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by Rob Thomas
Keene Davenport's call for a student walkout to protest his school's annual "Slave Day" fund-raiser is having less than the desired effect. Shawn Greely, Robert E. Lee High School's first African American student council president, still amiably presides over the auction of student body reps to serve as book toters, chauffeurs, and lunch fetchers for the day. Hoping to save face, Keene chooses an alternate path of civil disobedience. Assuming that a day of degradation ought to open Shawn's eyes, Keene will "buy" Shawn to be his slave, no matter what cost.
So begins one eventful day in the lives of Robert E. Lee High's "slaves" and "masters" — seven students and one teacher — who tell of their experiences in alternating first-person narratives. Beauty queens and geeks, class clowns and football players, spanning different ethnic, social, and class backgrounds — all the participants are ripe to come away from Slave Day changed.
Satellite Down
Rats Saw God
The
Faded Sun Trilogy by C.J. Cherryh
For four decades now the mri have faced an enemy unlike any other. In defending the merchant ships and protecting the intergalactic commerce of the elephantine regul, the kel — the mri's warrior caste — have met the deadliest enemy any mri has ever faced — an enemy who does not honor single combat, an enemy whose way of war is widespread destruction. These "humans" are mass fighters, creatures of the herd, and the mri have been slaughtered like animals.
Now in the aftermath of war, the mri face extinction. It will be up to three individuals to save whatever remains of this devastated race: a kel — one of the last survivors of his kind; a sen — the priestess and spiritual leader of this honorable people; and a lone human — a man sworn to aid this enemy of his own kind. Can they retrace the galaxy-wide path of this nomadic race back through millennia to reclaim the ancient world which first gave them life?
The Pride of Chanur
Downbelow Station
Angel With the Sword
by Bruce Sterling
They call themselves the Storm Troupe and they hack heavy weather. They chase the monster storms that twist erratically across the Southwestern badlands laid to waste by the greenhouse effect. They survive on scrap, grunge, free software, danger, and the charisma of their leader, the brilliant mathematician Dr. Jerry Mulcahey. Equipped with military-surplus "smart" vehicles, networked laptop computers, and virtual-reality gear, the Storm Troupe is chasing the ultimate storm: the F-6 tornado. Few outside the Troupe even believe that an F-6 is possible. Yet something unmistakably monstrous is brewing in the wrecked atmosphere over America's Tornado Alley. But no one in the Troupe, not even its brilliant, driven leader, guesses the real nature of the F-6 or the shadowy forces unleashed in its twisting fury. Not until it is too late...
Holy Fire
The Difference Engine
Globalhead
by Steven Saylor
The hideously disfigured body was found in the atrium. The only clues were a blood-soaked cloak, and, carved into the stone at the corpse's feet, the word 'Sparta'... The overseer of Marcus Crassus's estate has been murdered, apparently by two slaves bent on joining Spartacus's revolt. The wealthy, powerful Crassus vows to honor an ancient law and have his ninety-nine remaining slaves slaughtered in three days. Gordianus the Finder is summoned from Rome by a mysterious client to find the truth about the murder before the three days are up.
From the brutal stench of a slave galley to the limpid, sea-glazed beauty of Baiae and the sulphurous pits of the Sybil at Cumae, he must risk all he loves, including his life, to stop a senseless slaughter.
Roman Blood
Catilina's Riddle
The Venus Throw
by Whitley Strieber
Eternal youth is a wonderful thing for the few who have it, but for Miriam Blaylock, it is a curse — an existence marred by death and sorrow. Because for the everlasting Miriam, everyone she loves withers and dies. Now, haunted by signs of her adoring husband's imminent demise, Miriam sets out in search of a new partner, one who can quench her thirst for love and withstand the test of time. She finds it in the beautiful Sarah Roberts, a brilliant young scientist who may hold the secret to immortality. But one thing stands between the intoxicating Miriam Blaylock and the object of her desire: Dr. Tom Haver... and he's about to realize that love and death go hand in hand.
The Last Vampire
Unholy Fire
Warday
by Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon's storied have long been out of print and never placed in chronological order — until now. This third volume features the "golden age of science fiction," stories written between 1941 and 1946.
The title story inspired an ABC television movie and the name of a rock band. Recognized universally as one of Sturgeon's great masterpieces, "Killdozer!" is one of the best descriptions in literature of humanity's understandable fear of the machine.
This third volume also brings back into print another Sturgeon classic from the mid-'40s, "Mewhu Jet," which preshadowed the theme of the visit of the child from space which Steven Spielberg made popular in his 1982 film E.T.
Microcosmic God
The Ultimate Egoist
by Rosemary Sutcliff
Young Arthur Pendragon became High King of England the instant he pulled the mysterious sword from the stone. He unlocked the magic within the sword Excalibur, and won the heart of the Lady Guenever. At his side through quests and adventures were the Knights of the Round Table — among them Gawain, who faced certain death at the hands of the Green Knight; Percival, who learned that it took more than victory on horseback to win a place at the Round Table; and Lancelot, who daily felt the passion he was forced to hide. And over them all ruled Arthur, true King....
"Stands far and beyond any Arthurian collection for young readers."
— Times Literary Supplement
"Other than Malory, I can think of no better introduction to the whole sweep of Arthurian stories."
— School Library Journal
The Light Beyond the Forest
The Road to Camlann
by Steve Szilagyi
It all began in the 1920's, when a blustering country policeman,Constable Michael Walsmear, literally punches his way into American photographer Charles Castle's London studio. Walsmear has what he claims are photographs of fairies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whom Castle approaches to verify the pictures, offers a large sum of money to have Walsmear's photographs destroyed. But even more than cash, Castle wants the truth. His quest takes him to Burkinwall, a seemingly peaceful country village. There, with camera in hand, he encounters an odd assortment of quirky characters, including two ethereally beautiful young girls in a beautiful garden full of unexpected secrets....
"As odd and endearing as its title... Full of characters with strange secrets."
— The Wall Street Journal
"Beautifully written and packed with ironic twists... You certainly might find yourself staying up all night to finish it."
— The Seattle TImes
by Lisa Goldstein
The Order of the Labyrinth, a secret society founded in Victorian England, survives to this day in San Francisco, and its members still lurk in occult bookstores and search for magical secrets of the mysterious founders. But Molly Travers, in researching her own genealogy, discovers that the secrets of the Order are no joke — are in fact potentially deadly. She is the heir of the founders, and she has to find her living (and perhaps magical) relatives before the Order finds her. She has to walk the Labyrinth.
"Goldstein has done a remarkable job here... in far less wordage than most writers seem to require for such work, but without skimping on a richness of mystery and detail. ... She simply tells a fine story — by turns charming, thoughtful, and suspenseful...."
— Fantasy & Science Fiction
Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon
Dark Cities Underground
The Red Magician
by Sheri S. Tepper
Generations ago, humans fled to the cosmic anomaly known as Grass. Over time they evolved a new and intricate society. But before humanity arrived another species had already claimed Grass for its own. It, too, had developed a culture...
Now a deadly plague is spreading across the stars. No world same Grass has been left untouched. Marjorie Westriding Yrarier has been sent from Earth to discover the secret of the planet's immunity. Amid the alien social structure and strange life-forms of Grass, Lady Westriding unravels the planet's mysteries to find a truth so shattering it could mean the end of life itself.
The Family Tree
A Plague of Angels
Beauty
by James Tiptree Jr.
These are the heroes of the Starry Rift, a dark river of night that flows between the arms of our galaxy: A headstrong teenaged runaway who makes first contact with a strange alien race. A young officer on the deep-space salvage mission who discovers an exact double of the woman he thought he'd lost. The crew of an exploration ship who must plead for the human race to avert interstellar war.
"Highly recommended. Takes a comparatively conventional SF subject and reworks it with enormous skill — sound world-building, well-drawn characters, and superb command of the language."
— Booklist
Brightness Falls From the Air
The Color of Neanderthal Eyes
Crown of Stars
by Andrew Vachss
In this mercilessly compelling thriller, Burke — the private eye, sting artist, and occasional hit man who metes out a cruelly ingenious vengeance on those who victimize children — is up against a soft-spoken messiah, who may be rescuing runaways or recruiting them for his own hideous purposes. But in doing so Burke becomes a target for an entire Mafia family, a whore with a heart of cyanide, and a contract killer as implacable as a heat-seeking missile. Written with Vachss's signature narrative overdrive — and with his unnerving familiarity with the subbasement of American crime — Hard Candy is vintage Burke.
Safe House
Flood
Down in the Zero
by Nalo Hopkins
It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. But to young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival — until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgivable crime.
Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree. Here monstrous creatures from folklore are real, and the humans are violent outcasts in the wilds. Here Tan-Tan must reach into the heart of the myth — and become the Robber Queen herself. For only the Robber Queen's legendary power's can save her life... and set her free.
Brown Girl in the Ring
by Tad Williams
Otherland...
Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and the darkest nightmares. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth's most valuable resource — its children.
"The ultimate virtual-reality saga, borrowing motifs from cyberpunk, mythology, and world history."
— San Francisco Chronicle
"A wonderful mixture of visual imagery and movement... once again Tad Williams paints us a picture so vivd and real that it becomes three dimensional. Highly recommended. ..."
— Absolute Magnitude
Tailchaser's Song
The Dragonbone Chair
by Connie Willis
For Jeff, a young historical researcher for a Civil War novelist, reality is redefined on a bitter cold night near the close of a lingering winter. He meets Annie, an intense and lovely young woman suffering from vivid, intense nightmares. Haunted by the dreamer and her unrelenting dreams, Jeff leads Annie on an emotional odyssey through the heartland of the Civil War in search of a cure. On long-silenced battlefields their relationship blossoms — two obsessed lovers linked by unbreakable chains of history, torn by a duty that could destroy them both. Suspenseful, moving, and highly compelling, Lincoln's Dream is a novel of rare imaginative power that strikes a chord deep within the hearts of us all.
To Say Nothing of the Dog
Bellwether
Doomsday Book
by Robert A. Heinlein
Name: Valentine Michael Smith
Ancestry: Human
Origin: Mars
Here is Heinlein's masterpiece — the brilliant spectacular and incredibly popular novel that grew from a cult favorite to a bestseller to a classic in a few short years. It is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the man from Mars who taught humankind grokking and watersharing. And love.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
The Door into Summer
Friday
by Peter Straub
You have been there... if you have ever been afraid. Come back. To a dark house deep in the Vermont woods, where two friends are spending a season of horror, apprenticed to a Master Magician. Learning secrets best left unlearned. Entering a world of incalculable evil more ancient than death itself. More terrifying. And more real.
Only one of them will make it through.
"I thought it was creepy from page one! I loved it!"
— Stephen King
Mr. X
The Throat
The Talisman
and other Fiendish Frolics
by Richard Sala
Welcome, friends, to a gleefully ghoulish look at maniacs, monsters and mayhem. As you creep through these pages you'll meet axe-swinging psychos, bloodthirsty beasts, and sinister stalkers of every size and shape — all captured in frightfully witty verse and devilish drawings that will make you shiver with delight!
Hypnotic Tales
Thirteen O'Clock
Black Cat Crossing
by William Gibson
Turner, high-corrporate commando, is abruptly reactivated by the Hosaka Corporation for a mission even more dangerous than the one he's still recovering from. Mass-Neotek's chief of R&D is defecting, and Turner must get him out, intact, along with the biochip he's perfected. With voodoo on the Net, he thinks he's only trying to get out alive. But he hasn't met the angel...
"An intriguing cast of characters and a tough, glitzy image of computer consciousness and the future of mankind."
— Richmond Times
"Count Zero shares with Neuromancer that novel's stunning use of language, breakneck pacing, technological innovation, and gritty brand-name realism."
— Fantasy Review
Mona Lisa Overdrive
The Difference Engine
Neuromancer
by Michael Kandel
Christopher Zimmerman sure looks like a normal; ten-year-old (even if he is the shortest member of his class). He collects pebbles and has a dog named Buzz. He also tells his whole fifth-grade class at Lincoln Elementary about traveling into the past to see dinosaurs and trilobites. For Christopher — in spite of his ordinary looks — is actually the youngest child in a family of aliens... or are they mutants? (And really, does it matter which?)
When Mother hears Christopher's boasting she rules as she must: Christopher will be scooped out.
Christopher would rather die than be scooped out, so he enlists Gramps's help and flees on a journey through space, time, and other less recognizable things, and into a classic science fiction adventure.
Strange Invasion
In Between Dragons
by Elizabeth Hand
It is 1999. The Last Days, or some say, the First. The climate has warmed dramatically, the cities have imploded into riotous shards, and the sky is a glimmering array of reds and greens and golds.
In fin de siecle New York, a millionaire publisher, a jaded rock star, and the girl who, in her own way, loves them both are watching the waters rise as the cults begin the frenzies of the Night of the Thousand Years.
This breathtaking novel is Elizabeth Hand's audacious attempt to capture in one explosive story both the unspoken dreams and the unspeakable nightmares of her generation.
She succeeds.
"A wild, psychedelic thoughtful thriller... Another dynamic read!"
— Des Moines Register
Waking the Moon
by Roger Zelazny
Zelazny the myth-master, fantasy and SF writer extraordinary, excels himself in this brilliant novel. It is the story of Charles Render, the Shaper, one of the world's handful of neuroparticipant therapists. Render can enter and direct another person's mind. His skills can alter a personality. But the mind is an uncharted and infinite universe, and the Shaper is drawn, unawares, into a fateful vortex which all the arts of the Dream Master cannot avoid.
This is a deeply exciting and inventive novel, rich in intriguing undertones and correspondences with Arthurian and older mythology — in fact, vintage Zelazny.
Lord of Light
This Immortal
Psychoshop
by Alan Garner
Told to stay out of the way while their house is packed up for the next day's move, the four Watson children wander into the slims of Manchester. There they tumble into the ruined land of Elidor and learn that they are somehow bound up with its fate. Back in their new house the children are constantly besieged by evil forces surging to escape into their dimension. Finally, after months of tension, the children return and face Findhorn, a fierce and giant unicorn, who must sing before the land can be redeemed and the children safe again.
"One of the better fantasies, British or American...."
— Library Journal
The Owl Service
The Stine Book Quartet
by James H. Schmitz
Telzy Amberdon is one of the most powerful xenotelepaths in the known galaxy. Trigger Argee is a crack shot, with reflexes that make lightning look lethargic, and also a top agent of the galaxy's Federation of the Hub. Separately they have been making life miserable for human criminals, unfriendly aliens, and nefarious members of all species. But when a danger to the entire Hub civilization brought these two together, the galaxy would never be the same!
"A typical James Schmitz mix of humor, strange mental powers, and mild anarchy. Delightful!"
— The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction
Telezey Amberdon
Trigger and Friends
The Hub: Dangerous Territory
by Michael Kurland
Somewhere on the crumbling road between the Palisades Enclave in California and the remains of the Chicago Spaceport, a brightly-painted wagon rumbles along on the last rubber tires in the world. Mordecai Lehrer is moving east. His wagon is a traveling medicine show, a peddler's pack, home for part-time magicians — and courier service for Earth's last enclaves of scientific knowledge. Ninety per cent of Earth's population perished in the Death, and the remaining ten blame the evils of godless science for that terrible plague. They would destroy the science enclaves if they could — and they grow bolder day by day.
But the enclaves know what the people cannot: scientists in the Mars colony have discovered that the plague will inevitably be followed by a mutant form virulent enough to wipe out all the survivors of the first siege. Mars has also found a vaccine, and even now a suicidal mission of mercy is racing toward the ruins of the Chicago Spaceport.
Meanwhile Mordecai Lehrer bumps across the plains of the west, carrying precious instructions from the California enclave on how to grow and use the vaccine. He travels in secret, and in fear, for all around him are the people whose lives will be saved if he succeeds — and who would kill him gladly to ensure his failure.
The Infernal Device and Others
American
Gods by Neil Gaiman
Shadow spent three years in prison, keeping his head down, doing his time. All he wanted was to get back to the loving arms of his wife and stay out of trouble for the rest of his life. But days before his scheduled release, he learns that his wife has been killed in an accident, and his world becomes a colder place.
On the plane ride home to the funeral, Shadow meets a grizzled man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A self-styled grifter and rogue, Wednesday offers Shadow a job. And Shadow, a man with nothing to lose, accepts.
But working for the enigmatic Wednesday is not without a price, and Shadow soon learns that his role in Wednesday's schemes will be far more dangerous than he ever could have imagined. Entangled in a world of secrets, he embarks on a wild road trip and encounters, among others, the murderous Czernobog, the impish Mr. Nancy, and the beautiful Easter — all of whom seem to know more about Shadow than he himself does.
Shadow will learn that the past does not die, that everyone, including his late wife, had secrets, and that the stakes are higher than anyone could have guessed.
All around them a storm of epic proportions threatens to break. For beneath the placid surface of everyday life a war is being fought — and the prize is the very soul of America.
Stardust
The Sandman (graphic novels)
Good Omens
by Colson Whitehead
Two warring factions in the Department of Elevator Inspectors in a bustling metropolis vie for dominance: The Empiricists, who go by the book and rigorously check every structural and mechanical detail, and the Intuitionists, whose observational methods involve meditation and instinct. Lila Mae Watson, the city's first black female inspector and devout Intuitionist with the highest accuracy rate in the department, is at the center of the turmoil. An elevator in a new municipal building has crashed on Lila Mae's watch, fanning the flames of the Empiricist-Intuitionist feud and compelling Lila Mae to go underground to investigate. As she endeavors to clear her name, she becomes entangled in a web of intrigue that leads her to a secret that will change her life forever.
A dead-serious and seriously funny feat of the imagination, The Intuitionist conjures a parallel universe in which latent ironies in matters of morality, politics, and race come to light and marks the debut of an important American writer.
"Unusual. ... Whitehead's prose is graceful and often lyrical, and his elevator underworld is a complex, lovingly realized creation."
— The New Yorker
"Literary reputations may not rise and fall as predictably as elevators, but if there's any justice in the world of fiction, Colson Whitehead's should be heading to the upper floors."
— The New York Times Book Review
