Literary Science Fiction

The slaughter is on! Across the galaxy, human mercenaries are being ambushed, and an ever-increasing number of companies aren't returning from their contracts. Someone even appears to be plotting the demise of the premier Four Horsemen companies, and disaster for the other three companies has only been averted by the narrowest of margins. Sansar Enkh, the president of The Golden Horde, knows her company is likely to be next, but has no idea who is behind the attacks, or when they will strike her beloved Horde.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

After their epic journey across Europe, Ayla and Jondalar have reached his home, the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, the old stone-age settlement in the region known today as southwest France. Jondalar's family greet him warmly, but they are initially wary of the beautiful young woman he has brought back, with her strange accent and her tame wolf and horses.

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now pictures because women are not allowed to read. She must pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, for in a time of declining birthrates her value lies in her fertility, and failure means exile to the dangerously polluted Colonies. Offred can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name....

The Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers, one of the most respected organizations throughout all of England, has long been tasked with maintaining magic within His Majesty's lands. But lately the once proper institute has fallen into disgrace, naming an altogether unsuitable gentleman - a freed slave who doesn't even have a familiar - as their Sorcerer Royal and allowing England's once profuse stores of magic to slowly bleed dry. At least they haven't stooped so low as to allow women to practice....

The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood. The Year of the Flood is a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power. The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners - a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life - has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life.

King Shrewd is dead at the hands of his son Regal. As is Fitz - or so his enemies and friends believe. But with the help of his allies and his beast magic, he emerges from the grave, deeply scarred in body and soul. The kingdom also teeters toward ruin: Regal has plundered and abandoned the capital, while the rightful heir, Prince Verity, is lost to his mad quest - perhaps to death. Only Verity's return - or the heir his princess carries - can save the Six Duchies.

A dark and sweeping adventure, Dreamcatcher is set in the haunted city of Derry - the site of Stephen King's It and Insomnia. In it, four young boys stand together and do a brave, good thing, an act that changes them in ways that they hardly understand. A quarter-century later, as grown men who have gone their separate ways, these friends come together once a year to hunt in the woods of Maine.

Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, was deeply opposed to Beren, and imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien. Undaunted by Lord Thingol’s challenge, Beren and Lúthien embark on the supremely heroic attempt to rob Morgoth, the greatest of all evil beings, of a Silmaril, one of the hallowed jewels that adorn the Black Enemy’s crown.

A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab, and soon, you'll be matched with your perfect partner - the one you're genetically made for. That's the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs each of us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: Test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance, and love.

Ayla, one of the most remarkable and beloved heroines in contemporary fiction, continues to explore the world and the people around her with curiosity, insight, and, above all, courage. As the story opens, Ayla, Jondalar, and their infant daughter, Jonayla, are living with the Zelandonii in the Ninth Cave - a shelter of stone. Ayla has been chosen as an acolyte and has embarked on the arduous task of training to become a spiritual leader.

The fourth book in the NYT best-selling Expanse series, Cibola Burn sees the crew of the Rocinante on a new frontier, as the rush to colonize the new planets threatens to outrun law and order and give way to war and chaos. Enter a new frontier. "An empty apartment, a missing family, that's creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell everyone to leave".

Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.

The fifth book in the NYT best-selling Expanse series, Nemesis Games drives the crew of the Rocinante apart, and as they struggle to survive, the inner planets fall victim to an enemy's catastrophic plan. A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle. Ships are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed. The sole remaining protomolecule sample is stolen.

Since time immemorial the Spires have sheltered humanity, towering for miles over the mist-shrouded surface of the world. Within their halls aristocratic houses have ruled for generations, developing scientific marvels, fostering trade alliances, and building fleets of airships to keep the peace. Captain Grimm commands the merchant ship Predator. Fiercely loyal to Spire Albion, he has taken their side in the cold war with Spire Aurora, disrupting the enemy's shipping lines by attacking their cargo vessels.

Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.

The downtown core of Toronto is being consumed by Elysium, a drug that allows its users to slip through the permeable edges of this world into the next, before consuming them utterly. Peddled by the icy Srebrenka, few have managed to escape the drug and its dealer. But Maggie has. Years after beating her addiction, Maggie is dismayed by the reappearance of Srebrenka in her life. Although she resists temptation, she quickly learns her brother, Kyle, has been ensnared by Srebrenka's beguiling.

This surreal fable, set in America's Old West, features a cast of notorious characters: the Crying Gun, who breaks into tears at the sight of his opponent; the Priest, who goes into gunfights giving his adversaries the last rites; and the Nihilistic Kid himself, Kim Carsons, a homosexual gunslinger who, with a succession of beautiful sidekicks, sets out to challenge the morality of small-town America and fight for intergalactic freedom.

Stephen Mitchell's marvelously clear and vivid rendering recreates the robust masculine music of the original. It both hews closely to the Old English and captures its wild energy and vitality, not just as a deep "work of literature" but also as a rousing entertainment that can still stir our feelings and rivet our attention today, after more than a thousand years. This new translation - spare, sinuous, vigorous in its narration, and translucent in its poetry - makes a masterpiece accessible to everyone.