"17 years ago: A girl in South Dakota falls through the earth, then wakes up dozens of feet below ground on the palm of what seems to be a giant metal hand. Today: She is a top-level physicist leading a team of people to understand exactly what that hand is, where it came from, and what it portends for humanity. A swift and spellbinding tale told almost exclusively through transcriptions of interviews conducted by a mysterious and unnamed character,...

"The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she's an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs. Honestly, it's a pretty...

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels

"One of the greats. . . . Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon." —Stephen King

"Engrossing . . . Ursula Le Guin is more than just a writer of adult fantasy and science fiction . . . she is a philosopher; an explorer in the landscapes of the mind." — Cincinnati Enquirer

Ursula

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"Jay na Thalang is a demanding, driven genius. He doesn't know how to stop or even slow down. The instant he lays eyes on Maria Lopez, he knows that she is a sexy distraction he can't afford. He's done his best to keep her at arm's length, and he's succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Maria has always been cautious. Now that her once-tiny, apocalypse-centered blog is hitting the mainstream, she's even more careful about preserving her online anonymity....

Michael Beard is a Nobel prize winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions, and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. While he coasts along in his professional life, Michael's personal life is another matter entirely. His fifth marriage is crumbling under the weight of his infidelities....

A research physicist loses his leg and wanders the world aimlessly until a fellow professor explains his new philosophy of Unteleology, or purposelessness.

"When her husband's car is found abandoned and on fire-in the middle of a rainstorm-police suspect that Eve Roth had something to do with it. After all, her husband was suspended from the University of Iowa for inappropriate conduct with a student, and who else but an atmospheric physicist could incinerate a car in a downpour? But Eve has no idea why her husband disappeared. She's desperate to find him, both for herself and her beloved, disabled father-in-law....

Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath discover that a missing renowned physicist had several interstellar yachts flown far outside the planetary system where they vanished. Following the physicist's trail into the unknown puts Benedict and Kolpath in danger.

The compelling story of a couple living in the wake of a personal tragedy. She is a star employee of an online dating company, while he is a physicist, performing experiments that, if ever successful, may have unintended consequences, altering the nature of their lives and perhaps of reality itself. Rebecca Wright has gotten her life back, finding her way out of grief and depression following a personal tragedy years ago. She spends her days working...

When physicist Ryan Oronzi's development of military applications of Higgs projector technology leads to the return of the varcolac, which seeks to destroy human life, Sandra and Alex Kelley strive to defeat it.