The Windup GirlPaolo Bacigalupi  
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*Winner of the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel*

*Winner of the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Novel*
In this Time Magazine top 10 book of the year, Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of The Calorie Man; (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and Yellow Card Man (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these poignant questions. This title has been nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. This title was also on the best book lists of the year for Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.

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The Digital DeadBruce Balfour  
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Bruce Balfour, the acclaimed author of The Forge of Mars, brings us to a future age in which virtual versions of the dead control the desires of those they've left behind-with terrifying results.

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The Forge of MarsBruce Balfour  
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NASA's made a monumental discovery in the caverns of Mars-alien artifacts that have already killed the first man who touched them. Now they're sending brilliant scientist Tau Wolfsinger to unlock the secrets of the artifacts.

But Tau's in for a big surprise. And not just the one waiting for him on Mars.

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CapacityTony Ballantyne  
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Welcome to the year 2252—and congratulations! You’re now a personality construct. We know that can be a daunting stage of personal development, especially if you don’t remember making this life-changing decision. But we’re here to help….

Helen is waking to a dark new reality—one that she’s certain she didn’t choose. In this borrowed existence, she finds an unexpected guide in Judy, a geisha-faced virgin who’s on a mission of her own. Together, the two of them begin a dangerous run through dozens of imagined worlds in an attempt to trap a psychopath haunting the shadowed areas of virtual space—a killer who brutally murdered an earlier version of Helen and who plans to kill again. Meanwhile, Justinian is investigating a peculiar rash of AI suicides on far-off planets—and finds that not only is there more to these “deaths” than he thought, but that they may be linked to his wife Anya’s mysterious coma.

In a future where AIs have taken over human life and the Environment Agency runs everything for our own good, the fact that we can live on after physical death as sentient digital beings should have been a good thing. Instead, as Helen and Justinian are about to discover, it just means there are more ways to die.

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RecursionTony Ballantyne  
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It is the twenty-third century. Herb, a young entrepreneur, returns to the isolated planet on which he has illegally been trying to build a city–and finds it destroyed by a swarming nightmare of self-replicating machinery. Worse, the all-seeing Environment Agency has been watching him the entire time. His punishment? A nearly hopeless battle in the farthest reaches of the universe against enemy machines twice as fast, and twice as deadly, as his own–in the company of a disarmingly confident AI who may not be exactly what he claims…

Little does Herb know that this war of machines was set in motion nearly two hundred years ago–by mankind itself. For it was then that a not-quite-chance encounter brought a confused young girl and a nearly omnipotent AI together in one fateful moment that may have changed the course of humanity forever.

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ExcessionIain Banks  
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It's not easy to disturb a mega-utopia as vast as the one Iain M. Banks has created in his popular Culture series, where life is devoted to fun and ultra-high-tech is de rigueur. But more than two millennia ago the appearance—and disappearance—of a star older than the universe caused quite a stir. Now the mystery is back, and the key to solving it lies in the mind of the person who witnessed the first disturbance 2,500 years ago. But she's dead, and getting her to cooperate may not be altogether easy.

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Consider PhlebasIain M. Banks  
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"Dazzlingly original." — Daily Mail
"Gripping, touching and funny." — TLS

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

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Look to WindwardIain M. Banks  
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A classic in science fiction, Banks's novel is about a war so powerful it destroyed two suns and the billions of lives they supported.

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Surface DetailIain M. Banks  
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It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters.
It begins with a murder.And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.

Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture.

Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful thought it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful - and arguably deranged - warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war - brutal, far-reaching - is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality.

It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the center of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.

SURFACE DETAIL is Iain M. Banks' new Culture novel, a breathtaking achievement from a writer whose body of work is without parallel in the modern history of science fiction.

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Daybreak ZeroJohn Barnes  
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What began as a technothriller
continues as high adventure
in the newly savage ruins of civilization.
 
In late 2024, Daybreak, a movement of post-apocalyptic eco-saboteurs,  smashed modern civilization to its knees. In the losing, hopeless struggle against Daybreak,
Heather O'Grainne, a one-time minor bureaucrat and former Federal agent, rose to become a vital leader in the struggle to restore civilization. That story was told in Directive 51.
 
Now Heather's story continues in Daybreak Zero.  In the summer of 2025, she leads a tiny organization of scientists, spies, scouts, entrepreneurs, engineers, dreamers, and daredevils based in Pueblo, Colorado. Both of the almost-warring governments of the United States have charged them with an all but impossible mission: find a way to put the world back together.
 
But Daybreak's triumph has flung the world back centuries in technology, politics, and
culture. 
Pro-Daybreak Tribals openly celebrate ending the world as we know it. Army regiments have to fight their way in and out of Pennsylvania.The Earth's environment is saturated with plastic-devouring biotes and electronics-corroding nanoswarm. A leftover Daybreak device drops atom bombs from the moon on any outpost of the old civilization it can spot. 
Confined to her base in Pueblo to give birth to her first child, Heather recruits and monitors a coterie of tech wizards, tough guys, and modern-day frontier scouts: a handful of heroes to patrol a continent.  All the news is bad:
Tribals have overrun Indiana and IllinoisThe last working aircraft carrier sits helplessly out in the Indian Ocean, not daring to come closer to landThe crash of one of the last working airplanes kills a vital industrialistTribals try to force appeasement on the Provi government while the Temper government faces a rebellion of religious fanaticsSeventeen states are lost to the Tribals as California drifts into secession and hereditary monarchyEverywhere,  Provis and Tempers lurch toward civil war. 
Heather's agents may be brave, smart, and daring, but can they be enough?  For the sake of everything from her newborn son to her dying nation,  can she forge them into a the weapon that can at last win the world back from the overwhelming, malevolent force of Daybreak? 
 
Her success or failure may change everything for the next thousand years,
beginning from  Daybreak Zero.

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Directive 51John Barnes  
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Part philosophic discussion, part international terrorist faction, and part artists' movement, "Daybreak" consists of a group of diverse people with radical ideas who are united in their desire to take down modern civilization. And when they strike, the government has no choice but to implement its emergency contingency program: Directive 51.

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The Last PresidentJohn Barnes  
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For more than a year, Heather O’Grainne and her small band of heroes, operating out of Pueblo, Colorado, have struggled to pull the United States back together after it shattered under the impact of the event known as Daybreak. Now they are poised to bring the three or four biggest remaining pieces together, with a real President and Congress, under the full Constitution again. Heather is very close to fulfilling her oath, creating a safe haven for civilization to be reborn.
 
But other forces are rising too—forces that like the new life better...
 
In a devastated, splintered, postapocalyptic United States, with technology thrown back to biplanes, black powder, and steam trains, a tiny band of visionaries struggles to re-create Constitutional government and civilization itself, as a new Dark Age takes shape around them.

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BorderlineNevada Barr  
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The New York Times bestseller by the author of Winter Study.

To list their spirits, Anna Pigeon and her husband head to Texas for a rafting trip on the Rio Grande. The power of the river works its magic- until the raft is lost in the rapids and someone makes the grisly discovery of a pregnant woman caught between two boulders. Soon Anna will learn that nature isn't the only one who wanted to see the woman and her baby dead.

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Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon NovelNevada Barr  
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"Gripping…BREATHTAKING…complex."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

In Destroyer Angel, Anna Pigeon, a ranger for the U.S. Park Services, sets off on a much-needed vacation: an autumn camping trip in the Iron Range in upstate Minnesota. With Anna is her friend Heath, a paraplegic; Elizabeth, Heath's fifteen-year-old daughter; Leah, a wealthy designer of outdoor equipment; and Katie, Leah's thirteen-year-old daughter. For Heath, this getaway is the ultimate test to see whether Leah's camping gear can help make wilderness adventures more accessible to the disabled. So far, so good. . .

"BARR IS ONE OF THE BEST!"—Boston Globe

Until their second night, when Anna decides to go for a solo evening float on the Fox River. When she returns to the campsite, she is shocked to see, with her own two eyes, that a group of heavily armed thugs have abducted Heath and the others. Now, with limited resources and no access to the outside world, Anna must find a way to rescue the women from their captors—and brave the elements of the unforgiving North Woods—before it's too late. And time is running out…

"Equal parts PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER and WILDERNESS-SURVIVAL tale…Top-tier white-knuckle suspense."—Booklist

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