Showing results by narrator "Shawn Jain" in All Categories

All Aaron wants for Christmas is for his brother, Casey, to get over his ex, Raquel. He’d prefer not to be at Winter Wonderland, the island north of Alaska that’s home to a year-round Christmas theme park. But Casey loves Christmas, so here they are. Unfortunately for Aaron, Casey’s determined to do anything to win Raquel back. All Kris wants for Christmas is for his uncle to move back to Winter Wonderland to be the first gay Santa. To make that happen Kris needs to win the Race, his grade’s annual competition to see who can get a guest to fall in love with them first.

A romantic getaway for vampires Cat Crawfield and her husband Bones is cut short when they’re called on to guard a spoiled heiress with a price on her head, and an undead hitman on her trail. What starts as a simple bodyguard job ends up being a fight for survival that neither Cat, nor Bones, saw coming.

It’s the summer before senior year. Gabriel, Reese, Sal, and Heath are best friends, bonded in their small, rural town by their queerness, their good grades, and their big dreams. But they have plans for the summer, each about to embark on a new adventure. Gabriel is interning at an environmental nonprofit in Boston. Reese is attending design school in Paris. Sal is volunteering on Capitol Hill for a senator. Heath is heading to Florida, to help out at his aunt’s boardwalk arcade.

Chased by evil her whole life, Leila was accused of lighting the fire that killed her beloved foster brother, Zeke. Now, she's one of the badass assassins fated to wield holy relics that will stop the apocalypse. When Zeke turns up alive, handsome as the devil and working for her rivals, she's forced to confront her worst fear… is she evil? Why else would he fake his death and abandon her? Burdened by guilt, Zeke joined Team Saint as a gunslinging demon hunter to pursue a path of redemption. He failed everyone in his life… including the only girl he ever loved, his foster sister Leila.

Trapped in a cave in the Hindu Kush, Annja Creed has a dream vision of the Monkey King, trickster hero of the Chinese classic Journey to the West, who charges her to protect her rescuer, a historian seeking the scepter that may have inspired the Monkey King’s magic staff. The key lies in a lost journal from the Dunhuang Library, an ancient trove of knowledge deep in the Gobi Desert. But unseen rivals will kill to protect the secret or claim it for themselves. Annja begins her own journey, protecting her friend from danger and death, in the footsteps of the Monkey King himself.

In Robyn’s 2010 track Dancing on My Own, the Swedish pop-singer chronicles a night on the dance floor in the shadow of a former lover. She is bitter, angry, and at times desperate, and yet by the time the chorus arrives her frustration has melted away. She decides to dance on her own, and in this way, she transforms her solitude into a more complex joy. Taking inspiration from Robyn’s seminal track, emerging art critic and curator Simon Wu dances through the institutions of art, capitalism, and identity in these expertly researched, beautifully rendered essays.

Raam Patel is eager to prove himself ever since he didn't make the middle school's basketball team. So, when Hoop Con comes to town he is determined to be there and take his shot. His big moment proves to be unforgettable . . . but not in the way he'd hoped. Raam gets schooled by the camp's golden boy right in front of his NBA idol. To make matters even worse, this fail goes viral.

Amrita Sidhu belongs: in her Indian extended family, in her Sikh faith, in her California home. But when a family fight makes up her father's mind to take a job across the country in Ohio, she's torn from the fabric of her community and left to find her footing in a new high school and a new life. In Ohio, Amrita meets Dave Gill, who's funny, part-Indian, and also Mormon. At a series of Bollywood movie nights with friends, they begin to connect—despite the pressure they both feel not to date outside their own faith.

In Not with a Bug, But with a Sticker: Attacks on Machine Learning Systems and What to Do About Them, a team of distinguished adversarial machine learning researchers deliver a riveting account of the most significant risk to currently deployed artificial intelligence systems: cybersecurity threats. The authors take you on a sweeping tour—from inside secretive government organizations to academic workshops at ski chalets to Google's cafeteria—recounting how major AI systems remain vulnerable to the exploits of bad actors of all stripes.

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer and series editor Heidi Pitlor.

Through compelling case studies, including those of Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Sony, Amazon, and Google Books, Vaidhyanathan shows that the modern intellectual property systems reflect three centuries of changes in politics, economics, technologies, and social values. Although it emerged from a desire to foster creativity while simultaneously protecting it, intellectual property today has fundamentally shifted to a political dimension.

Daddy Samuel is a patient man, but that has nothing to do with why he wants his daughter's closest friend as his own. To him, Toby's quirks are part of his charm. Will he be able to convince the younger man how brave he is facing the world as his true self regardless of the negative voices in his head telling him he's broken? Welcome back to The Tap Tavern where there's booty-shaking in the kitchen, cuddling on the couch, and sometimes a boy just needs a little help to get out of his head.

Hunter Yee has perfect aim with a bow and arrow, but all else in his life veers wrong. He’s sick of being haunted by his family’s past mistakes. The only things keeping him from running away are his little brother, a supernatural wind, and the bewitching girl at his new high school. Luna Chang dreads the future. Graduation looms ahead, and her parents’ expectations are stifling. When she begins to break the rules, she finds her life upended by the strange new boy in her class, the arrival of unearthly fireflies, and an ominous crack spreading across the town of Fairbridge.

Raam and his buddy, Cake, are ready to try out for their middle school's basketball team. Will Raam earn a spot on the roster this time around? Or will old rivals resurface?

Thirty-three-year-old hijabi Sana Saeed has put away her childhood dream of ishq—an all-consuming, sweeping love. The arranged dates she's agreed to have failed time after time, and she has responsibilities to consider—namely her sweet, autistic younger brother, Zia. Sana and Zia are a package deal, and she wouldn't have it any other way. But their traditional mother won't allow Sana to be named as his future guardian . . . unless she's married.

It's no secret that steering a business has become dramatically more complex and uncertain in our modern era. Constant exploration of new territory by teams is the name of the game. Yet most companies are stuck with yesterday's approach to problem solving. Having reached the highest levels of the Fortune 500, digital disrupter Atif Rafiq has written Decision Sprint to pull the curtain back on the hidden management systems within your organization that impact how people think, collaborate, and make decisions.

After a life-changing summer, four friends are finally ready for senior year. Gabriel is thrilled to create his school's first LGBTQ+ advocacy group, but his long-distance relationship is fading from summer love to something else. Heath feels secure for the first time in years, but with his future riding on a baseball scholarship each pitch triggers his anxiety. Reese is set on pursuing a career in fashion design, but his creativity takes him in an unexpected direction. Sal wants to be in politics. After a chat with his aunt, he is ready for an unlikely path.

Now, as awareness of the apartheid nature of the State of Israel continues to grow, Omar Barghouti, founding member of the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, presents a renewed call to action. Aimed at forcing the State of Israel to uphold international law and universal human rights for the Palestinian people, here is a manifesto for change.

Traveling across India, interviewing Hindu zealots, armed insurgents, jailed dissidents, and politicians and thinkers from across the political spectrum, Siddhartha Deb reveals a country in which forces old and new have aligned to endanger democracy. The result is an absorbing—and disturbing—portrait. India has become a religious fundamentalist dystopia, one depicted here with a novelist's precise language and eye for detail.

1836, Wisconsin. Catalina lives with her pa and brother in a ramshackle cabin on the edge of the wilderness. Harsh winters have brought the family to the brink of starvation, and Catalina has replaced her poet's soul with an unyielding determination to keep Pa and her brother alive. When a sudden illness claims Pa, a strange man appears—a man covered in bark, leaves growing from his head, and sap dripping from his eyes.