Nasim is a young computer scientist, hoping to work on the Human Connectome Project: a plan to map every neural connection in the human brain. But funding for the project is cancelled, and Nasim ends up devoting her career to Zendegi, a computerised virtual world used by millions of people. Fifteen years later, a revived Connectome Project has published a map of the brain. Zendegi is facing fierce competition from its rivals, and Nasim decides to exploit the map to fill the virtual world with better Proxies: the bit-players that bring its crowd scenes to life. As controversy rages over the nature and rights of the Proxies, a friend with terminal cancer begs Nasim to make a Proxy of him, so some part of him will survive to help raise his orphaned son. But Zendegi is about to become a battlefield ...

In the South Pacific, 1000 feet below the surface, a space ship rests on the ocean floor - and it is at least 300 years old. Rushed to the scene are four scientists: an astrophysicist, a biologist, a mathematician and a psychologist. Together they descend into the depths of the sea to investigate. Has it come from an alien culture? From the future? What is the giant, perfect silver sphere - clearly not man-made - that they find inside the ship?

For Seattle detective Joanne Walker, spring is about new beginnings. She’s mastered her shamanic abilities (mostly), survived a cannibalistic serial killer (barely), and now she’s facing the biggest challenge of her career—attending a dance concert with her sexy boss, Captain Michael Morrison. But when the performance—billed as transformative—actually changes her into a coyote, she and Morrison have bigger things to deal with.

Trotskyist agitator, outspoken enemy of tyranny, relentless religion-baiter,disciple of George Orwell, devoted friend of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and James Fenton, unrepentant chain-smoker, heavy boozer, tireless advocate of war against Iraq – Christopher Hitchens has dedicated his considerable talents as an orator both in person and in print to a great many and a wide variety of causes over the years.