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The Hugo Awardâ€"nominated novel by “a hard science fiction writer through and through and one of the very best alive.†â€"The Globe and Mail
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Two months have past since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the Earth, screaming as they burned. The heavens have been silent sinceâ€"until a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Something talks out there: but not to us. Who should we send to meet the alien, when the alien doesn’t want to meet?
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Send a linguist with multiple-personality disorder and a biologist so spliced with machinery that he can’t feel his own flesh. Send a pacifist warrior and a vampire ! recalled from the grave by the voodoo of paleogenetics. Send a man with half his mind gone since childhood. Send them to the edge of the solar system, praying you can trust such freaks and monsters with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to findâ€"but you’d give anything for that to be true, if you knew what was waiting for them. . . .
In March of 1994, Simon Lewis was a Hollywood man on the rise. He had started in the film industry as a lawyer and worked his way up to become a big-budget studio producer. He’d helped shepherd one of the most successful comedies in film history. He’d married the love of his life. And then one night, in a few seconds, everything changed.
In Blindsight, author Chris Colin unspools the remarkable true story of a horrific accident and the life that followed it. A killer at large. Unlikely twists of fate. Miraculous medical oddities. Otherworldly perceptions. Lewisâ! €™s is a tale of one man’s love and loss, and of the strange! turns a waiting a life remade.
“Colin tells Simon Lewis’s story of wreckage and rebirth with economy, vividness, and grace.†â€"Nicholson Baker,†author of House of Holes and Vox
“The extraordinary perceptions and insights experienced by Simon Lewis after his life-altering brain injury are fascinating to read about. This piece should remind those of us who plod through our days with healthy brains that a similar beauty and grace exists inside us waiting to be uncovered.†â€"Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche
“Only Chris Colin could make me care about the man responsible for the cheese-horror movie C.H.U.D II. Mixing a potent blend of reportage with vivid storytelling, Blindsight tells the tragic story of movie producer Simon Lewis, and his almost twenty year struggle with a strange neurological condition. Lewis’s story, we know in our heart of hearts, could befall any of us.†â€"Novella ! Carpenter, best-selling author of Farm CityIn March of 1994, Simon Lewis was a Hollywood man on the rise. He had started in the film industry as a lawyer and worked his way up to become a big-budget studio producer. He’d helped shepherd one of the most successful comedies in film history. He’d married the love of his life. And then one night, in a few seconds, everything changed.
In Blindsight, author Chris Colin unspools the remarkable true story of a horrific accident and the life that followed it. A killer at large. Unlikely twists of fate. Miraculous medical oddities. Otherworldly perceptions. Lewis’s is a tale of one man’s love and loss, and of the strange turns awaiting a life remade.
“Colin tells Simon Lewis’s story of wreckage and rebirth with economy, vividness, and grace.†â€"Nicholson Baker,†author of House of Holes and Vox
“The extraordinary perceptions and insights experienced by Simon Lewis after his life-altering brain ! injury are fascinating to read about. This piece should remind! those o f us who plod through our days with healthy brains that a similar beauty and grace exists inside us waiting to be uncovered.†â€"Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche
“Only Chris Colin could make me care about the man responsible for the cheese-horror movie C.H.U.D II. Mixing a potent blend of reportage with vivid storytelling, Blindsight tells the tragic story of movie producer Simon Lewis, and his almost twenty year struggle with a strange neurological condition. Lewis’s story, we know in our heart of hearts, could befall any of us.†â€"Novella Carpenter, best-selling author of Farm City
Two months since the stars fell...
Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.
Two months of silence, wh! ile a world holds its breath.
Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.
So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn't want to meet?
You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed, and the fainter one she'll do any good if she is. You sen! d a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator o! nce call ed vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist--an informational topologist with half his mind gone--as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.
You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.
But you'd give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them...
Two months since the stars fell...
Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.
Two months of silence, w! hile a world holds its breath.
Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.
So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn't want to meet?
You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed, and the fainter one she'll do any good if she is. You send a monster! to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called ! vampi re, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist--an informational topologist with half his mind gone--as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.
You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.
But you'd give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them...
Isla's ability as a Seer has made her a life-long captive of a paranormal crime lord. Fae assassin, Ransom, offers her a chance at escape, but when she touches his hand she sees only blood, horror, apocalypse. What reason can Ransom have for wanting to rescue her, and can she possibly trust a man who deals in death?
**Please note, if! your copy ends in the bar office instead of with another vision, you DO NOT have the revised edition. Please contact Amazon for the most recent version.**
**Isla and Ransom's novel will be continued later in the Mirus series. In the meantime, please check out the other books in this series, starting with Genesis, an omnibus that includes Forsaken By Shadow and Devil's Eye.**
EXCERPT:
The city was burning. Ash drifted down like snow, blanketing the cracked pavement, mixing with the blood that leaked from broken bodies strewn in the street, on the sidewalks. In the distance the thunder of mortar shells competed with choruses of screams cut short before their crescendo.
Across the street a pack of vampires dragged a pair of women--mother and daughter by the look of themâ€"down the steps of a smoldering brownstone, fighting and arguing with every step over who had rights to the kill. No one stopped to help. They were too busy running for t! he overturned cars that barricaded either end of the block, cl! amoring, climbing to escape this nightmare.
All around her creatures that should have lived in the dark, in the night, or on the fringes of the human world were running amok. In the broad light of day. The dregs of Mirus society had erupted, and the ignorant, foolish humans were paying the price.
A shadow blotted out the sun, and she looked up to see a dragon, glittering black wings extended in a magnificent show of strength as it hovered a dozen feet above the street. It inhaled, armored chest expanding before it opened its enormous mouth and rained fire over every living thing, Mirus and human.
Isla did not feel the burn, but that didn’t stop the bite of fear as she watched more people swarm in. Fae soldiers with flashing blades took formation against a small army of goblins and trolls. A pride of Felis and a pack of Wylk flanked the other side, tearing through the disorganized ranks of underworld creatures with vicious claws and fangs.
Blood, so much blood.
The sound of mortar shells drew nearer until she could see the tanks of the human military beyond the barricade of vehicles, surrounded by soldiers kitted out for urban warfare. They were being picked off along either side by creatures Isla didn’t even recognize. As she watched, a broad-shouldered, white-faced soldier went down under a mass of razor-studded tentacles, the spray of blood soaking his nearby companions.
A voice rose upon the air, overpowering the sounds of violence with a language of the ancients. Isla looked up to the rooftops and spotted a robed figure, arms raised to the heavens. In a sharp, divisive motion, he brought his hands down and apart. The ground trembled and split. Trolls and goblins screeched as they fell into the pit, and other fighters scrambled back to the relative safety of the edge to continue fighting. Backs turned, they didn’t see the beasts that emerged behind them, clawing, crawling, deci! mating everything in their path.
The staccato pop o! f automa tic weapons announced the arrival of the military on the scene. Some of the citizens they were allegedly protecting went down in the spray of bullets. A young boy fell, motionless, across the body of a wraith. The dragon bellowed, rising up above the chaos to lay waste to the barricade and unleashing the paranormal hell on the last hope of the human race.Isla's ability as a Seer has made her a life-long captive of a paranormal crime lord. Fae assassin, Ransom, offers her a chance at escape, but when she touches his hand she sees only blood, horror, apocalypse. What reason can Ransom have for wanting to rescue her, and can she possibly trust a man who deals in death?
**Please note, if your copy ends in the bar office instead of with another vision, you DO NOT have the revised edition. Please contact Amazon for the most recent version.**
**Isla and Ransom's novel will be continued later in the Mirus series. In the meantime, please check out the other books in this s! eries, starting with Genesis, an omnibus that includes Forsaken By Shadow and Devil's Eye.**
EXCERPT:
The city was burning. Ash drifted down like snow, blanketing the cracked pavement, mixing with the blood that leaked from broken bodies strewn in the street, on the sidewalks. In the distance the thunder of mortar shells competed with choruses of screams cut short before their crescendo.
Across the street a pack of vampires dragged a pair of women--mother and daughter by the look of themâ€"down the steps of a smoldering brownstone, fighting and arguing with every step over who had rights to the kill. No one stopped to help. They were too busy running for the overturned cars that barricaded either end of the block, clamoring, climbing to escape this nightmare.
All around her creatures that should have lived in the dark, in the night, or on the fringes of the human world were running amok. In the broad light of day. The dregs of Mirus society had e! rupted, and the ignorant, foolish humans were paying the price! .
A shadow blotted out the sun, and she looked up to see a dragon, glittering black wings extended in a magnificent show of strength as it hovered a dozen feet above the street. It inhaled, armored chest expanding before it opened its enormous mouth and rained fire over every living thing, Mirus and human.
Isla did not feel the burn, but that didn’t stop the bite of fear as she watched more people swarm in. Fae soldiers with flashing blades took formation against a small army of goblins and trolls. A pride of Felis and a pack of Wylk flanked the other side, tearing through the disorganized ranks of underworld creatures with vicious claws and fangs.
Blood, so much blood.
The sound of mortar shells drew nearer until she could see the tanks of the human military beyond the barricade of vehicles, surrounded by soldiers kitted out for urban warfare. They were being picked off along either side by creatures Isla didn’t even recognize. As she watched, a broa! d-shouldered, white-faced soldier went down under a mass of razor-studded tentacles, the spray of blood soaking his nearby companions.
A voice rose upon the air, overpowering the sounds of violence with a language of the ancients. Isla looked up to the rooftops and spotted a robed figure, arms raised to the heavens. In a sharp, divisive motion, he brought his hands down and apart. The ground trembled and split. Trolls and goblins screeched as they fell into the pit, and other fighters scrambled back to the relative safety of the edge to continue fighting. Backs turned, they didn’t see the beasts that emerged behind them, clawing, crawling, decimating everything in their path.
The staccato pop of automatic weapons announced the arrival of the military on the scene. Some of the citizens they were allegedly protecting went down in the spray of bullets. A young boy fell, motionless, across the body of a wraith. The dragon bellowed, rising up above the chaos to l! ay waste to the barricade and unleashing the paranormal hell o! n the la st hope of the human race.Organ transplants are common today. But the master of medical suspense imagines what could happen when supply falls short of demand.A young girl is missing, and her only hope is a blind woman who can see through her eyes...
Tina has unforgettable female protagonists and action-packed, almost haunting plotlines. â€" Janet Evanovich New York Times bestselling author
Eight-year-old Phaedra Burns has been kidnapped by a madman who believes her sacrifice will assuage his rage. Olivia Howe knows that rage; sixteen years ago, she escaped his clutches. The trauma stole her sight, but gave her something in return: a psychic connection to abducted children. Now, that connection is Phaedra’s only hope…if Olivia can face the terrors of her pastâ€"and an inescapable new nightmare.
Phaedra’s kidnapping is the case that could push Detective Max Callahan over the edge. Especially when his key witnessâ€"or suspectâ€"is a! beautiful blind woman with a crazy claim. But her fragile beauty isn’t the only thing that draws him to her. And as their pasts, and passion, twist together, a killer stalks their every move.
(Formerly published in 2002 as Now You See Me for St. Martin’s Press under the name Tina Wainscott.)
Original reviews of this book:
“The plotline of paranormal mystery, Now You See Me [Blindsight], is similar to many other thrillers of this ilk, but its sensitive characterizations and incisive descriptions separate it from the pack. … Wainscott cleverly keeps the suspense rolling by introducing a handful of red herrings and penning a number of chilling close calls and near encounters. Though Wainscott hasn’t yet reached the popularity of Kay Hooper or Lisa Jackson, this intoxicating thriller is on par with those authors’ best works.†â€"Publishers Weekly
***** Incredible! I could not put this book down. It caught m! e from page one and REFUSED to let me go until the very end. A! uthor Ti na Wainscott has the shining talent of being able to combine the genre of "thriller" with the genre of "romance" and somehow make it work! Once again, Tina Wainscott delivers a heart-stopping story that will make many readers stay awake reading long into the night! ***** -- Huntress Reviews
TOP PICK! … Wonderfully drawn suspense that is gritty, chilling and frighteningly eerie. Author Tina Wainscott has really found her niche! â€" RT Bookclub Reviews
… A riveting tale of suspense, intrigue, and the healing power of love. The battle of good against evil is particularly important for Olivia and Max, both of whom have suffered more than any person should have to endure. But to save the kidnapped child and capture this fiendish killer, they must confront their deepest fears. The kidnapper knows their vulnerabilities and is quick to exploit them; Max and Olivia are the hunters and, in some ways, the hunted. A diverse cast of secondary characters adds de! pth and texture to this well-written, thoroughly engrossing tale.
The plot has more twists and turns than a labyrinth, and the suspense just keeps building. Readers will be on the edge of their seats for most of this white-knuckle thriller. With characters and a story you'll remember long after the last page is turned, NOW YOU SEE ME [Blindsight] is a strong contender for the best romantic suspense book of the year.
Review by Susan Lantz, www.newandusedbooks.com
A young girl is missing, and her only hope is a blind woman who can see through her eyes...
Tina has unforgettable female protagonists and action-packed, almost haunting plotlines. â€" Janet Evanovich New York Times bestselling author
Eight-year-old Phaedra Burns has been kidnapped by a madman who believes her sacrifice will assuage his rage. Olivia Howe knows that rage; sixteen years ago, she escaped his clutches. The trauma stole her sight, but gave her something in r! eturn: a psychic connection to abducted children. Now, that co! nnection is Phaedra’s only hope…if Olivia can face the terrors of her pastâ€"and an inescapable new nightmare.
Phaedra’s kidnapping is the case that could push Detective Max Callahan over the edge. Especially when his key witnessâ€"or suspectâ€"is a beautiful blind woman with a crazy claim. But her fragile beauty isn’t the only thing that draws him to her. And as their pasts, and passion, twist together, a killer stalks their every move.
(Formerly published in 2002 as Now You See Me for St. Martin’s Press under the name Tina Wainscott.)
Original reviews of this book:
“The plotline of paranormal mystery, Now You See Me [Blindsight], is similar to many other thrillers of this ilk, but its sensitive characterizations and incisive descriptions separate it from the pack. … Wainscott cleverly keeps the suspense rolling by introducing a handful of red herrings and penning a number of chilling close calls and near encounters. Though Wainsc! ott hasn’t yet reached the popularity of Kay Hooper or Lisa Jackson, this intoxicating thriller is on par with those authors’ best works.†â€"Publishers Weekly
***** Incredible! I could not put this book down. It caught me from page one and REFUSED to let me go until the very end. Author Tina Wainscott has the shining talent of being able to combine the genre of "thriller" with the genre of "romance" and somehow make it work! Once again, Tina Wainscott delivers a heart-stopping story that will make many readers stay awake reading long into the night! ***** -- Huntress Reviews
TOP PICK! … Wonderfully drawn suspense that is gritty, chilling and frighteningly eerie. Author Tina Wainscott has really found her niche! â€" RT Bookclub Reviews
… A riveting tale of suspense, intrigue, and the healing power of love. The battle of good against evil is particularly important for Olivia and Max, both of whom have suffered more than any person should have ! to endure. But to save the kidnapped child and capture this fi! endish k iller, they must confront their deepest fears. The kidnapper knows their vulnerabilities and is quick to exploit them; Max and Olivia are the hunters and, in some ways, the hunted. A diverse cast of secondary characters adds depth and texture to this well-written, thoroughly engrossing tale.
The plot has more twists and turns than a labyrinth, and the suspense just keeps building. Readers will be on the edge of their seats for most of this white-knuckle thriller. With characters and a story you'll remember long after the last page is turned, NOW YOU SEE ME [Blindsight] is a strong contender for the best romantic suspense book of the year.
Review by Susan Lantz, www.newandusedbooks.com
Civilization rests on the backs of its outcasts.
So when civilization needs someone to run generating stations three kilometers below the surface of the Pacific, it seeks out a special sort of person for its Rifters program. It recruits those whos! e histories have preadapted them to dangerous environments, people so used to broken bodies and chronic stress that life on the edge of an undersea volcano would actually be a step up. Nobody worries too much about job satisfaction; if you haven't spent a lifetime learning the futility of fighting back, you wouldn't be a rifter in the first place. It's a small price to keep the lights going, back on shore.
But there are things among the cliffs and trenches of the Juan de Fuca Ridge that no one expected to find, and enough pressure can forge the most obedient career-victim into something made of iron. At first, not even the rifters know what they have in themâ€"and by the time anyone else finds out, the outcast and the downtrodden have their hands on a kill switch for the whole damn planet...
Peter Watts's first novel explores the last mysterious place on earth--the floor of a deep sea rift. Channer Vent is a zone of freezing darkness that bel! ongs to shellfish the size of boulders and crimson worms thre! e meters long. It's the temporary home of the maintenance crew of a geothermal energy plant--a crew made up of the damaged and dysfunctional flotsam of an overpopulated near-future earth. The crew's reluctant leader, basket case Lenie Clarke, can barely survive in the upper world, but she quickly falls under the rift's spell, just as Watts's magical descriptions of it enchant the reader: "Steam never gets a chance to form at three hundred atmospheres, but thermal distortion turns the water into a column of writhing liquid prisms, hotter than molten glass."
Watts is investigating monsters. Gigantic deep sea monsters, surgically-altered-from-human monsters, faceless jellied-brain computer monsters--which monsters are human, which are more than human, which are less? Watts keeps the story line stripped down to showcase the theme of dehumanization. The anonymous millions who live along the unstable shore of N'AmPac come under threat (a triggered earthquake, and perhaps! a disaster that's slower but even more pitiless) from their own dehumanized creations. But Watts is less interested in whether Lenie can save the dry world as in whether she can save herself. In Starfish, Watts stretches the boundaries of humanity up, down, and sideways to see whether its dimensions reveal anything we'd be proud to be a part of. --Blaise SelbyBlindsight is an unusual condition where the sufferer can respond to visual stimuli, while lacking any conscious feeling of having seen the stimuli. It occurs after a particular form of brain injury.
The first edition of Blindsight, by one of the pioneers in the field - Lawrence Weiskrantz, reported studies of a patient with this condition. It was an important, much cited publication. In the past twenty years, further work has been done in this area, and this new edition brings the book up to date. Retaining the original text, but adding a substantial new chapter and colour illustra! tions, the first section of the book summarizes findings on DB! since t he last published account in 1986. The second part includes information on other new research that has occurred since the last edition. As well as giving an account of research over a number of years into a particular case of blindsight, it provides a discussion of the historical and neurological background, a review of cases reported by other investigators, and a number of theoretical and practical issues and implications.
The book will be valuable for cognitive psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists, as well as philosophers of mind.This spellbinding story introduces the unforgettable seventeen-year-old narrator, Luke Prescott, who has been brought up in a bohemian matriarchy by his divorced New Age mother, a religious grandmother, and two precocious half-sisters. Having spent a short lifetime swinging agreeably between the poles of Eastern mysticism and New England Puritanism, Luke is fascinated by the new fields of brain science and believes in having evidenc! e for his beliefs. “Without evidence,†he declares, “you just have hope, which is nice, but not reliable.†Luke is writing his college applications when his fatherâ€"a famous television star whom he never knewâ€"calls and invites him to Los Angeles for the summer. Luke accepts and is plunged into a world of location shooting, celebrity interviews, glamorous parties, and premieres. As he begins to know the difference between his father’s public persona and his private one, Luke finds himself sorting through his own personal mythology.
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By the end of the summer Luke thinks he has found the answers he’s been seeking, only to discover that the differences between truth and belief are not always easy to spot, and that evidence can be withheld: when Luke returns home, his mother reveals something she knows will change everything for him.
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With Blind Sight, Meg Howrey gives us a smart, funny, and deeply moving story about truth ve! rsus belief, about what we do and don’t tell ourselvesâ€"wit! h the re sult, as Luke says, that we don’t always know what we know.
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