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Recommendations based on Underground Airlinesby Ben H. Winters
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Countdown City
by Ben H. Winters
Detective finds himself in a race against time to save the world from an impending apocalypse.
With electricity and telecommunications links down, petroleum increasingly scarce and with water supplies of unknown potability, former Concord police detective Henry Palace is in a race with time. ... (Wikipedia)
Old Man's War
by John Scalzi
Elderly citizens enlist in an interstellar war to save humanity, discovering new strength and purpose.
Old Man's War is about a soldier named John Perry and his exploits in the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF). The first-person narrative follows Perry's military career from CDF recruit to the rank of ... (Wikipedia)
Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler
A modern woman is thrown back in time, forced to confront the harsh realities of slavery.
Kindred scholars have noted that the novel's chapter headings suggest something "elemental, apocalyptic, archetypal about the events in the narrative," thus giving the impression that the main ... (Wikipedia)
Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
by Carmen Maria Machado
Collection of surreal stories exploring the complexities of gender, sexuality and identity.
In Her Body and Other Parties , Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her ... (Goodreads)
The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
An escaped slave's daring escape to freedom, fighting against the brutality of slavery.
The story is told in the third person, focusing mainly on Cora. Scattered single chapters also focus on Cora's mother Mabel, the slavecatcher Ridgeway, a reluctant slave sympathizer named Ethel, and ... (Wikipedia)
Cop Town
by Karin Slaughter
A female police officer's fight against bigotry and corruption in 1970s Atlanta.
Atlanta, 1974. As a brutal killing rocks the city, Kate Murphy wonders if her first day on the police force will also be her last. For life is anything but easy in the male-dominated world of the ... (Goodreads)
The Pecan Man
by Cassie Dandridge Selleck
A woman's journey of self-discovery, as she uncovers the truth about her family's past.
The Pecan Man is a work of Southern fiction whose first chapter was the First Place winner of the 2006 CNW/FFWA Florida State Writing Competition in the Unpublished Novel category. In the summer of ... (Goodreads)
The Bone Clocks
by David Mitchell
A time-spanning saga of a war between two powerful supernatural forces.
Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew ... (Goodreads)
The Power
by Naomi Alderman
A world where women have the power to control electricity, and use it to fight against gender-based oppression.
In a matriarchal society, a gushing male writer writes to an influential author about his fictional account of how the matriarchy came to be. Five thousand years earlier (in our current time), men ... (Wikipedia)
World of Trouble
by Ben H. Winters
A detective in a post-apocalyptic world investigates a mysterious cult that threatens to destroy humanity.
Only weeks and then days remain, as asteroid 2011GV1 is on the final stage of its deadly course towards Earth and it will impact within the Indonesian archipelago, which will obliterate humanity in ... (Wikipedia)
Seveneves
by Neal Stephenson
Humanity's struggle for survival after an apocalyptic event threatens to extinguish life on Earth.
In the near future, an unknown agent causes the Moon to shatter. As the pieces begin to collide with one another, astronomer and science popularizer "Doc" Dubois Harris calculates that Moon fragments ... (Wikipedia)
Kitchens of the Great Midwest
by J. Ryan Stradal
A heartwarming tale of interconnected lives, all connected by their shared love of food.
The novel centers around Eva, a culinary prodigy born with a “once-in-a-generation palate” to a chef father and a sommelier mother. Though growing up in poverty and facing numerous challenges, by age ... (Wikipedia)
A Civil Campaign
by Lois McMaster Bujold
Miles Vorkosigan navigates the tricky waters of romance and politics in a comedic space opera.
Miles Vorkosigan has a problem: unrequited love for the beautiful widow Ekaterin Vorsoisson, violently allergic to marriage after her first exposure. If a frontal assault won't do, Miles thinks, try ... (Goodreads)
The Last Policeman
by Ben H. Winters
A detective investigates a suicide in a world where an asteroid is about to collide with Earth, causing societal breakdown.
The novel is divided into four parts—"Hanger Town", "Non-Negligible Probabilities", "Wishful Thinking", and "Soon, They Will"—each containing five chapters, and an epilogue . Each part has an ... (Wikipedia)
Consider Phlebas
by Iain M. Banks
A thrilling space opera about a galactic war between two powerful civilizations.
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 ... (Goodreads)
Redeployment
by Phil Klay
Collection of stories of soldiers' experiences in Iraq, spanning the battlefield and homecoming.
Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven ... (Goodreads)
The Magician's Land
by Lev Grossman
The final book in the Magicians trilogy, as Quentin Coldwater and his friends face their ultimate challenge in a magical world.
After being expelled from the magical realm of Fillory, magician Quentin Coldwater returns to his alma mater , the magical college of Brakebills, as a new professor. There he is finally given a ... (Wikipedia)
The Past Through Tomorrow
by Robert A. Heinlein
A collection of short stories exploring the future of humanity, from the near future to thousands of years ahead.
Here in one monumental volume are all 21 of the stories, novellas and novels making up Heinlein's famous Future History—the rich, imaginative architecture of Man's destiny that many consider his ... (Goodreads)
Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
Post-apocalyptic exploration of a world drastically changed after a pandemic.
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse,, Station Eleven, tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Immortalists
by Chloe Benjamin
Four siblings visit a fortune teller who predicts the dates of their deaths, leading them to confront mortality and shape their lives accordingly.
If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life? It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims ... (Goodreads)
The Bonfire of the Vanities
by Tom Wolfe
An ambitious Wall Street banker's moral downfall in New York City.
The story centers on Sherman McCoy, a successful New York City bond trader . His $3 million Park Avenue co-op , combined with his aristocratic wife's extravagances and other expenses required to keep ... (Wikipedia)
Morning Star
by Pierce Brown
Darrow's revolution reaches its climax as he fights to overthrow the corrupt Society and establish a new order.
Darrow is a shadow of his former self after a year of torture and imprisonment at the hands of Adrius au Augustus, the ArchGovernor of Mars, better known as the Jackal. Across the worlds, he is ... (Wikipedia)
Conversations with Friends
by Sally Rooney
Two college students explore the complexity of relationships and their place in the world.
A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple. Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A ... (Goodreads)
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
by Stuart Turton
A man must solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle, but each day he wakes up in a different body, reliving the same day over and over again.
Aiden Bishop knows the rules. Evelyn Hardcastle will die every day until he can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different ... (Goodreads)
Pigs in Heaven
by Barbara Kingsolver
A young girl and her adoptive mother fight for their family's rights and the power of love.
Mother and adopted daughter, Taylor and Turtle Greer, are back in this spellbinding sequel about family, heartbreak and love. Six-year-old Turtle Greer witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam ... (Goodreads)
The Mote in God's Eye
by Larry Niven
A journey of first contact between the human race and an alien species.
In the year AD 3017, humanity is slowly recovering from an interstellar civil war that tore apart the first Empire of Man. The Second Empire is busy establishing control over the remnants of its ... (Wikipedia)
Exit West
by Mohsin Hamid
Reflection on displacement and immigration as two refugees traverse the world in search of a new life.
Nadia and Saeed meet when they are working students in an unnamed city. Saeed is more conservative and still lives at home, as custom generally requires, but the more independent Nadia has chosen to ... (Wikipedia)
The Girl with All the Gifts
by M.R. Carey
A post-apocalyptic world where a young girl holds the key to humanity's survival.
Twenty years ago humanity was infected by a variant of the fungus native to South America called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which led to the Breakdown - the end of civilization as it was before. ... (Wikipedia)
The Orphan Master's Son
by Adam Johnson
A man's struggle to survive in a totalitarian North Korean regime and his journey to freedom.
Part 1 details Jun Do's upbringing in a state orphanage and his service to the state, including as a kidnapper of Japanese citizens , and later as a signal operator stationed on a fishing boat. Due ... (Wikipedia)
Career of Evil
by Robert Galbraith
Private detective investigates a series of mysterious and violent cases linked to a deranged criminal.
After murdering a woman, an unidentified man stalks Robin Ellacott, whom he sees as part of his plan to exact revenge against private investigator Cormoran Strike. Robin, having worked for Strike for ... (Wikipedia)
