SUPREMACY de Parmy Olson

SUPREMACY will reveal the truths behind Big Tech’s exploitation of the greatest invention in history, who those players are, and why their work deserves far more scrutiny. We are entering an age where the world’s biggest monopolies are amassing even more power through tools that threaten our economies and culture. It is time to push back..

SUPREMACY
AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Changed the World
by Parmy Olson
St. Martin’s Press, July 2024

In November of 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was a chatbot called ChatGPT. OpenAI launched it quietly, letting anyone who registered experiment with the new tool. The word spread. ChatGPT was unlike anything people had experienced before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. It could tell you where snowy owls lived or give you a recipe for French onion soup in plain language, as if a real person was writing the answer. It could give health advice and write letters of condolence. ChatGPT’s sister tool, called DALL-E 2, creates images from any text prompt. OpenAI wanted to combine those tools to make an even more powerful system that would create all kinds of content, like magic. In Supremacy, Parmy Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, sharply alerts readers to the real threat of artificial intelligence: the silent, profit-driven spread of flawed-technology into industries, education and medicine. OpenAI and soon Google are selling their language models to law firms and consulting firms across the globe to help implement them into businesses. Despite the rush, nobody seems to know what the misinformation rate is for these tools or how many employees are behind the modeling.

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of We Are Anonymous.

THE SUNFLOWER HOUSE d’Adriana Allegri

Shedding light on a little-known aspect of the Nazi regime, this is a heartfelt, emotional novel of friendship, love, and secrets that is sure to resonate with historical fiction fans.

THE SUNFLOWER HOUSE
by Adriana Allegri
St. Martin’s Press, September 2024

In a sleepy German village, Allina Gottlieb’s life is idyllic: she works at the bookshop with her uncle, makes strudel with her aunt, and spends the weekends with her friends and fiancé. But it’s 1939, and on one fateful night, her life changes forever.

THE SUNFLOWER HOUSE is a meticulously-researched debut historical novel set at Hochland Home, part of the notorious Lebensborn Program in Nazi Germany—a real-life Handmaid’s Tale. Women of “pure” blood resided there for the sole purpose of perpetuating the Aryan population, giving birth to hundreds of babies who were then raised—and neglected—in this state-run baby factory.

With her life on the line, Allina is forced to work as a nurse in Hochland Home. Her Jewish identity must remain a secret in order for her to survive, but when she discovers the neglect occurring within the home, she is determined not only to save herself, but also the children in her care. When Allina meets Karl, a high-ranking SS officer with secrets of his own, the two must decide how much they are willing to share with each other—and how much they can stand to risk. The threads of this poignant and heartrending novel weave a tale of loss and love, friendship and betrayal, and the secrets we bury in order to save ourselves.

As a first-generation American with parents who lived in Europe during World War II, Adriana Allegri grew up on stories about how small acts of compassion and kindness saved lives. That theme shows up in everything she writes, regardless of genre. She has worked in education, as a high school teacher and program administrator; as a writer/project manager for a leading data analytics company, and as an author. 2015 was her Big Risk Year, as she left her corporate job to concentrate on writing. THE SUNFLOWER HOUSE is her first novel.

THORN TREE de Max Ludington

The dark side of the 1960s returns to haunt a contemporary Los Angeles family in this new novel from a critically acclaimed author. Prefect for readers of Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

THORN TREE
by Max Ludington
St. Martin’s Press, April 2024

From the acclaimed author of Tiger in a Trance (Doubleday, 2003) comes a suspenseful and beautifully wrought novel about the aftershocks of the late 1960s and the relationship between trauma and the creative impulse. Now in his seventies, Daniel lives in quiet anonymity in a converted guest cottage in the Hollywood Hills. A legendary artist, he’s known for one seminal work—Thorn Tree—a hulking, welded, scrap metal sculpture that he built in the Mojave desert in the 1970s. The work emerged from tragedy, but building it kept Daniel alive and catapulted him to brief, reluctant fame in the art world.
Daniel is landlord and neighbor to Celia, a charismatic but fragile actress living in the main house on his property. She too experienced youthful fame, hers in a popular television series, but saw her life nearly collapse after a series of bad decisions. Now, a new movie with a notorious director might re-ignite her career. A single mother, Celia leaves her young son, Dean, for weeks at a time with her father, Jack, who stays at her house while she’s on location. Jack and Daniel strike up a tentative friendship as Dean takes to visiting Daniel’s cottage—but something about Jack seems off. Discomfiting, strangely intimate, with flashes of anger balanced by an almost philosophical bent, Jack is not the harmless grandparent he pretends to be.
Weaving the idealism and the darkness of the late 1960s, the glossy surfaces of Los Angeles celebrity today, and thrumming with the sound of the Grateful Dead, the mania of Charles Manson and other cults, and the secrets that both Jack and Daniel have harbored for fifty years, THORN TREE is an utterly-compelling novel.

Max Ludington’s first novel, Tiger in a Trance was a New York Times Notable Book. He received his M.F.A. from Columbia University and now lives in New York. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Tin House, Meridian, Nerve, and On the Rocks: The KGB Bar Fiction Anthology.

THE BREAKTHROUGH YEARS d’Ellen Galinsky

From child development expert Ellen Galinsky comes a book that blends cutting-edge research with engaging storytelling to offer readers a paradigm-shifting comprehensive understanding of adolescence.

THE BREAKTHROUGH YEARS
A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens
by Ellen Galinsky
Flatiron Books, March 2024

Almost every adolescent has said to parents, “You JUST don’t understand.” In THE BREAKTHROUGH YEARS, Galinsky explains why that is so often true. Galinsky’s seven-year inquiry into the adolescent brain and behavior, including conducting original studies—uniquely informed by the questions adolescents have about their own development—shows why our understanding of adolescence is out of step with the latest research and how to correct it. In this book, Galinsky identifies the most important adolescent developmental needs—including belonging, developing competence, and building an identity; presents the life skills that are emerging rapidly during adolescence—like learning to be resilient and taking on challenges; and introduces Solutions Mindset and Shared Solutions—a problem-solving mindset and process that parents and others can use to help create solutions to their adolescent’s challenging problems. This book will help parents and those who work with teens to understand adolescence not as the “I hope we can get through these years” but as the breakthrough years that they truly can be.

Ellen Galinsky is President of Families and Work Institute. She’s conducted research on child-care, parent-professional relationship, parental development, work-family issues and youth voice. Ellen is the author of the best-selling Mind in the Making, more than 100 books/reports and 300 articles. She holds a Master of Science degree in child development and education from Bank Street College of Education and a Bachelor of Arts degree in child study from Vassar College. A popular keynote speaker, she has been a presenter at five White House Conferences, including the White House Conference on Teenagers in 2000. She has been featured regularly in the media, including appearances on Good Morning America, the Today Show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

THE DAUGHTERS’ WAR de Christopher Buehlman

This standalone novel follows young warrior Galva dom Braga on her journey from untested academy swordswoman to feared and bloodied veteran knight, set during the war-torn, goblin-infested years just before The Blacktongue Thief.

THE DAUGHTERS’ WAR
by Christopher Buehlman
Tor Books, June 2024

The goblins have killed all of our horses and most of our men. They have enslaved our cities, burned our fields, and inflicted a waking nightmare on the known world. Now, our daughters take up arms. Galva—Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill—has defied her family’s wishes and joined the army’s untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind. The road to victory is bloody, and goblins are clever and merciless. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted—not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side. But some hopes are worth any risk.

Christopher Buehlman (he/him) is an author, comedian, and screenwriter from St. Petersburg, Florida, whose books include The Blacktongue Thief and Those Across the River. He tours the country most years, writing fantasy and horror and performing at Renaissance festivals. He and his wife, Jenn, travel with their rescue dog, Duck, and a black cat named Jane Mansfield, who is proficient in ninjutsu.