"An elegant and amusing account.... Anyone planning to enter a casino or place an online bet would be advised to keep this book handy." —Wall Street JournalFor the past 500 years, gamblers-led by mathematicians and scientists-have been trying to figure out how to pull the rug out from under Lady Luck. In The Perfect Bet, mathematician and award-winning writer Adam Kucharski tells the astonishing story of how the experts have succeeded, revolutionizing mathematics and science in the process. The house can seem unbeatable. Kucharski shows us just why it isn't. Even better, he demonstrates how the search for the perfect bet has been crucial for the scientific pursuit of a better world.

All Star High is a series of Hi-Lo books for reluctant readers set in the coolest school in the UK, where the pupils are so desperate to attend they audition for a place! Wannabe actors, singers, and dancers join the school in the hope that they will become the next big thing!Aaron loves martial arts, and Claire loves ballet. Read how a cool New York dance teacher gets them to perform together.

In Great Buddha Gym for All Mens and Womens, author Sallie Tisdale so richly evokes her pilgrimage to the four vital sites related to Buddha Shakyamuni's life and enlightenment that the reader feels as if she's tripping alongside Tisdale every crowded, colorful, and sensuous step of the way. The challenges of travel in modern India are daunting. The ancient sites are overrun with tourists and seekers. Merchants hawking spiritual goods are everywhere. And yet, miraculously, despite the chaos, the great teachings of the Buddha come shining through.Sallie Tisdale is the author of seven books, including Talk Dirty to Me and The Best Thing I Ever Tasted, a finalist for a James Beard Award. Her memoir Stepping Westward was one of the 100 Notable Books of the West.Tisdale's essays have appeared in such publications as Harper's, Threepenny Review, the New Yorker, and Esquire. She is the 2013 recipient of the Regional Arts and Culture Council Literary Fellowship. She has received...

Humans have always wanted to know what goes on inside the minds of other animals. But what if humans could become animals? Toby’s father leads a team of neuroscientists directly connecting the brains of humans with those of animals. And Toby is a prodigy at throwing her mind into the animal subjects in his lab—she’s the best there is. But Toby suffers from cystic fibrosis and she’s not likely to live into adulthood. Could a radical plan to embed her consciousness into an animal allow Toby to survive? And what does it mean to live without a human body? Can Toby and her father solve the problem of fully merging two beings before she takes her last breath? Will the government succeed in stopping their efforts before they are done? It’s a race against death and into the minds of animals.

The latest thriller from the author of number one bestseller Strike BackFormer SAS Captain Will Jackson is a man with nothing to lose. A veteran of the most dangerous missions the Regiment could throw at him, his life was torn apart the day a terrorist attack killed his family. Now he leads a life of grief-stricken obscurity, the world of warfare nothing but a distant memory.People higher up the chain of command have other plans, however. They're in a mess of their own making, and unless they sort it out, thousands of innocent people will pay the price. And so they make Jackson an offer he can't refuse. An offer that will take him straight back into a brutal theatre of war.Only one person can help prevent the disaster that is waiting to happen, and that person is being held by the Taliban insurgency in the depths of a harsh Afghanistan winter. As Will reluctantly prepares to undertake this final mission, he does so in the knowledge that it will stop a...

Astronaut Keith Stoner, member of a joint U.S.-Soviet mission to capture an alien ship that had entered the solar system, was trapped alone aboard the alien spacecraft. But he didn’t die, he lay frozen in deep sleep for fifteen years, kept alive by alien biotechnology.Now Keith Stoner is something more than just a man. While asleep he was inoculated with virus-sized machines designed to repair his body, expand his brain, and let him live forever. Stoner also carries the knowledge and memories of the being whose body was enshrined in the alien craft. He now knows of many different intelligent races who destroyed themselves, battering themselves to death on the stony problems of war, famine, runaway population, and ill-planned technological breakthroughs.Keith Stoner fears for mankind, and he will do everything in his power—his extensive, alien-enhanced power—to preserve humanity into the future.

Second in size only to Jupiter, bigger than a thousand Earths but light enough to float in water, home of crushing gravity and delicate, seemingly impossible rings, it dazzles and attracts us: SATURN Earth groans under the thumb of fundamentalist political regimes. Crisis after crisis has given authoritarians the upper hand. Freedom and opportunity exist in space, for those with the nerve and skill to run the risks. Now the governments of Earth are encouraging many of their most incorrigible dissidents to join a great ark on a one-way expedition, twice Jupiter's distance from the Sun, to Saturn, the ringed planet that baffled Galileo and has fascinated astronomers ever since. But humans will be human, on Earth or in the heavens-so amidst the idealism permeating Space Habitat Goddard are many individuals with long-term schemes, each awaiting the tight moment. And hidden from them is the greatest secret of all, the real purpose of this expedition, known to only a few....

For centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of scientific knowledge. In Dark Banquet, zoologist Bill Schutt takes readers on an entertaining voyage into the world of some of nature's strangest creatures--the sanguivores. Using a sharp eye and mordant wit, Schutt makes a remarkably persuasive case that vampire bats, leeches, ticks, bed bugs, and other vampires are as deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species are--and that many of them are even ­worthy of conservation.Schutt takes us from rural Trinidad to the jungles of Brazil to learn about some of the most reviled, misunderstood, and marvelously evolved animals on our planet: vampire bats. Only recently has fact begun to disentangle itself from fiction concerning these remarkable animals, and Schutt delves into the myths and misconceptions surrounding them. Examining the substance that sustains nature's vampires, Schutt reveals...