Uglies


Scott Westerfeld - 2005
    In just a few weeks she'll have the operation that will turn her from a repellent ugly into a stunning pretty. And as a pretty, she'll be catapulted into a high-tech paradise where her only job is to have fun.But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to become a pretty. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world—and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally a choice: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. Tally's choice will change her world forever....

Tumbledown


Robert Boswell - 2013
    In a moving narrative twist, he boldly reckons with the extent to which tragedy can be undone, the impossible accommodated.At age thirty-three, James Candler seems to be well on the road to success. He's in line for a big promotion at Onyx Springs, the treatment facility where he's a therapist. He has a fiancée, a sizable house, and a Porsche. But ... he's falling in love with another woman, he's underwater on his mortgage, and he's put his hapless best friend in charge of his signature therapeutic program. Even the GPS on his car can't seem to predict where he should turn next. And his clients are struggling in their own hilarious, heartbreaking ways to keep their lives on track. How can he help them if he can't help himself? In Tumbledown, Robert Boswell presents a large, unforgettable cast of characters who are all failing and succeeding in various degrees to make sense of our often-irrational world. In a moving narrative twist, he boldly reckons with the extent to which tragedy can be undone, the impossible accommodated.

One Night Only


Sue Welfare - 2012
    Funny, sharp and deeply poignant, One Night Only explore the pitfalls of fame, friendship and family secrets and gets under the skin of why looking back is not an easy thing to do…sPECIAL LOW PRICE FOR A LIMITED PERIOD TO DISCOVER SUE WELFARE’S LATEST NOVEL.Fame and fortune can’t hide the secrets of her past…When fading soap star, Helen Redford, goes back to her old home town to make a TV show about her glittering career she catches a glimpse of the might-have-beens that drove her to leave in the first place.Ex boy friends, old scores to settle, friendships gone sour, chances not taken,and secrets about Helen's family that have haunted her since she was a little girl.Will Helen be able to put her past to rest?

Joshua, Son of None


Nancy Freedman - 1973
    Mike has soloed all on her own into Crichton territory & her story preempts your curiosity to begin with & then is ambushed with all the procedures & more doubtful morality of the brave new medical world. When, in 1963, a President (nameless throughout) lies dead, a few live cells from his body are retained by a dedicated scientist-devout atheist, Thor Bittenbaum. With the financial resources of an aggressive young millionaire, Kellogg, a child becomes the first...in his image ("genesis in a petri dish," artificial insemination & birth the natural way) & brought up clan-style, not tennis & social graces. When Josh learns part of the truth he runs away but eventually returns to be programmed for his manifest destiny--another presidency, another guess what... Even if the 1st donee suffers visibly thru all of this, & Freedman draws God into the argument, it's essentially pop melodrama of life, death & their "viable alternatives" in a suspension of suds. Clonees and donees--reasonable expectations both.--Kirkus

Tomorrow


Damian Dibben - 2018
    His adventures take him through the London Frost Fair, the strange court of King Charles I, the wars of the Spanish succession, Versailles, the golden age of Amsterdam and to nineteenth-century Venice. As he journeys through Europe, he befriends both animals and humans, falls in love (only once), marvels at the human ability to make music, despairs at their capacity for war and gains insight into both the strength and frailties of the human spirit.With the rich historical vision of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and the captivating canine perspective of A Dog’s Purpose, Tomorrow draws us into a unique century-spanning tale of the unbreakable connection between dog and human.

The Body Departed


J.R. Rain - 2009
    Sentenced to burn in hell for a crime he cannot remember, James is given the choice to proceed immediately to the afterlife or haunt the world of the living in search of his killer. Electing to return to Earth as a ghost, he attempts to solve the mystery of his own murder, visits the living—starting with his daughter and ex-wife—and confronts the sins in his past that put him on the fast track to eternal damnation.With the help of a world-class medium, James begins to make progress. Forgiveness is possible, it seems, for a good man who made some bad choices. But with the memories of his life on Earth fading out one by one and his ghost body rapidly disintegrating, James faces the very real prospect of vanishing completely before he learns the devastating secret that kept his soul from achieving its true potential.

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil


George Saunders - 2005
    In a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, large enough for only one resident at a time, citizens waiting to enter the country fall under the rule of the power-hungry and tyrannical Phil, setting off a chain of injustice and mass hysteria.An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone.

Arkwright


Allen M. Steele - 2016
    At the end of his life he becomes reclusive and cantankerous, refusing to appear before or interact with his legion of fans. Little did anyone know, Nathan was putting into motion his true, timeless legacy.Convinced that humanity cannot survive on Earth, his Arkwright Foundation dedicates itself to creating a colony on an Earth-like planet several light years distant. Fueled by Nathan's legacy, generations of Arkwrights are drawn together, and pulled apart, by the enormity of the task and weight of their name.

Cixin Liu Three Body Problem Collection 4 Books Set


Liu Cixin
    Description:- The Three-Body Problem: 1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind. The Dark Forest: Imagine the universe as a forest, patrolled by numberless and nameless predators. In this forest, stealth is survival any civilisation that reveals its location is prey.Earth has. Now the predators are coming.Death's End: Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. The Wandering Earth: Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay.Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge and, with human science advancing and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations can co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation.

Temporary


Hilary Leichter - 2020
    She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it's shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, "there is nothing more personal than doing your job."This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.

Proxima


Stephen Baxter - 2013
    The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light... The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun. How would it be to live on such a world?

FantasticLand


Mike Bockoven - 2016
    Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares. How could a group of survivors, mostly teenagers, commit such terrible acts?Presented as a fact-finding investigation and a series of first-person interviews, FantasticLand pieces together the grisly series of events. Park policy was that the mostly college-aged employees surrender their electronic devices to preserve the authenticity of the FantasticLand experience. Cut off from the world and left on their own, the teenagers soon form rival tribes who viciously compete for food, medicine, social dominance, and even human flesh. This new social network divides the ravaged dreamland into territories ruled by the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, and the Mole People. If meticulously curated online personas can replace private identities, what takes over when those constructs are lost?FantasticLand is a modern take on Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale that probes the consequences of a social civilization built online.

Unparalleled


D.S. Smith - 2018
    His pregnant wife is missing, but his only living relative, his brother, is incapable of substantiating his claim. Lost in a world of confusion that is spiralling out of his control, Stuart finds temporary salvation in a psychiatrist assigned to his case. Meanwhile, peculiar events across the world lead a team of Oxford scientists to develop top secret technology that will change the future of humanity. Betrayed by double agents, the race to control this technology endangers the lives of all involved, which unwittingly includes Stuart and his psychiatrist. This enthralling journey takes Stuart to the edge of sanity, culminating in an unparalleled climax of kidnapping, betrayal and murder.

The Name of the Wind


Patrick Rothfuss - 2007
    The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature. A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.

Challenger Park


Stephen Harrigan - 2006
    Her husband, Brian, a rigorous man whose dreams of glory have been blighted by two star-crossed missions. Walt Womack, the steady, unflappable leader of the training team that prepares Lucy for her first shuttle flight.Lucy has devoted years of intense and focused effort to win her place on a mission, but as her lifelong dream of flying in space comes true, her familiar world appears to be falling apart around her. Her marriage is deteriorating. Her son’s asthma is growing more serious. Her relationship with Walt Womack is becoming dangerously intimate. And when at last she is in space, 240 miles above the earth, and an accident renders the world she left behind appallingly distant—perhaps unreachable—her spirit is tested in gripping and unexpected ways.In The Gates of the Alamo, Stephen Harrigan’s narrative authority brought a vanished nineteenth-century Texas to vibrant life. In Challenger Park, he does the same with the world of space flight, bringing us up close to the lives—the risks, the friendships, the rituals, the training—of the astronauts and the people who work with them. Harrigan has written an exciting—indeed a thrilling—novel about the contrary pulls of home and adventure, reality and dreams, and the unimaginable experience, the joys and terrors and revelations, of space flight itself.