Metropolis


Thea von Harbou - 1925
    It contains bits of the story that got lost on the cutting-room floor; in a very real way it is the only way to understand the film. Michael Joseph of The Bookman wrote about the novel: "It is a remarkable piece of work, skillfully reproducing the atmosphere one has come to associate with the most ambitious German film productions. Suggestive in many respects of the dramatic work of Karel Capek and of the earlier fantastic romances of H. G. Wells, in treatment it is an interesting example of expressionist literature. ... Metropolis is one of the most powerful novels I have read and one which may capture a large public both in America and England if it does not prove too bewildering to the plain reader."

Clean Room, Vol. 3: Waiting for the Stars to Fall


Gail Simone - 2017
    In this new installment of Gail Simone's Clean Room, go back to the beginning to learn how Astrid was first affected after her hospitalization...through the eyes of one who cannot see what she sees: her would-be assassin and brother, Peter Mueller.Then, a young woman devastated by the violent loss of her husband finds comfort in Astrid Mueller's teachings, only to face the woman herself in the most nightmarish reaches of the Clean Room! Collecting: Clean Room 13-18

Girl Town


Casey Nowak - 2018
    Her stunning solo debut collection celebrates the ascent of a rising star in comics.Diana got hurt—a lot—and she's decided to deal with this fact by purchasing a life-sized robot boyfriend. Mary and La-La host a podcast about a movie no one's ever seen. Kelly has dragged her friend Beth out of her comfort zone—and into a day at the fantasy market that neither of them will forget. Carolyn Nowak's Girl Town collects the Ignatz Award-winning stories "Radishes" and "Diana's Electric Tongue" together with several other tales of young adulthood and the search for connection. Here are her most acclaimed mini-comics and anthology contributions, enhanced with new colors and joined by brand-new work.Bold, infatuated, wounded, or lost, Nowak's girls shine with life and longing. Their stories—depicted with remarkable charm and insight—capture the spirit of our time.

The Stress of Her Regard


Tim Powers - 1989
    Joining forces with Byron, Keats, and Shelley in a desperate journey that crisscrosses Europe, Crawford desperately seeks his freedom from this vengeful lover who haunts his dreams and will not rest until she destroys all that he cherishes. Told in the guise of a secret history, this long-awaited tale of passion and terror is finally back in print after more than 20 years.

Troll: A Love Story


Johanna Sinisalo - 2000
    Trolls are known in Scandinavian mythology as wild beasts like the werewolf, but this troll is just a small, wounded creature. Angel decides to offer it a safe haven for the night. In the morning Angel thinks he dreamed it all. But he finds the troll alive, well, and drinking from his toilet. What does one do with a troll in the city?Angel begins researching frantically. Angel searches the Internet, folklore, nature journals, and newspaper clippings, but his research doesn't tell him that trolls exude pheromones that have a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. As Angel's life changes beyond recognition, it becomes clear that the troll is familiar with the man's most forbidden feelings, and that it may take him across lines he never thought he'd cross. A novel of sparkling originality, Troll is a wry, peculiar, and beguiling story of nature and man's relationship to wild things, and of the dark power of the wildness in ourselves.

Unquenchable Fire


Rachel Pollack - 1988
    A lot of fantasists admit that, but Pollack's Jennie Mazdan shows us just how uncomfortable it can be. This is suburban fantasy, reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's suburban SF, and the protagonist is a nice suburban middle-class person who, in a recognizable America informed with rational, non-Christian divine powers, copes with supernatural imposition on her life. Perfectly balancing the anchoring familiar mundanities against her brilliant, fascinating Living World---surly bureaucrats at the National Oneiric Registration Agency, tourists photographing the Founder's Urinal shrine in Poughkeepsie---Pollack tells Jennie and Valerie's story of transformation, acceptance and triumph. Potently stocked with archetypes, yet down-to-earth and even funny, this is great fiction and great fantasy.

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept


Elizabeth Smart - 1945
    In lushly evocative language, Smart recounts her love affair with the poet George Barker with an operatic grandeur that takes in the tragedy of her passion; the suffering of Barker's wife;the children the lovers conceived. Accompanied in this edition by The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals, a short novel that may be read as its sequel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has been hailed by critics worldwide as a work of sheer genius.

DC Comics: Bombshells, Vol. 1: Enlisted


Marguerite BennettGarry Brown - 2016
    In these stories from issues #1-6 of the hit series, learn the story behind this alternate reality where the Second World War is fought by superpowered women on the front lines and behind the scenes! It all begins with the stories of Batwoman, Wonder Woman and Supergirl.

The End of Men


Christina Sweeney-Baird - 2021
    The year is 2025, and a mysterious virus has broken out in Scotland--a lethal illness that seems to affect only men. When Dr. Amanda MacLean reports this phenomenon, she is dismissed as hysterical. By the time her warning is heeded, it is too late. The virus becomes a global pandemic--and a political one. The victims are all men. The world becomes alien--a women's world.What follows is the immersive account of the women who have been left to deal with the virus's consequences, told through first-person narratives. Dr. MacLean; Catherine, a social historian determined to document the human stories behind the male plague; intelligence analyst Dawn, tasked with helping the government forge a new society; and Elizabeth, one of many scientists desperately working to develop a vaccine. Through these women and others, we see the uncountable ways the absence of men has changed society, from the personal--the loss of husbands and sons--to the political--the changes in the workforce, fertility and the meaning of family.In The End of Men, Christina Sweeney-Baird creates an unforgettable tale of loss, resilience and hope.

The Devil's Alphabet


Daryl Gregory - 2009
    Then, as quickly and inexplicably as it had struck, the disease–dubbed Transcription Divergence Syndrome (TDS)–vanished, leaving behind a population divided into three new branches of humanity: giant gray-skinned argos, hairless seal-like betas, and grotesquely obese charlies.Paxton Abel Martin was fourteen when TDS struck, killing his mother, transforming his preacher father into a charlie, and changing one of his best friends, Jo Lynn, into a beta. But Pax was one of the few who didn’t change. He remained as normal as ever. At least on the outside.Having fled shortly after the pandemic, Pax now returns to Switchcreek fifteen years later, following the suicide of Jo Lynn. What he finds is a town seething with secrets, among which murder may well be numbered. But there are even darker–and far weirder–mysteries hiding below the surface that will threaten not only Pax’s future but the future of the whole human race.

The Soft Machine


William S. Burroughs - 1961
    Burroughs revealed his genius. In The Soft Machine he begins an adventure that will take us even further into the dark recesses of his imagination, a region where nothing is sacred, nothing taboo. Continuing his ferocious verbal assault on hatred, hype, poverty, war, bureaucracy, and addiction in all its forms, Burroughs gives us a surreal space odyssey through the wounded galaxies in a book only he could create.

Touch


Claire North - 2015
    But when reaching out to the murderer for salvation in those last dying moments, a sudden switch takes place.Now Kepler is looking out through the eyes of the killer himself, staring down at a broken and ruined body lying in the dirt of the alley.Instead of dying, Kepler has gained the ability to roam from one body to another, to jump into another person’s skin and see through their eyes, live their life — be it for a few minutes, a few months or a lifetime.Kepler means these host bodies no harm — and even comes to cherish them intimately like lovers. But when one host, Josephine Cebula, is brutally assassinated, Kepler embarks on a mission to seek the truth — and avenge Josephine’s death.

Bubble


Jordan Morris - 2021
    Humans like Morgan, who’s Brush-born and Bubble-raised and fully capable of fending off an Imp attack during her morning jog. She’s got a great routine going—she has a chill day job, she recreationally kills the occasional Imp, then she takes that Imp home for her roommate and BFF, Annie, to transform into drugs as a side hustle. But cracks appear in her tidy life when one of those Imps nearly murders a delivery guy in her apartment, accidentally transforming him into a Brush-powered mutant in the process. And when Morgan’s company launches Huntr, a gig economy app for Imp extermination, she finds herself press-ganged into kicking her stabby side job up to the next level as she battles a parade of monsters and monstrously Brush-turned citizens, from a living hipster beard to a book club hive mind.

Soft Science


Franny Choi - 2019
    A series of Turing Test-inspired poems grounds its exploration of questions not just of identity, but of consciousness―how to be tender and feeling and still survive a violent world filled with artificial intelligence and automation. We are dropped straight into the tangled intersections of technology, violence, erasure, agency, gender, and loneliness.

The City We Became


N.K. Jemisin - 2020
    Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.