The Nine

Acclaimed journalist Jeffrey Toobin takes us into the chambers of the most important—and secret—legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, revealing the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land. An institution at a moment of transition, the Court now stands at a crucial point, with major changes in store on such issues as abortion, civil rights, and church-state relations. Based on exclusive interviews with the justices and with a keen sense of the Court’s history and the trajectory of its future, Jeffrey Toobin creates in The Nine a riveting story of one of the most important forces in American life today.

"[A] narrative of unfathomable courage... Ms. Strauss does her readers—and her subjects—a worthy service by returning to this appalling history of the courage of women caught up in a time of rapacity and war." —Wall Street Journal "Utterly gripping." —Anne Sebba, author of Les Parisiennes "A compelling, beautifully written story of resilience, friendship and survival. The story of Women’s resistance during World War II needs to be told and The Nine accomplishes this in spades." —Heather Morris, New York Times bestselling author of Cilka's Journey The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII from Germany back to Paris. The nine women were all under thirty when they joined the resistance. They smuggled arms through Europe, harbored parachuting agents, coordinated communications between regional sectors, trekked escape routes to Spain and hid Jewish children in scattered apartments. They were arrested by French police, interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo. They were subjected to a series of French prisons and deported to Germany. The group formed along the way, meeting at different points, in prison, in transit, and at Ravensbrück. By the time they were enslaved at the labor camp in Leipzig, they were a close-knit group of friends. During the final days of the war, forced onto a death march, the nine chose their moment and made a daring escape. Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative from Gwen Strauss is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.

In the dark streets of Corma exists a book that writes itself, a book that some would kill for... Black market courier Rowena Downshire is just trying to pay her mother’s freedom from debtor's prison when an urgent and unexpected delivery leads her face to face with a creature out of nightmares. Rowena escapes with her life, but the strange book she was ordered to deliver is stolen. The Alchemist knows things few men have lived to tell about, and when Rowena shows up on his doorstep, frightened and empty-handed, he knows better than to turn her away. What he discovers leads him to ask for help from the last man he wants to see—the former mercenary, Anselm Meteron. Across town, Reverend Phillip Chalmers awakes in a cell, bloodied and bruised, facing a creature twice his size. Translating the stolen book may be his only hope for survival; however, he soon realizes the book may be a fabled text written by the Creator Himself, tracking the nine human subjects of His Grand Experiment. In the wrong hands, it could mean the end of humanity. Rowena and her companions become the target of conspirators who seek to use the book for their own ends. But how can this unlikely team be sure who the enemy is when they can barely trust each other? And what will happen when the book reveals a secret no human was meant to know?

Hannah Webber fears she will never be a mother, but her prayers are finally answered when she gives birth to a son. In an era of high-stakes parenting, nurturing Sam’s intellect becomes Hannah’s life purpose. She invests body and soul into his development, much to the detriment of her marriage. She convinces herself, however, that Sam’s acceptance at age fourteen to the most prestigious of New England boarding schools overseen by an illustrious headmaster, justifies her choices. When he arrives at Dunning, Sam is glad to be out from under his mother’s close watch. And he enjoys his newfound freedom—until, late one night, he stumbles upon evidence of sexual misconduct at the school and is unable to shake the discovery. Both a coming-of-age novel and a portrait of an evolving mother-son relationship, The Nine is the story of a young man who chooses to expose a corrupt world operating under its own set of rules—even if it means jeopardizing his mother’s hopes and dreams.

The thrilling story of how nine young women, captured by the Nazis for being part of the resistance, launched a bold escape and found their way home. As war raged across Europe, and the Nazi regime tightened its reign of horror and oppression, nine women, some still in their teens, joined the French and Dutch resistance. Caught out in heroic acts against the brutal occupiers, they were each tortured and sent east into Greater Germany to a concentration camp, where they formed a powerful friendship. In 1945, as the war turned against Hitler, they were evacuated from the camp and forced on a death march. Determined to survive, they made a bid for freedom - and so began one of the most breathtaking tales of escape and resilience of the Second World War.

"[A] narrative of unfathomable courage" —Wall Street Journal The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII from Germany back to Paris. The nine women were all under thirty when they joined the resistance. They smuggled arms through Europe, harbored parachuting agents, coordinated communications between regional sectors, trekked escape routes to Spain and hid Jewish children in scattered apartments. They were arrested by French police, interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo. They were subjected to a series of French prisons and deported to Germany. The group formed along the way, meeting at different points, in prison, in transit, and at Ravensbrück. By the time they were enslaved at the labor camp in Leipzig, they were a close-knit group of friends. During the final days of the war, forced onto a death march, the nine chose their moment and made a daring escape. Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative by Gwen Strauss is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.

A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head. We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we -- the everyday people whose data powers AI -- aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into -- one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations -- Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain. In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI -- the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself -- is broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course, and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.

What Room Are You In? Ask any woman how she's feeling. Even when things look pretty darn great from the outside, chances are that at least one thing (and it may seem minor to others) is nagging at her, making her feel less than spectacular, bringing her down: I'm too fat. My husband doesn't help enough around the house. My friend is going to be mad if I don't call her back. Why don't my kids try harder at school? My job is less than inspiring. Whatever happened to that old boyfriend, the one who got away? Whether it's the size of our thighs or our bank accounts, there always seems to be something that isn't measuring up to our high standards--and we let the dissatisfaction spill over into other areas of our lives, distracting us from taking pleasure in everything that's going right. In The Nine Rooms of Happiness, Lucy Danziger, editor in chief of Self magazine, and women's-health psychiatrist Catherine Birndorf use the metaphor of a house to release us from this phenomenon. In this house, the living room is where we deal with friendships and our social life; the bedroom is where we explore intimacy, romance, relationships, and sex; the bathroom is for issues relating to health and body image; the kitchen is for nourishment and the division of chores; and so on. Our "inner house" can have eight beautifully designed, neat and tidy rooms, and one messy one, and still we focus on the mess. The Nine Rooms of Happiness pinpoints common self-destructive patterns of behavior and offers key processes that will help readers clean up their emotional architecture. After each room is "clean," Danziger and Birndorf show us how we can spend time on ourselves figuring out what is most meaningful to us--finding larger passion and purpose that makes returning to the rest of our house a pleasure, no matter what calamity or mess awaits. The result? After reading this book you'll think differently about the things that are bringing you down and be able to live a happier, more joy filled life, in every room of your emotional house. From the outside, you'd think I have it all: beautiful house, wonderful children, devoted husband. But am I happy? I think so. There's nothing that has gone terribly wrong. There's no reason for me not to be happy. But I don't feel happy so much as I feel I'm just going through the motions. Sometimes I have the feeling that there's more and I just haven't found it yet. But what . . . and how dare I want more? Isn't all that I have enough? --from The Nine Rooms of Happiness