Washoe County Library System

"Shantiport was supposed to be a gateway to the stars. But the city is sinking, and its colonist rulers aren't helping anyone but themselves. Lina, a daughter of failed revolutionaries, has no desire to escape Shantiport. She loves her city and would do anything to save its people. This is, in fact, the plan for her life, made before she was even born. Her brother, Bador, is a small monkey bot with a big attitude and bigger ambitions. He wants a chance...

"Cinnabar's chief spymaster is a mother also, and her son is determined to search for treasure in the midst of a civil war. Who better to watch over him then Captain Daniel Leary, Cinnabar's troubleshooter, and his friend cyberspy Adele Mundy? The only thing certain in the struggle of the mining planet Corcyra is that the rival parties are more dangerous to their own allies than to their opponents. Daniel and Adele face kidnappers, hijackers, pirates...

“I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind,” writes Ursula Le Guin in her introduction to Dancing at the Edge of the World. But she has, and here is the record of that change in the decade since the publication of her last nonfiction collection, The Language of the Night. And what a mind — strong, supple, disciplined, playful, ranging over the whole field of its concerns, from modern literature to menopause, from...

A View from the Stars is a collection of short fiction and nonfiction pieces from Cixin Liu, the New York Times bestselling author of The Three-Body Problem. Included are essays and interviews that shed light on Liu's experiences as a reader, writer, and lover of science fiction throughout his life, as well as short fiction that gives glimpses into the evolution of his imaginative voice over the years"--Back cover. "From the author of the New York...

''Few authors are so iconic that their name is an adjective - Ballard is one of them. Master of both literary and science fiction, his novels such as Empire of the Sun, Crash and Cocaine Nights show a world out of joint - a bewildering, alienating and yet enthralling place. From his rapturously weird takes on contemporary reality to his classic dystopias like The Drowned World and High Rise, Ballard's legacy shaped the future of literature. This...

In the spellbinding Arthur C. Clarke tradition, here is an exhilarating adventure into the hearts of both the Universe and mankind . . . By the twenty-third century Earth has already had two encounters with massive, mysterious robotic spacecraft from beyond our solar system--the incontestable proof of an alien technology that far exceeds our own. Now three human cosmonauts are trapped aboard a labyrinthine Raman vessel, where it will take all of...

"From gravity to black holes, tides to global warming, this authoritative and entertaining book from bestselling author Marcus Chown breaks down complex science into manageable chunks, explaining the one thing you really need to know to get to grips with the subject. In a world in which most people are time poor, telling them the one thing they need to know to understand a topic and showing how everything else follows as a logical consequence is a...

"Outlaws Shane and Ava, determined to thwart military leaders from taking over their home world, make interstellar headlines with each new heist, determined to bring the planet to its knees--or die trying"-- "Shane and Ava are a team. He steals the aircraft, she charms their mark, and together they take what they need. Not even their distracting chemistry could get in the way. Until Shane was caught and left to rot on a prison moon. Now, freshly...

"During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale. "A wonderful clash of fire and ice—a book you won't want to let go of."—Diana Gabaldon, author of Outlander January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse...

"When an elderly customer at a Swedish big box furniture store -- but not that one -- slips through a portal to another dimension, it's up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company's bottom line. Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but those two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago. To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture...