Literary Science Fiction

Cosimo di Rondo, a young Italian nobleman of the 18th century, rebels against his parents by climbing into the trees and remaining there for the rest of his life. He adapts efficiently to an existence in the forest canopy - he hunts, sows crops, plays games with earthbound friends, fights forest fires, solves engineering problems, and even manages to have love affairs. From his perch in the trees, Cosimo sees the Age of Enlightenment pass by and a new century dawn.

The best-selling author of the popular Renshai series, Mickey Zucker Reichert pens I, Robot: To Protect - the first in a trilogy inspired by the Isaac Asimov classic I, Robot. It’s the year 2035, and robot psychologist Dr. Susan Calvin is beginning her residency at a teaching hospital where patients are being injected with diagnostic nanobots. Before long, Susan realizes that the injections portend dire consequences - and that the nanobots are being used to facilitate a deadly scheme.

When sisters Muna and Sakti wake up on the peaceful beach of the island of Janda Baik, they can’t remember anything, except that they are bound as only sisters can be. They have been cursed by an unknown enchanter, and slowly Sakti starts to fade away. The only hope of saving her is to go to distant Britain, where the Sorceress Royal has established an academy to train women in magic. If Muna is to save her sister, she must learn to navigate high society and trick the English magicians into believing she is a magical prodigy.

It is a stark and inhospitable place, where the landscape itself poses a challenge to survival, yet its strange, silent beauty has long fascinated scientists and adventurers. Now Antarctica faces an uncertain future. The international treaty which protects the continent is about to dissolve, clearing the way for Antarctica’s resources to be plundered, its eerie beauty to be savaged. As politicians wrangle over its fate, major corporations begin probing for its hidden riches.

All his life, Moon roamed the Three Worlds, a solitary wanderer forced to hide his true nature - until he was reunited with his own kind, the Raksura, and found a new life as consort to Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud court. But now a rival court has laid claim to him, and Jade may or may not be willing to fight for him. Beset by doubts, Moon must travel in the company of strangers to a distant realm where he will finally face the forgotten secrets of his past, even as an old enemy returns with a vengeance.

All residents of the City have recently died, and they will remain in the City only as long as someone still living on Earth remembers them. On Earth, however, the population has been devastated by a terrible pandemic. Laura Byrd, isolated at an Antarctic research station, may be the only person to have survived the pandemic. But she's running out of time and supplies, and her memories are fading.

In outward form, Number9Dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister's death and his mother's breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses - through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck - a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father's identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer.

When Mrs. Sorensen's husband dies, she rekindles a long-dormant love with an unsuitable mate in "Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch". In "Open the Door and the Light Pours Through", a young man wrestles with grief and his sexuality in an exchange of letters with his faraway beloved. "Dreadful Young Ladies" demonstrates the strength and power - known and unknown - of the imagination. The World Fantasy Award-winning novella The Unlicensed Magician introduces the secret, magical life of an invisible girl once left for dead.

It's 2040. After decades of research, scientists of the European Union believe that they have at last conquered humankind's most pernicious foe: old age. For the first time, technology holds out the promise of not merely slowing the aging process but actually reversing it. The first subject for treatment is 78-year-old philanthropist Jeff Baker. After 18 months in a rejuvenation tank, Jeff emerges looking like a 20-year-old. And the change is more than skin deep. From his hair cells down to his DNA, Jeff is 20 - with a breadth of life experience.

As destiny weaves its rich tapestry, a compelling drama plays out against a background of wild forests, elegant castles, hidden temples, and savage battlefields. This is the medieval Japan of Lian Hearn's imagination, where animal spirits clash with warriors and children navigate a landscape as serene as it is deadly.

Set before Tales of the Otori begins, Heaven's Net recounts the life of Lord Otori Shigeru, the series' spiritual warrior-godfather and the adoptive father of the Tales' Takeo. We learn about Shigeru's training; his relationship with the Tribe of mysteriously powerful assassins; his fateful meeting with Lady Maruyama, who would become his secret lover; the battle of Yaegahara, where his father is killed; and other turning points that shaped the Tales.

Political activist and best-selling author Randall Robinson is a pillar of scholarship and insight within the African-American literary community. His acclaimed novel Makeda stars Gray March, a young man who, beginning in the 1950s, embarks on a journey of spiritual and historical enlightenment through stories he hears from his blind grandmother.

Written at the turn of the 19th century, before "science fiction" existed as a genre, H.G. Wells' creation was a new departure in literature. The author's deep devotion to social reform led him to use the idea of an extraterrestrial invasion to theorize about a possible violent upheaval in society - instead of "Martians" think "Bolsheviks."

After being horribly mistreated at a government animal-research facility, Snitter and Rowf escape into the isolation—and terror—of the wilderness. Aided only by a fox they call “the tod,” the two dogs must struggle to survive in their new environment. When the starving dogs attack some sheep, they are labeled ferocious man-eating monsters, setting off a great dog hunt that is later intensified by the fear that the dogs could be carriers of the bubonic plague.

Mark Sandoval - resolutely arrogant, covered head to foot in precise geometric scarring, and still marginally famous after Hollywood made an Oscar-winner based off his memoir years before - has been strongly advised by his lawyer to leave the country following a drunken and potentially fatal hit and run. When a woman sends Sandoval grainy footage of what appears to be a unicorn, he quickly hires an assistant and the two head off to the woman's farm in Hvildarland, a tiny, remote island off the coast of Iceland.

July 12, 1939: Perry Nelson is driving along the palisades when another vehicle swerves into his lane, a tire blows out, and his car careens off the road and over a bluff. The last thing he sees before his head connects with the boulders below is a girl in a green bathing suit, prancing along the shore.

Hunter S. Thompson's notorious Screwjack is as salacious, unsettling, and brutally lyrical as it has been rumored to be since the private printing in 1991 of 300 fine collectors' copies and 26 leather-bound presentation copies. Only the first of the three pieces included here - "Mescalito", published in Thompson's 1990 collection Songs of the Doomed - has been available to the public, making the audio edition of Screwjack a major publishing event.

Matt Reddy's old Asiatic Fleet destroyer USS Walker has been mysteriously transported to an alternate version of earth. Here, WWII is no longer raging, and Reddy and his crew have been trying to find a new place for themselves in this strange new world.

Unpacking her belongings in her new hometown of Portland, Oregon, herbalist and reformed alchemist Zoe Faust can't help but notice she's picked up a stowaway. Dorian Robert-Houdin is a living, breathing three-and-half-foot gargoyle - not to mention a master of French cuisine - and he needs Zoe's expertise to decipher a centuries-old text. Zoe, who's trying to put her old life behind her, isn't so sure she wants to reopen her alchemical past... until the dead man on her porch leaves her no choice.

Someone, somewhere, has declared war on Kevin Kichida, and that someone has a long list of magical predators in their Rolodex. The good news is that Kevin lives in a town where Ted Cahill is the new sheriff and old ally of John Charming. The attacks on Kevin seem to be a pattern, and the more John and his new team follow that thread, the deeper they find themselves in a maze of supernatural threats, family secrets, and age-old betrayals.