When you're cooking, you're a chemist! Every time you follow or modify a recipe, you are experimenting with acids and bases, emulsions and suspensions, gels and foams. In your kitchen you denature proteins, crystallize compounds, react enzymes with substrates, and nurture desired microbial life while suppressing harmful bacteria and fungi. And unlike in a laboratory, you can eat your experiments to verify your hypotheses.

In Culinary Reactions, author Simon Quellen Field turns measuring cups, stovetop burners, and mixing bowls into graduated cylinders, Bunsen burners, and beakers. How does altering the ratio of flour, sugar, yeast, salt, butter, and water affect how high bread rises? Why is whipped cream made with nitrous oxide rather than the more common carbon dioxide? And why does Hollandaise sauce call for clarified butter? This easy-to-follow primer even includes recipes to demonstrate the concepts being discussed, including: Whipped Creamsicle Topping--a foam; Cherry Dream Cheese--a protein gle; Lemonade with Chameleon Eggs--an acid indicator; and more!

Black powder, the world's first chemical explosive, was originally developed in the seventh century, during China's Tang dynasty. It was a crude mixture at first, but over time chemists discovered the optimum proportion of sulfur, charcoal, and nitrates, as well as the best way to mix them so that the particles of each component were tiny and homogenous, resulting in a complete and powerful reaction.
Author and chemistry buff Simon Quellen Field takes readers on a decades-long journey through the history of things that go boom, from the early days of black powder to today's modern plastic explosives. Not just the who, when, and why, but also the how. How did Chinese alchemists come to create black powder? What accidents led to the discovery of high explosives? How do explosives actually work on a molecular scale? And though most people have a vague understanding that dynamite is more powerful than gunpowder, what does it mean to be more powerful?
Boom The Chemistry and History of Explosives goes back to the original papers and patents written by the chemists who invented them, to shed light on their development, to explore the consequences of their use for good and ill, and to give the reader a basic understanding of the chemistry that makes them possible.

This fresh collection of more than 20 science projects--from hydrogen fuel cells to computer-controlled radio transmitters--is perfect for the tireless tinkerer. Innovative activities include taking detailed plant cell photographs through a microscope using a disposable camera; building a rocket engine out of aluminum foil, paper clips, and kitchen matches; and constructing a geodesic dome out of gumdrops and barbecue skewers. Organized by scientific topic, each chapter includes explanations of the physics, chemistry, biology, or mathematics behind the projects. Most of the devices can be built using common household products or components available at hardware or electronic stores, and each experiment contains illustrated step-by-step instructions with photographs and diagrams that make construction easy. No workbench warrior, science teacher, or grown-up geek should be without this idea-filled resource.

Sandra is in the business of finding people. It turns out she can even find people in the federal witness protection program. Unfortunately, the man she found was murdered shortly after being found. Her partner is not answering his phone. Only he knew who had hired them. She is on the run, hiding from her murderous client, and now from the police, who think she is killing people. But Sandra is in the business of finding people. She knows how to hide. And she knows that she must find her murderous client in order to get her life back. Or just save it.

How much do you really know about how the human body works and how it reacts to food, exercise, nutrition, and the environment? While most people have read about at least one fad diet, they're left wondering about the greater biochemistry, psychology, sociology, and physiology of the obesity crisis in the United States.
Gut Reactions by chemist Simon Quellen Field shows readers how their bodies react to food and the environment and how their brains affect what and how much they eat. It reveals why some diets work for some people but not for others, based on genetics, previous weight history, brain chemistry, environmental cues, and social pressures. It explores how dozens of hormones affect hunger and satiety and interact with the brain and the gut to regulate feeding behavior. And it explains the addictive nature of foods that interact with the same dopamine and opioid receptors in the brain as cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, and nicotine.
Whether you're looking to lose weight, put on muscle mass, or simply understand how your metabolism or gut microbiome impact your food cravings, Simon Quellen Field has the scientific answers for you.

When she's not on the medication that keeps her sane, Raven is highly intelligent.

But during one of her lucid periods, she discovers that she is transmitting radio signals from an implanted device in her spine.

Is this what causes her symptoms? Who is tracking her? And why?

She and her new friends race to find out because the medications are killing her, and she doesn't have a lot of time left.

What would it be like to be genetically engineered? To have your genes selected from thousands of the most successful athletes, scientists, businessmen, and scholars from all over the world? Jack Wright knows, because that's just what was done to him. Growing up with the expectations of greatness, all his successes taken for granted, all his accomplishments attributed to his genes, he can run faster than any Olympian, but will never get a medal, since genetic enhancements are considered unfair competition, like performance enhancing drugs. In a world where broad spectrum antiviral drugs have made most illnesses things of the past, including all sexually transmitted diseases, relationships form quickly and easily, without fear, except for Jack. Living alone, the scars of growing up as a lonely superman leave him particularly at a loss when his path intersects with two women, whose secrets get them all involved with murder, gang warfare, illegal drug trading, and a mystery that Jack is uniquely suited to solve.

Step-by-step instructions to building more than 30 fascinating devices are included in this book for workbench warriors and grown-up geeks. Detailed illustrations and diagrams explain how to construct a simple radio with a soldering iron, a few basic circuits, and three shiny pennies. Instructions are included for a rotary steam engine that requires a candle, a soda can, a length of copper tubing, and just 15 minutes. To use optics to roast a hot dog, no electricity or stove is required, just a flexible plastic mirror, a wooden box, a little algebra, and a sunny day. Also included are experiments most science teachers probably never demonstrated, such as magnets that levitate in midair, metals that melt in hot water, a Van de Graaff generator made from a pair of empty soda cans, and lasers that transmit radio signals. Every experiment is followed by an explanation of the applicable physics or chemistry.

California's north coast is quiet, lonely, and rugged, and not a place well known for murder. But when an investigator looking into a possible suicide is murdered, Jimmy Davis interrupts his retirement and takes the case. But as soon as he gets to the scene, the main suspect also turns up dead. Connecting the three deaths is all the more difficult because everyone in the small community seems to be guilty. The pretty singer was dating the married suspect, and her footprints are at the cliff where he fell. The daughter of the first victim has several motives, as do most of the other locals who knew the three dead men. A new approach to the investigation is needed, or the next investigator may end up dead as well. A new approach is exactly what Jimmy Davis brings, but he also brings a gun.

Jerry has half a brain, and half a mind to use it. After his accident left him missing large parts of his brain, a computer chip was implanted to try to connect the pieces that were left. This left him, in his words, funny. He lives with other funny people in a clinic for people like him, each of them with a unique take on life, given to them by their special gifts. But when Jerry meets a funny little man who is very much out of this world, his own abilities begin to grow. And Jerry is getting better every day...

Wade Bennet was shot in the arm while rescuing the kidnapped daughter of a crime boss.\

But that is only the beginning of his problems.

The daughter is now missing after maybe shooting her father with a gun taken from the kidnappers Wade killed.

At every turn, new evidence brings to light new mysteries, and no one can be trusted.

And that is just the beginning of Wade's problems.

Randall Story isn't from around here.

He knows he can get home. He just has to work to make the world a better place, a little bit at a time.

But a lifetime of work is now threatened by people who have learned how to extract energy from the order of the universe.

They seem to be unaware that every watt they extract makes the world descend a little more into chaos.

What if someone from the future could send messages into the head of someone in our time?

And what if the only possible recipient was a schizophrenic who was used to hearing voices, and everyone he knows is used to him hearing voices?

And when he starts getting rich from lottery and horse-racing wins and stock tips, he gets the interest of the police, the mob, and the SEC?

June Clemson's mother Rachel is laundering 22 million reasons to keep her past a secret, even from her daughter.

But when June's innocent DNA test reveals relatives she didn't know existed, she puts her life and that of everyone she meets in grave danger.