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Harvest
of Stars by Poul Anderson
Winner of seven Hugo and three Nebula Awards, Poul Anderson is one of science fiction's supreme masters. In Harvest of Stars, Earth lies crushed in the grip of totalitarianism. To save her planet, Kyra Davis is sent on a mission to liberate the last bastion of freedom and rescue its legendary leader. Her bold adventure will sweep her from earth's rebel enclaves to the decadent court of an exotic lunar colony, from the virtual realities of biotech and artificial intelligence to a brave new world menaced by a dying star.
The Stars Are Also Fire
Three Hearts and Three Lions
The
Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
In 2301 A.D., guns are only museum pieces and benign telepaths sweep the minds of the populace to detect crimes before they happen. In 2301 AD, homicide is virtually impossible -- but one man is about to change that.
In this classic science fiction novel, the first to win the prestigious Hugo Award, a psychopathic business magnate devises the ultimate scheme to eliminate the competition and destroy the order of his society. Hurtling from the orgies of a future aristocracy to a deep space game preserve, and across densely realized subcultures of psychic doctors, grifters, and police, The Demolished Man is a masterpiece of high-tech suspense, set in a world in which everything has changed except for the ancient instinct for murder.
The Stars My Destination
Psychoshop with Roger Zelazny
The
Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
"An experience not to be missed... If you have to send a group of people to a newly discovered planet to contact a totally unknown species, whom would you choose? How about four Jesuit priests, a young astronomer, a physician, her engineer husband, and a child prostitute turned computer expert? That's who Mary Doria Russell sends in her new novel. This motley combination of agnostics, true believers, and misfits becomes the first to explore the Alpha Centauri world of Rakhat with both enlightening and disastrous results. ... Vivid and engaging... And incredible novel."
— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Children of God
The
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out of work actor.
And it just gets better from there...
Life, the Universe, and Everything
Restaurant at the End
of the Universe
The
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Joe Kavalier, a young Jewish artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America -- the comic book. With exhilarating style and grace, Michael Chabon tells an unforgettable story about American romance and possibility.
Werewolves in Their Youth
Wonder Boys
Dangerous
Angels — The Weetzie Bat Books by Francesca Lia Block
Block's luminous saga of interwoven lives will send the senses into wild overdrive. These postmodern fairy tales chronicle the thin line between fear and desire, pain and pleasure, cutting loose and holding on in a world where everyone is vulnerable to the most beautiful and dangerous angel of all: Love.
Girl Goddess #9
I Was a Teenage Fairy
Violet and Claire
Little,
Big by John Crowley
Edgewood is many houses, all put inside each other, or across each other. It's filled with and surrounded by mystery and enchantment: the further in you go, the bigger it gets. Smoky Barnable, who has fallen in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, comes to Edgewood, her family home, where he finds himself drawn into a world of magical strangeness.
The Deep
Engine Summer
Something
Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
In this season of dying, Cooger & Darks Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes ... and the stuff of nightmare.
The Martian Chronicles
From the Dust Returned
Sundiver
by David Brin
David Brin's Uplift novels are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction ever written. Brin's tales are set in a future time when no species can reach sentience without being "uplifted" by a patron race. But the greatest mystery remains unsolved: Who uplifted humankind?
Startide Rising
The Uplift War
by Clive Barker
For Simon McNeal it had begun as a game. A simple matter of faking a few ghostly noises and scribblings on the walls of a derelict house, under the none-too-watchful eyes of a pair of psychic investigators. But soon he realised there were bigger stakes to play for. At twenty years old, his psychic trickery was about to bring him undreamed-of fame and riches -- when suddenly the dead began to exact a hidden and bloody revenge...
Coldheart Canyon
Weaveworld
The Thief of Always
Imajica
by Lisa Goldstein
The story of Ruthie, a young journalist sent to interview Jeremy, a man in his forties, who as a child was the central character of a series of classic children's books written by his mother, The Adventures of Jeremy in Neverwas. But the scary, fantastic world of Jeremy's youth is real, and sucks them into strange adventures underground, where love and death threaten.
"Her poetic but precise imagery produces some of the most sublime work in science fiction."
— Houston Post
The Red Magician
Walking the Labyrinth
by Katherine Dunn
This is the story of a carnival family, the Binewskis, who save their traveling "Carnival Fabulon" from bankruptcy by giving birth to fabulous freaks — the children born to Lil Binewski after she ingests drugs, insecticides, arsenic, radioisotopes, anything to make her babies more "special." The result is a world readers have never encountered before, a place of horror and humor, where vengeance and love are realized in unimaginable ways. And where some unforgettable "Ripley's Believe It or Not" characters are both exotically unique — and hauntingly, chillingly, like us.
"Wonderfully descriptive... the comic exploration of the peculiar... gives Geek Love its main success: that and Ms. Dunn's tremendous imagination."
— New York Times Book Review
Attic
Truck
by James H. Schmitz
Telzey Amberdon was only in her teens when she discovered that she was a telepath. Not only a telepath, but a xenotelepath, able to communicate mentally not just with humans, but with alien intelligences. And she turned out to be one of the most powerful telepaths in the history of the galactic civilation called the Hub.
First she had to deal with an alien race that humans hadn't realized were intelligent, and who were about to eliminate those troublesome humans who thought they were colonizing an uninhabited world. Then, she had to fend off the secret psi agents of the Psychological Corps who took a dim view of any telepath, let alone one with Telzey's powers, operating outside of their control. Next, she stumbled across a telepathic serial killer, who used an unstoppable predator, under his mental control, to hunt and kill his victims -- and Telzy was to be the catch of the day.
It was fortunate for the human race that she survived, since she next found herself in the middle of a secret war between two hidden races of genetically engineered humans. They called it the "Lion Game", and they made the mistake of thinking that in this clash of predators, Telzey was just a harmless kitten. But when the dust settled, Telzey would be the only one purring. ...
T'nt: Telzey and Trigger
Trigger and Friends
The Hub: Dangerous Territory
by Steven Saylor
Elena asks that you come to the House of Swans at once... Compelled by this message, the wealthy, sybaritix Sextus Roscius goes not to his harlot, but to his doom -- savagely murdered by unknown assassins. In the unseasonable heat of a spring morning in 80 BC, Gordianus the Finder is summoned to the house of Cicero, a young advocate staking his reputation on this case. The charge is patricide; the motive, a son's greed. The punishment, rooted deep in Roman tradition, is horrific beyond imagining.
Gordianus's investigation takes him through the city's raucous, pungent streets and deep into rural Umbria, unraveling layers of deceit, twisted passions, and murderous desperation. From pompous, rouged nobles to wily slaves to citizens of seemingly simple virtue, the case becomes a political nightmare. As the defense proceeds toward a devastating confrontation in the Forum, one man's fate may threaten the very leaders of Rome itself.
A Murder on the Appian Way
The Venus Throw
Arms of Nemesis
Good
Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The Apocalypse like you've never seen it before.
Neverwhere
Stardust
American Gods
Also by Pratchett:
The Color of Magic
The Light Fantastic
Mort
by Samuel R. Delany
Illyrion: the most precious energy source in the galaxy. The varied and exotic crew who sign up with Captain Lorq Van Ray know the search for it is dangerous, and they soon learn that they are involved in a deadly race with the charismatic bit vicious leader of an opposing space federation. But they have no idea of Lorq's secret obsession: to gather Illyrion at source by flying through the very heart of an imploding star.
City of a Thousand Suns
Babel-17
Triton
by Karen Joy Fowler
Through frontier bedlams and bordellos, across rivers and forests, Sarah Canary charts a lunatic course through the rugged territory of the heart's desire. Larger than life, she will make you laugh, make you cry... and long to follow on an awe-inspiring adventure that illuminates our national myths and awakens wonder. It is a journey you will never forget.
Artificial Things
by Robertson Davies
The first novel in the celebrated Deptford Trilogy is the story of a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.
The Manticore
World of Wonders
Murther & Walking Spirits
by Michael Shea
This time they would make a killing. Join master thief Nifft the Lean with his companion-at-arms, might barbarian Barnar Hammer-Hand, as they trust to their wits and their luck. Once Nifft and Barnar were hired by the ghost of a dead woman to kidnap the man who betrayed her and drag him down to hell to join her. A simple task — or so they thought at first...
Another time, the pair lucked into an even more lucrative proposition, when they were shipwrecked on the way to work in Costard's sap mine — very dangerous and sometimes nauseating work far below ground — and were hired by Bunt to bring back twenty gills of the ichor exuded by the monstrous insectile queen. It seemed like easy money — they wouldn't have to go to hell! Of course, the best laid plans sometimes do go astray, but this time they were sure they would ... make a killing.
by Jack Finney
"Sleep. And when you awake everything you know of the twentieth century will be gone from your mind. Tonight is January 21, 1882. There is no such thing as automobiles, no planes, computers, television. 'Nuclear' appears in no dictionary. You have never heard the name Richard Nixon."
Did illustrator Si Morley really step out of his twentieth century apartment one night -- right into the winter of 1882? The U.S. Government believed it, especially when Si returned with a portfolio of brand-new sketches and tintype photos of a world that no longer existed -- or did it?
About Time
Forgotten News
The Night People
by Darren Shan
Darren Shan is just an ordinary schoolboy who loves to ride bikes and hang out with his three best friends. Then one day Darren and his friend stumble across an invitation to visit the "Cirque Du Freak," a strange and mysterious freak show. The boys can only buy two tickets, so they draw straws to see who will go. Almost as if by destiny, Darren wins one of the tickets, and what follows is his horrifying descent into the dark and bloody world of vampires.
"Fast-paced and compelling, full of satisfying macabre touches -- Cirque du Freak explores the powerful fascination of the dangerous and unnatural and also, movingly, the obligations of friendship."
J.K. Rowling
