New movie: THE CURRENT WAR on Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse
New science-themed movie The Current War : I just saw an ad for this movie that opens next week. Looking forward to seeing it! Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Benedict Cumberbatch Synopsis: Three brilliant visionaries set off in a charged battle for the...
Book review: SYNAPSE by Steven James
Thirty years in the future, when AI is so advanced that humans live side by side with cognizant robots called Artificials, Kestrel Hathaway must come to terms not just with what machines know, but with what they believe. Soon after experiencing a personal tragedy,...
Book review: TRAUMA by CJ Lyons
Angels of Mercy ER charge nurse Nora Halloran has been living with a painful secret for three long years. But when a coworker is brutally assaulted and killed, she knows she can no longer remain silent. Determined to unmask the murderer, Nora teams up with her...
Book review: CATALYST by CJ Lyons
A medical student investigating the mysterious deaths of patients begins to experience the same deadly symptoms herself. On rotation at Pittsburgh ’s Angels of Mercy Hospital and struggling to finish medical school, Amanda Mason can’t afford to make any mistakes—or to...
Book review: LIFELINES by CJ Lyons
New ER doctor Lydia Fiore finds herself losing the wrong patient—the Chief of Surgery's son. To save her career, Lydia must discover the truth behind her patient’s death, even if it leads her into unfamiliar—and risky—territory, finding new friends, new love, and new...
Book review: ISOLATION by CJ Lyons
With Pittsburgh snarled by a New Year’s Eve blizzard and Angels of Mercy Hospital cut off from the outside world, staff and patients are at the mercy of armed gunmen. Their target is Dr. Gina Freeman, who is holding vigil over her wounded fiancé, Detective Jerry...
Book review: SPHERE by Michael Crichton
In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface of the water, a huge vessel is discovered resting on the ocean floor. Rushed to the scene is a group of American scientists who descend together into the depths of the sea to investigate this...
Book review: THE WHITE PLAGUE by Frank Herbert
A molecular biologist is driven mad when he witnesses the murder of his wife and children by Irish Republican terrorists (ah, remember those pre-9/11 days?). He takes his revenge by engineering a plague that kills women. Like the plague, Herbert’s story travels the...
Book review: BOILING POINT by Karen Dionne
The long-slumbering Chilean volcano Chaiten awakens. Sheila Kennedy, a scientist engaged in microbiology research on the mountain, has gone on a hunt for a convoy of tanker trucks she suspects are involved in illegal dumping, while her partner Ross Roundtree (who...
Book review: THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson
A lawyer is perplexed and disturbed that his respected friend and client, Dr. Henry Jekyll, has prepared a will leaving his fortune to the repugnant Mr. Edward Hyde, a stranger with a violent temperament and deformed appearance. Publication Date: 1886 Category:...
Book review: THE DEUS MACHINE by Pierre Ouelette
An economic downturn has sent the United States into the throes of depression. Middle-class riots and a crack-like designer drug, Zap 37, rip into the social fabric. A paramilitary government cabal is determined to maintain America’s superpower status at any price....
Book review: FINAL THEORY by Mark Alpert
David Swift, a failed physicist turned science historian, is summoned by the police to the deathbed of his former mentor, renowned physicist Hans Kleinman. The elderly scientist and student of Albert Einstein was beaten and tortured by an unknown assailant seeking...
Book review: LIFE SUPPORT by Tess Gerritsen
ER doctor Toby Harper works the night shift, her days eclipsed by caring for her mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s. She’s a good doctor, thorough and devoted—but one night she loses a patient. He didn’t die; the demented and confused elderly man walked out of the ER...
Book review: THE THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE by Carla Buckley
The next “great” flu pandemic finally strikes. As plague and winter descend on Columbus, Ohio, human activity grinds to a halt. One family struggles to survive, forced by circumstances to choose between what is right and what is practical. Their marriage shaken by the...
Book review: STIFF by Mary Roach
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a nonfiction book about the amazing adventures of dead people. No, not brain-eating zombies, but ordinary cadavers, like you and me (someday). This unusual journalistic endeavor takes a light-hearted though unavoidably...
Book review: CHROMOSOME 8 by Peter Holt
Human DNA is the product of evolution, mutated and reprogrammed across eons. But fragments of primordial instructions remain in every cell; what if they could be reactivated? Biologist Marcus Oden and his geologist friend Nick Kondos are the Ocean Sciences Institute,...
Book review: THE DOT AND THE LINE: A Romance in Lower Mathematics by Norton Juster
Once upon a time there was a sensible straight line who was hopelessly in love with a beautiful dot. But the dot, though perfect in every way, only had eyes for a wild and unkempt squiggle. All of the line's romantic dreams were in vain, until he discovered...angles!...
Book review: DEJA DEAD by Kathy Reichs
Dr. Temperance Brennan (Tempe), a forensic anthropologist in Montreal, Quebec, is looking forward to a weekend away from the autopsy suite when she’s called to the location of some freshly-discovered human remains. The dismembered and decapitated corpse, wrapped in...
Book review: DEAD ON ARRIVAL by Matt Richtel
An airplane touches down at a desolate airport in a remote Colorado ski town. Shortly after landing, Dr. Lyle Martin, a world-class infectious disease specialist, is brusquely awakened to shocking news: Everyone not on the plane appears to be dead. The world has gone...
Book review: THE COMING STORM by Mark Alpert
New York City, 2023: Rising seas and superstorms have ravaged the land. Food and electricity are scarce. A dangerous Washington regime has terrorized the city, forcing the most vulnerable and defenseless people into the flood-ravaged neighborhoods. The new laws are...