Audiobooks by Alex Shvartsman

The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI

"Today’s software can only imitate art, but what about tomorrow? Will true artificial intelligences be able to appreciate or even create art? Explore dystopian societies, where AI generates most of the content and human artists must eke out an existence, and utopias, where artificial minds help unlock and enhance human creativity. Delve into the minds of robot painters, AI poets, drone forgers, and electronic theater curators. These and other possible futures are imagined by award-winning and bestselling human authors from the USA, UK, China, Ukraine, Chile, Japan, Madagascar, Brazil, Czech Republic, and Sri Lanka."

Alex Shvartsman, Ken Liu (Author), Aimee Reid, David Bendena, Hope Shangle, Jackie Meloche, Lauren Deporre, Lesa Lockford, Mark Owen, Nick Mondelli, Psalm Morant (Narrator)

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Kakistocracy

"If you do it well, lying is every bit as effective as magic. Conrad Brent has no innate magic, so he bluffs a lot and uses a myriad of magical items to protect Brooklyn from monsters and arcane threats. As a member of the Watch, the group that protects the mundane humans from such dangers, he risks his life on a regular basis. Sometimes twice before lunch. Sometimes during lunch, when he dares order his food from a street cart. After regaining his position in the Watch which he’d temporarily lost due to the machinations of a variety of evil-doers, Conrad doesn’t want to take any risks he doesn’t have to. But now his boss is missing, there’s a totalitarian new regime in City Hall oppressing all magic users, and the mayor has aligned himself with a diabolical villain. In order to save the day, Conrad must team up with a recovering necromancer to mediate a dispute between two ancient enemy factions, solve a mystery of a warded house adjacent to a cemetery, and stand with his friends against tyranny. That is, if the interdimensional fae assassins don’t get him first."

Alex Shvartsman (Author), Patrick Boylan (Narrator)

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The Middling Affliction: The Conradverse Chronicles

"GUARD BROOKLYN, FIGHT MONSTERS, TAUNT BAD GUYS 'Shvartsman delivers real magic action and surprise twists...You're going to want more.'—Esther M. Fiesner, Nebula-award winning author of the national bestseller, Warchild. What would you do if you lost everything that mattered to you, as well as all means to protect yourself and others, but still had to save the day? Conrad Brent is about to find out. Conrad Brent protects the people of Brooklyn from monsters and magical threats. The snarky, wisecracking guardian also has a dangerous secret: he’s one in a million – literally. Magical ability comes to about one in every 30,000 and can manifest at any age. Conrad is rarer than this, however. He’s a middling, one of the half-gifted and totally despised. Most of the gifted community feels that middlings should be instantly killed. The few who don’t flat out hate them still aren’t excited to be around middlings. Meaning Conrad can’t tell anyone, not even his best friends, what he really is. Conrad hides in plain sight by being a part of the volunteer Watch, those magically gifted who protect their cities from dangerous, arcane threats. And, to pay the bills, Conrad moonlights as a private detective and monster hunter for the gifted community. Which helps him keep up his personal fiction – that he’s a magical version of Batman. Conrad does both jobs thanks to charms, artifacts, and his wits, along with copious amounts of coffee. But little does he know that events are about to change his life…forever. When Conrad discovers the Traveling Fair auction house has another middling who’s just manifested her so-called powers on the auction block, he’s determined to save her, regardless of risk. But what he finds out while doing so is even worse – the winning bidder works for a company that’s just created the most dangerous chemical weapon to ever hit the magical community. Before Conrad can convince anyone at the Watch of the danger, he’s exposed for what he really is. Now, stripped of rank, magical objects, friends and allies, Conrad has to try to save the world with only his wits. Thankfully though, no one’s taken away his coffee."

Alex Shvartsman (Author), Patrick Boylan (Narrator)

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