since the Draconic Army took wing, almost extinguishing humankind. Marosa Vetalda is a prisoner in her own home, controlled by her cold father, King Sigoso. Over the mountains, her betrothed, Aubrecht Lievelyn, rules Mentendon in all but name. Together, they intend to usher in a better world. A better world seems impossibly distant to Estina Melaugo, who hunts the Draconic beasts that have slept across the world for centuries.

Charlie Gordon, a floor sweeper born with an unusually low IQ, has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that doctors hope will increase his intelligence - a procedure that has been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon. All Charlie wants is to be smart and have friends, but the treatment turns him into a genius. Then Algernon begins to fade. What will become of Charlie? Read by Adam Sims.

Cascadia and Auria have felled each other, and in the wake of the Aurian king using a weapon made from machines long thought to be extinct, the moon has awakened and has begun to fall. The ghosts of the machines speak, telling humanity that judgment is coming.

In 17th-century Persia, a 14-year-old woman believes she will be married within the year. When her beloved father dies, she and her mother find themselves alone and without a dowry. With nowhere else to go, they are forced to sell the brilliant turquoise rug the young woman has woven to pay for their journey to Isfahan, where they will work as servants for her uncle, a rich rug designer in the court of the legendary Shah Abbas the Great.

Nine-year-old Violet loves spending time in her Aunt Abigail's flower shop in their small British town. And she's so excited to stay overnight with her Aunt Abigail for the first time! But when Aunt Abigail has to leave to deal with an emergency, Violet and her friends, twins Jack and Zack, start poking around - and discover that her aunt owns an ancient magical flower book and uses her flower magic to make people happy! Violet wants to do that, too. Her first mission: making a match between two of her teachers. Unfortunately, it all goes wrong!

Long before the sword-wielding heroes of legend readily cut down forests, slaughtered the old deities, and vanquished their enemies, there were playful gods, animal-headed kings, mischievous lovers, trickster harpists, and vegetal magicians with flowering wands. As eco-feminist scholar Sophie Strand discovered, these wilder, more magical modes of the masculine have always been hidden in plain sight.

Elloren Gardner and her friends were only seeking to right a few wrongs when they rescued a Selkie and freed a military dragon. The last thing they expected was to be thrust into a realm-wide underground resistance against Gardnerian conquest. While the Resistance struggles to fight back against the harsh rulings of the Mage Council, more and more Gardnerian soldiers descend upon the University…led by none other than Lukas Grey, now commander of the nearby military base. Though Elloren tries to keep him at arm's length, Lukas is determined to tie himself to her.

The rise of China and its great power competition with the U.S. will be one of the defining issues of our generation. But to understand modern China, one has to understand the people who live there–and the way the Chinese state is trying to control them along lines of identity and free expression. In vivid, cinematic detail, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom tells the stories of nearly two dozen people who are pushing back.

A Flower Dragon named Wildroot has come to Bracken! He needs help because his home is in danger. The Dragon Mastersmust find this small dragon his own Dragon Master. The Dragon Stone reveals a boy named Oskar, who is disappointed that hedoes not have a big, fire-breathing dragon. Can Oskar and his dragon learn to work together in time to save the Flower Dragonsfrom a terrible monster?

Catherine Coleman Flowers grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that’s been called “Bloody Lowndes” because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it’s Ground Zero for a new movement that is Flowers’s life’s work. It’s a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets, and, as a consequence, live amid filth.

In the grim darkness of the far future, the galaxy burns as its disparate races fight for resources, territory, and divine purpose. The Imperium faces threats both alien and heretic, and the touch of the warp is ever a moment from seeping into reality, with deadly consequences. Survival is earned in blood.

In the tradition of sumptuous gothic novels like Starling House and The Bloody Chamber comes a dark fairy tale-infused story about a cursed friendship and a marriage steeped in secrets—the breathtaking adult debut from New York Times bestselling author Roshani Chokshi.

It’s not in my nature to beg, but I’ll stay on my knees until I feel that flame sputter out. And then … I’ll rip the world to shreds. I’ve tumbled into a darkness so deep it’s hard to see the light, my petals curling inward as I tip my face from the sun. Hide from my monstrous actions. Traitor. Murderer. High Mistress. My mistakes hunt me down, and I’m pulled into a political tug-of-war, balancing Ocruth’s welfare on the edge of a bloody blade. The moon is swelling, the weight on my shoulders is compacting, and my unfailing curiosity keeps weaving its roots in the wrong direction.

Da Mad Dok Grotsnik, creator of Ghazghkull Thraka, is a painboy beyond legend. What – and who – he harbours in his formidable brain is a mystery to every ork but himself, and an army of orderlies provides him with a constant supply of flesh with which to tinker. When Grotsnik comes to the aid of Beastboss Bakmun, whose rampage on Hive Prome teeters on the brink of going out not with a Waaagh! but with a whimper, Bakmun can't believe his luck.