Just finished (I finally got around to reading it) "Season of the Skulls" by @cstross .
I was very well entertained by Charlies excursion into the romance genre. And I loved the 80ties Pop references.
If you have not read them, catch up with the "Laundry Files" and "New Management" series.

John Chu is a “sherpa”—a paid guide to online role-playing games like the popular Call to Wizardry. For a fee, he and his crew will provide you with a top-flight character equipped with the best weapons and armor, and take you dragon-slaying in the Realms of Asgarth, hunting rogue starships in the Alpha Sector, or battling hordes of undead in the zombie apocalypse.

Chu’s new client, the pseudonymous Mr. Jones, claims to be a “wealthy, famous person” with powerful enemies, and he’s offering a ridiculous amount of money for a comprehensive tour of the world of virtual-reality gaming. For Chu, this is a dream assignment, but as the tour gets underway, he begins to suspect that Mr. Jones is really North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, whose interest in VR gaming has more to do with power than entertainment. As if that weren’t enough to deal with, Chu also has to worry about “Ms. Pang,” who may or may not be an agent of the People’s Republic of China, and his angry ex-girlfriend, Darla Jean Covington, who isn’t the type to let an international intrigue get in the way of her own plans for revenge.

What begins as a whirlwind online adventure soon spills over into the real world. Now Chu must use every trick and resource at his disposal to stay one step ahead—because in real life, there is no reset button.

A wonderful, whimsical journey through the pioneering space-race graphics of the former Soviet Union

This otherworldly collection of Soviet space-race graphics takes readers on a cosmic adventure through Cold War-era Russia. Created against a backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty, the extraordinary images featured, taken from the period's hugely successful popular-science magazines, were a vital tool for the promotion of state ideology. Presenting more than 250 illustrations - depicting daring discoveries, scientific innovations, futuristic visions, and extraterrestrial encounters - Soviet Space Graphics unlocks the door to the creative inner workings of the USSR.

Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason wonders whether today we are on the brink of a change so big, so profound, that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system by which entire societies function, has reached its limits and is changing into something wholly new.

Before Prince of Persia was a best-selling video game franchise and a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, it was an Apple II computer game created and programmed by one person, Jordan Mechner. Mechner's candid and revealing journals from the time capture his journey from his parents' basement to the forefront of the fast-growing 1980s video game industry... and the creative, technical and personal struggles that brought the prince into being and ultimately into the homes of millions of people worldwide.

Now, Stripe Press celebrates Prince of Persia's 30th anniversary and enduring legacy with a hardcover collector's edition, annotated and lavishly illustrated with archival visuals illustrating stages of the game's creation.

A journalist investigates the past, present, and future of computer crimes, as he attends a hacker convention, documents the extent of the computer crimes, and presents intriguing facts about hackers and their misdoings.

New York Times bestselling author James Swallow delivers a thrilling, action-packed series with MI6 agent Marc Dane, a computer desk jockey who received an unexpected promotion to active field operative. Now, he experiences trials by fire in espionage as he fights for Queen and Country.

As so much technology is forgotten once it is superseded, this is a celebration of machines, industrial design and techno-utopianism of an era in the not-so-distant past. Conceived as a visual sourcebook of the most popular, most powerful and most idiosyncratic computers to grace our workspaces, this timely publication offers a reflection on how far we’ve come and a nostalgic look at a time when digital worlds could be contained in a box and turned off, rather than ever-present in our lives.

Home Computers opens with a scene-setting retrospective by computer and gaming writer Alex Wiltshire. The book’s heart is a series of specially commissioned photographs that capture details of switches and early user-interface design, letterforms and logos, and the quirks that set one computer off from another. Images are complemented by a potted history of each device, the inventors or personalities behind it, and its innovations and influences.

In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive—which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play.

Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings—conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp—and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience.

The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue—and how you host and attend them.

Not long after I first met Warren Buffett back in 1991, I asked him to recommend his favorite book about business. He didn’t miss a beat: “It’s Business Adventures, by John Brooks,” he said. “I’ll send you my copy.” I was intrigued: I had never heard of Business Adventures or John Brooks.

Today, more than two decades after Warren lent it to me—and more than four decades after it was first published—Business Adventures remains the best business book I’ve ever read. John Brooks is still my favorite business writer. (And Warren, if you’re reading this, I still have your copy.)

This is a short, readable book with smart insights, and along the way he crosses paths with some colorful characters.

Iger does a great job explaining what it is like to be a CEO.

In one important respect, the new book is a significant departure from their previous one. Poor Economics, as its name suggests, focused on poor countries. Good Economics for Hard Times focuses instead on the policy debates that are getting so much attention in wealthy countries. (Obviously, since it was written long before the coronavirus pandemic, it doesn’t touch on that issue.) Although it’s clear that their real expertise is microeconomics (the study of how individual people make decisions) rather than macroeconomics (the study of how an overall economy behaves), Banerjee and Duflo are good at assembling and explaining the facts behind contentious issues like immigration, inequality, and trade.

Everyone wonders what it's really like in space, but very few of us have ever had the chance to experience it firsthand. This captivating illustrated collection brings together stories from dozens of international astronauts—men and women who've actually been there—who have returned with accounts of the sometimes weird, often funny, and awe-inspiring sensations and realities of being in space. With playful artwork accompanying each, here are the real stories behind backwards dreams, "moon face," the tricks of sleeping in zero gravity and aiming your sneeze during a spacewalk, the importance of packing hot sauce, and dozens of other cosmic quirks and amazements that come with travel in and beyond low Earth orbit.

Surviving Tomorrow contains twenty-nine stories about survivors, over half of them original and published here for the first time. Struck by a desire to help people as the pandemic unfolded, editor Bryan Thomas Schmidt decided to try and use his skills as an anthologist to raise funding for COVID-19 support by creating an anthology with two purposes—fundraising and provide readers with stories that would speak to them as they manage the stress of our changing social landscape.

This beautiful 6x9 gold-embossed hardcover special edition of the book has a metal clasp and will be number plated as it comes off the press. It fits in the same shelf space as a standard hardcover but is also suitable for a coffee table display. Lets face it - it just looks awesome and you’ll feel super fancy reading it. Also makes an epic gift…

The Worm showcases over 300 images from NASA’s archives chosen with one simple criteria: each photograph must feature ‘the worm’.

Together, these images demonstrate not only the extent to which Danne & Blackburn’s 1975 NASA Graphic Program had been implemented before being rescinded in 1992, but also the incredible achievements by NASA personnel.

The unfinished final chapter of the book will showcase the return of the worm, as it flies once again aboard a SpaceX rocket on May 30, 2020.

Gibt es traditionelle Pflanzenrezepte, die wirklich schmecken? Diese Frage hat sich Katharina Seiser, Autorin beliebter und bewährter Kochbücher, gestellt. ­Die Antwort ist ein wahrer veganer Schatz, hier erstmals in einem Kochbuch vereint: 70 geschmackvolle und immer schon rein pflanzliche Rezepte aus über 20 Ländern.

Bullshit isn’t what it used to be. Now, two science professors give us the tools to dismantle misinformation and think clearly in a world of fake news and bad data.

Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news abound and it’s increasingly difficult to know what’s true. Our media environment has become hyperpartisan. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. We are fairly well equipped to spot the sort of old-school bullshit that is based in fancy rhetoric and weasel words, but most of us don’t feel qualified to challenge the avalanche of new-school bullshit presented in the language of math, science, or statistics. In Calling Bullshit, Professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West give us a set of powerful tools to cut through the most intimidating data.

You don’t need a lot of technical expertise to call out problems with data. Are the numbers or results too good or too dramatic to be true? Is the claim comparing like with like? Is it confirming your personal bias? Drawing on a deep well of expertise in statistics and computational biology, Bergstrom and West exuberantly unpack examples of selection bias and muddled data visualization, distinguish between correlation and causation, and examine the susceptibility of science to modern bullshit.

We have always needed people who call bullshit when necessary, whether within a circle of friends, a community of scholars, or the citizenry of a nation. Now that bullshit has evolved, we need to relearn the art of skepticism.

These are the cartoons not only from the LA Free Press, included in RCD25, but also the cartoons he did at the Digger, in Australia, and the cartoons he did for the LA Free Press when he came back from his tour of Australia with Phil Ochs.