Nimbus


B.J. Keeton - 2013
    NIMBUS is steampunk for people who don't know they like steampunk, as well as being steampunk for people who already love steampunk!--Seedy corporations and airship factions, demons and rogues, zealots and thieves…Nimbus is an epic tale of power, greed, and corruption.Jude Finley is a new recruit aboard the Gangly Dirigible, an airship that extracts water from rainclouds. While working aboard the ship, Jude and his friends uncover a secret which may or may not help them against a growing uprising that could spell doom for everyone on the planet. Meanwhile, Demetrius Rucca, the wheelchair-bound son of a prominent religious leader, begins recruiting followers for his own subversive cause. As allegiances are sworn to him and his followers grow, he begins to discover the new powers that lie within him. This power could be the salvation Demetrius is looking for–or it could be the destruction of the known world.

Infernal Devices


K.W. Jeter - 1986
    But idle sometime-musician George has little talent for clockwork. And when a shadowy figure tries to steal an old device from the premises, George finds himself embroiled in a mystery of time travel, music and sexual intrigue. A genuine lost classic, a steampunk original whose time has come.

Beautiful World, Where Are You Chapter Sampler


Sally Rooney - 2021
    In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

The Case Files of Aldicus Vescard


Mark William Chase - 2021
    He is, after all, a monster himself. Cursed in his errant past, his body now harbors a blazing fiend of pure, elemental chaos—kept in check by the bonds that smother his own magical abilities.But crime ever turns in the Clockwork City, and none are better suited to investigate those most sinister deeds of inscrutable sorcery than Corradon’s greatest detective magus. With his loyal apprentice, Keldon Veldanor, and a host of street-smart allies, Aldicus will face a crucible of sorcery and villainy with only his wits and the science of forensic alchemy to aid him.Yet, in the decaying depths of the Underworks far below the tick-tock city, there festers an even greater evil—a darkness that threatens not only the unsuspecting denizens of Corradon, but the fate of their entire world.

Loveless Love


Luigi Pirandello - 1995
    In each of these tales, Luigi Pirandello captures all the pain and tragedy of loveless love. Nobel Prize-winning Luigi Pirandello is one of Italy’s most distinguished and influential literary figures.

Anything You Can Do ...


Randall Garrett - 1962
    But is the result still human? Find the answer to this question in Randall Garrett's novel Anything You Can Do...

The Arcanist


Greg Curtis - 2015
    Happily useless. The third son of Count Argus Severin he would not inherit the title of count nor the reins of House Barris. He was free to do what he liked with his life provided he didn't embarrass his family. And what he liked was to live in his ancient fort in the town of Breakwater, tinker with his machines and play with his magic. Life was good. Then the city of Theria was attacked by a herd of stampeding mammoths, his older brother Marcus turned up on his doorstep in the middle of the night demanding his help, and he suddenly had to put his skills to use in investigating the crime. Little did he know that the attack was merely the first step in a plan to seize control of the Kingdom of Therion, or that the one responsible would be a member of his own family.

Adam Link Robot


Eando Binder - 1965
    Adam Link, first of the Robot Race, had photoelectric eyes, an iridium-sponge brain and the soul of a man! 174 pp

Anti-Man


Dean Koontz - 1970
    And he had the unusual power to heal others. In fact, Sam was too good to live.The world was overpopulated. Medicine had made the decision to stop trying to prolong life. Thus anyone who was not only immune to disease but who healed the dying was dangerous to the now precarious balance of nature.The order was issued by the Secret Police: "Disassemble Sam and destroy all records of his existence."But one man couldn't bear to see the work of a lifetime destroyed. He kidnapped Sam and began to run.Now they were enemies of the State -- hunted like animals, hurtling toward the terrifying secret of existence itself!

Witchdame


Kathleen Sky - 1984
    Never have such signs attended the coming of age of a witchdame princess. And never have the dark forces mustered against an Earthly being as they do now...For Elizabeth is of woodwitch blood as well, and before the final battle, she will enter the ancient flames of the banished mysteries of the Heartwood, into the secret wisdom of the Goddess herself...

High-Rise


J.G. Ballard - 1975
    In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.

Trick


Domenico Starnone - 2016
    A face-off between a man and a boy. The same blood runs through their veins. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator at the peak of his career. The other, Mario, is his four-year-old grandson who has barely learned to talk but has a few tricks up his loose-fitting sleeves all the same. The older combatant has lived for years in almost complete solitude. The younger one has been dumped with a grandfather he barely knows for 72 hours. Starnone’s sharp novella unfolds within the four walls (and a balcony!) of the apartment where the grandfather grew up, now the home of his daughter and her family, where the rage of an aging man meets optimism incarnate in the shape of a four-year-old child. Lurking, ever present in the conflict, is the memory of Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city where the old man spent his youth and whose influence is not easily shaken.

Frontier Earth


Bruce Boxleitner - 1999
    Known for his role as Captain Sheridan on the science fiction television series Babylon 5, Bruce Boxleitner creates a brand new science fiction legend featuring a stranger -- an alien from another world -- in a strange land: the American West of the late 1800s.

Like Family


Paolo Giordano - 2014
    His new novel features his trademark character-driven narrative and intimate domestic setting that first made him an international sensation. When Signora A first enters the narrator’s home, his wife, Nora, is experiencing a difficult pregnancy. First as their maid and nanny, then their confidante, this older woman begins to help her employers negotiate married life, quickly becoming the glue in their small household. She is the steady, maternal influence for both husband and wife, and their son, Emanuele, whom she protects from his parents’ expectations and disappointments. But the family’s delicate fabric comes undone when Signora A is diagnosed with cancer. Moving seamlessly between the past and present, Giordano highlights with remarkable precision the joy of youth and the fleeting nature of time. An elegiac, heartrending, and deeply personal portrait of marriage and the people we choose to call family, this is a jewel of a novel—short, intense, and unforgettable.

The Lost Girls of Rome


Donato Carrisi - 2011
    A few months ago, in the dead of night, her husband, an up-and-coming journalist, plunged to his death at the top of a high-rise construction site. The police ruled it an accident. Sanda is convinced it was anything but.Launching her own inquiries, Sanda finds herself on a dangerous trail, working the same case that she is convinced led to her husband's murder. An investigation which is deeply entwined with a series of disappearances that has swept the city, and brings Sandra ever closer to a centuries-old secret society that will do anything to stay in the shadows.