Visionary Fiction

Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his 11th life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August", she says. "I need to send a message". This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

Hugo Award winner Elizabeth Bear has been called one of the best science fiction authors of her generation. In Dust she skillfully spins a classic science fiction trope - the lost generation ship - into a complex and compelling tale of fallen angels, secretive family politics, and sexual taboo.

Meet Jim Carrey. Sure, he's an insanely successful and beloved movie star drowning in wealth and privilege — but he's also lonely. Maybe past his prime. Maybe even...getting fat? He's tried diets, gurus, and cuddling with his military-grade Israeli guard dogs, but nothing seems to lift the cloud of emptiness and ennui. Even the sage advice of his best friend, actor, and dinosaur skull collector Nicolas Cage isn't enough to pull Carrey out of his slump.

In the far future among the colonized worlds of the galaxy, there's a war going on between the majority of civilized worlds and a colonial theocracy. Trystin Desoll grows up fighting against religious fanatics and becomes a hero, a first-class pilot, then, amazingly, a spy. What do you do if you're a relatively humane soldier fighting millions of suicidal volunteers on the other side who know that they are utterly right, and you are utterly wrong, with no middle ground? Trystin Desoll has an idea.

Cass Neary made her name in the 70s as a photographer embedded in the burgeoning punk movement in New York City. Her pictures earned her a brief moment of fame. Thirty years later she is adrift, on her way down, and almost out when an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Down East, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and she finds one final shot at redemption.

I've been living in a small town working for the vampires for the last six months. All I want is to save up enough to open an apothecary so I don't have to heal the neckers anymore. Of course, nothing in my life can be that simple. Two detectives show up at my door asking questions about a dead girl and trying to pin the murder on my employer. Next thing I know, I'm dodging fireballs in parking lots.

Conspirators plot to explode a train carrying nerve gas. A perfect servant suddenly reveals himself to be the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Science-fantasy wars, racism, corporate capitalism, drug addiction, and various medical and psychiatric horrors all play their parts in this mosaic, experimental novel. Here is William S. Burroughs at his coruscating and hilarious best.

It has been two years since the events in Shantaram, and since Lin lost two people he had come to love: his father figure, Khaderbhai, and his soul mate, Karla, married to a handsome Indian media tycoon. Lin returns from a smuggling trip to a city that seems to have changed too much, too soon. Many of his old friends are long gone, the new mafia leadership has become entangled in increasingly violent and dangerous intrigues, and a fabled holy man challenges everything that Lin thought he'd learned about love and life.

In The Matisse Stories, this Booker Prize-winning author offers three elegant tales that explore the subtle interplays between mind and eye, heart and hand. In the first, Medusa’s Ankles, a fashionable woman watches her life take on darker, more ominous shades in the mirror of a beauty salon.

Includes three audiobooks from the Rise of the Arkansas Werewolves series: By the Light of the Moon, Beneath a Blood Lust Moon, and Desires of a Full Moon.

The year is 2117. In the farthest reaches of Earth's territorial space, a spree of depraved murders has local cattle ranchers fearing for their families. A fear, they will soon discover, that is more than justified. Apparently, John Gallic's reputation proceeded his arrival to the fringe-world of Muleshoe. A reputation suggesting he be given a wide berth. As the new Territory Abettor, commonly referred to as a Frontier Marshal, Gallic would be there for the long haul.

It is three in the morning when Bobby Western plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the site are the pilot’s bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.

Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, 10 people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food, and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him in. “Thank the Lord we found you,” a passenger says. “I am the Lord,” the man whispers. So begins Mitch Albom’s most beguiling and inspiring novel yet.

Jack Valentine seemed to have it all. He made good money as an ad man and looked good doing it. He had a hot apartment, cool friends, even a slick car - at least until the hectic Monday morning a truck smashed into it, sending the critically injured Jack to the hospital. Everything happens for a reason, though, and Jack’s reason reveals itself in the silver-haired cancer patient who becomes his roommate one evening. The elderly man, Cal, shares his life story - one not dissimilar to Jack’s - of material wealth masking a gaping hole within.

One man—visionary billionaire restaurant chain magnate T. R. Schmidt, Ph.D.—has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as “elemental.” But will it work? Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock brings together a disparate group of characters from different cultures and continents who grapple with the real-life repercussions of global warming.

Sissy Hankshaw, an almost flawlessly beautiful small-town girl with big-time dreams, hitchhikes her way into your heart, your hopes, and your sleeping bag in Tom Robbins's magical, funny, and most famous novel. Follow Sissy's amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax.

Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination; it's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life.

The author of 30 critically acclaimed works, Walter Mosley has had his novels translated into 23 languages. The Tempest Tales, an Essence Book Club Recommended Read, features Tempest Landry, a black man shot down by an over-eager cop. But that's not the end of the line for Tempest. Unwilling to accept St. Peter's judgment that he spend eternity in Hell, Tempest is sent back to Harlem - guardian angel in tow - to make things right.

Paul Auster's signature work, The New York Trilogy, consists of three interlocking novels: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room - haunting and mysterious tales that move at the breathless pace of a thriller.

The Faerie Race has proven more grueling and deadly than Jacqueline thought possible. With one trial down and two to go, it seems the reality show's producers will stop at nothing to get their ratings - even murder. It will take all of Jacq's cunning to get through the next trial unscathed, but all she can think about is her discovery that her sister is alive. Too bad her search for answers has only left her with more questions, and more enemies.