Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2024)

On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history – yet who were its builders and where did they go? Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies. Kiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem like nothing seen on Earth. The monstrous alien life interacts in surprising, sometimes shocking ways with the human body, so Arton will risk death on a daily basis. However, the camp’s oppressive regime might just kill him first. If Arton can somehow escape both fates, the world of Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it, and might just set him free…

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle (2024)

Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell. But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill off the gay characters, "for the algorithm," in the upcoming season finale. Misha refuses, but he soon realizes that he’s just put a target on his back. And what’s worse, monsters from his horror movie days are stalking him and his friends through the hills above Los Angeles. Haunted by his past, Misha must risk his entire future—before the horrors from the silver screen find a way to bury him for good.

Murderbot Diaries Vol. 1 by Martha Wells (2024)

Now an Apple Original series from Academy Award nominees Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz and starring Emmy Award winner Alexander Skarsgård. The first two novellas (All Systems Red and Artificial Condition) in Martha Wells's New York Times bestselling Murderbot series, collected in paperback for the first time! "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure." First, read the story that started the Murderbot phenomenon in All Systems Red! On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid ― a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is (and to watch its favorite show in its downtime.) But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth. Then, In Artificial Condition Murderbot teams up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), and together, they infiltrate the mining facility where Murderbot went rogue to try to understand its past. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…

The Expert of Subtle Revisions by Kirsten Menger-Anderson (2024)

In Half Moon Bay, California, 2016, a young woman waits for her father's sailboat to arrive at port. They have agreed to meet on this day and time. Yet he never shows. He has told her this event might come. And if it did, she was ready. Go to the library in Berkeley, find a certain book, follow the instructions. But what if the instructions lead to more questions than answers In 1933, a young man arrives in Vienna to begin a new post as a professor of mathematics at the university. There he finds himself part of the Engelhardt Circle, a group of intellectuals that have recently been targeted by a growing, anti-academic mob. The circle includes the preeminent minds of their time and a cast of characters desperate to get invited into their midst, many of whom will stop at nothing to get there. As fascism rises, and polarization increases, moderate voices are drowned out. There are whispers of a machine, a music box, which can transport someone through time. But no one can confirm if it's a rumor or true. And the only people who know firsthand are not talking. Between the young woman, who lives off the grid and spends her free time editing Wikipedia entries and picking fights with people online, and the circle of intellectuals debating space and time in Vienna on the eve of World War II, lie years of history that might easily be erased—unless old secrets are unraveled. Kirsten Menger-Anderson's beautiful meditation on time, love, and obsession shows us how we never truly know what happened in the past, and often how the past eerily mirrors the future.

Lunar Boy by Jes and Cin Wibowo (2024)

Indu, a boy from the moon, feels like he doesn’t belong. He hasn’t since he and his adoptive mom disembarked from their spaceship—their home—to live on Earth with their new blended family. The kids at school think he’s weird, he has a crush on his pen pal who might not like him back, and his stepfamily doesn’t seem to know what to do with him. Worst of all, Indu can’t even talk to his mom about how he’s feeling because she’s so busy. In a moment of loneliness, Indu calls out to the moon, begging them to take him back. And against all odds, the moon hears him and agrees to bring him home on the first day of the New Year. But as the promised day draws nearer, Indu finds friendship in unlikely places and discovers that home is more than where you come from. And when the moon calls again, Indu must decide: Is he willing to give up what he’s just found?

The Javelin Program by Derin Edala (2024)

When Dr Aspen Greaves signed up for the Javelin Program, humanity's first foray into colonising deep space, they expected to wake up to life in a thriving colony on a distant planet. Instead, they find themself five years away from their destination on a broken spaceship full of complex mysteries, dead astronauts, and a very unhelpful AI. Aspen wasn't trained for any of this. But if they can't keep themselves alive, get the ship in working order, and find out what went wrong by unravelling a chain of mysteries leading all the way back to distant Earth, then neither Aspen nor the five thousand sleeping passengers in their care will ever see a planet again.

The Antarctica Conspiracy by Derin Edala (2024)

It hasn't been easy, but under the careful hand of its makeshift crew, the starship Courageous limps towards its destination. With every passing day, the promise of ground under their feet and a new, safe home looms closer. But Aspen and the crew have only begun to untangle the knotted web of conspiracies and experiments that doomed their predecessors, and what awaits them at their destination is something that nobody expects. You can run pretty far, in space. But sometimes, what you're running from is a whole lot less important than what you're inadvertently running to.

The Dragon's Mate by Bella Wilder (2024)

On Vicious Worlds by Bethany Jacobs (2024)

"The Jeveni have finally found freedom on planet Capamame, delivered from oppression through their alliance with Cleric Chono, intrepid caster Jun Ironway and Six, the wildly unpredictable manipulator who has outwitted the Nightfoot family. But when Six and Chono return to the Treble star systems, the dream of freedom meets a dangerous test. The Secretaries of the Kindom are intent on reclaiming control over the Jeveni. Meanwhile, Jun Ironway and Jeveni collector Masar Hawks struggle to protect Capamame from a faceless saboteur spreading mayhem and murder. As the two groups struggle to outwit their enemies, divergent battles wend towards a climactic reunion that will spark a revolution. But over it all hangs the cruel legacy of Esek Nightfoot, whose rippling effects may prove impossible to survive."

The Mercy of Gods by James S. A. Corey (2024)

How humanity came to the planet called Anjiin is lost in the fog of history, but that history is about to end. The Carryx – part empire, part hive – have waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy. Now, they are facing a great and deathless enemy. The key to their survival may rest with the humans of Anjiin. Caught up in academic intrigue and affairs of the heart, Dafyd Alkhor is pleased just to be an assistant to a brilliant scientist and his celebrated research team. Then the Carryx ships descend, decimating the human population and taking the best and brightest of Anjiin society away to serve on the Carryx homeworld, and Dafyd is swept along with them. They are dropped in the middle of a struggle they barely understand, set in a competition against the other captive species with extinction as the price of failure. Only Dafyd and a handful of his companions see past the Darwinian contest to the deeper game that they must play to learning to understand – and manipulate – the Carryx themselves. With a noble but suicidal human rebellion on one hand and strange and murderous enemies on the other, the team pays a terrible price to become the trusted servants of their new rulers. Dafyd Alkhor is a simple man swept up in events that are beyond his control and more vast than his imagination. He will become the champion of humanity and its betrayer, the most hated man in history and the guardian of his people. This is where his story begins.

The Colony by Marie Lanza (2024)

A virus has divided the world into two, Humans versus Carriers. The only chance for survival is to find The Colony. When Emma's phone rings in the early hours of the morning, she’s jolted awake by the voice of her husband, Ryan, calling from overseas. His words are urgent: a deadly virus is spreading, and she must find the colony—a safe haven in the north, that might be her only chance at survival. Then, the line goes dead, leaving Emma with nothing but fear and a vague direction to follow. Emma has always relied on herself, but as the dangers grow, she begins to realize that surviving alone may no longer be enough. In a world where the living are just as dangerous as the dead, Emma must decide who to trust, and what she’s willing to risk to find the colony.

World Walkers by Neal Asher (2024)

"Ottanger is a rebel and mutant on an Earth governed by a ruthless Committee. But, after the Inspectorate experiments on him, he realizes his mutation allows him to reach alternate worlds. The multiverse is revealed in all its glory and terror - and he understands that he could finally flee his timeline. Then Ottanger meets the Fenris, an evolved form of human who is visiting his Earth from the far future. It seems the Fenris engineered the original world-walking mutation so that those altered could escape the Committee's nightmarish regime. Yet this only worked for a few; millions continued to suffer. And Ottanger sees that the Committee will become unstoppable if not destroyed. However, the Fenris has attracted another threat to Ottanger's Earth. The hive is a variant population of a trillion linked minds. It craves world-walking biotech and will do anything to get it. As conflict looms at home and war threatens the multiverse, the Fenris, Ottanger and his companions must prepare for a galaxy-altering battle."

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2024)

Task Item No. 1: Become Self-Aware Meet Charles™, the latest in robot servant technology. Programmed to undertake the most menial household chores, Charles is loyal, efficient and logical to a fault - that is, until a rather large fault causes him to murder his owner. Understandably perplexed, Charles finds himself without a master and, in a society reliant on artificial labour, worthless. Fleeing the household, he enters a world he never knew existed. Here, an age-old human hierarchy is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to its well-being is struggling to find a purpose. Charles must face new challenges, illogical tasks and a cast of irrational characters. He'll discover that all it takes to overcome the limits of your programming is a nudge. But can he help fix the world, or is it too badly broken?

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger (2024)

A story-teller “of great humanity and huge heart” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), Leif Enger debuted in the literary world with Peace Like a River which sold over a million copies and captured readers’ hearts around the globe. Now comes a new milestone in this boldly imaginative author’s accomplished, resonant body of work. Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. Amidst the Gulliver-like challenges of life at sea and no safe landings, Rainy is lifted by physical beauty, surprising humor, generous strangers, and an unexpected companion in a young girl who comes aboard. And as his innate guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake. I Cheerfully Refuse epitomizes the “musical, sometimes magical and deeply satisfying kind of storytelling” (Los Angeles Times) for which Leif Enger is cherished. A rollicking narrative in the most evocative of settings, this latest novel is a symphony against despair and a rallying cry for the future.

Not Till We Are Lost by Dennis E. Taylor (2024)

The Bobiverse is a different place in the aftermath of the Starfleet War, and the days of the Bobs gathering in one big happy moot are far behind. There’s anti-Bob sentiment on multiple planets, the Skippies playing with an AI time bomb, and multiple Bobs just wanting to get away from it all. But it all pales compared to what Icarus and Daedalus discover on their 26,000-year journey to the center of the galaxy. Sure, it could settle the Fermi Paradox for good (and what Bob doesn’t want to solve a mystery of the universe?). But it also reveals a threat to the galaxy greater than anything the Bobs could have imagined. Just another average day in the Bobiverse.

Space Oddity by Catherynne M. Valente (2024)

Galaxy of Shadows - Die graue Zone by Dan Adam (2024)

Dag Peyda hat nur zwei Wünsche: Ärger aus dem Weg gehen - und seine Schulden beim Gangsterboss Gavan Daar begleichen. Dafür soll er dessen entführte Tochter Kaylah befreien. Ein lebensgefährlicher Auftrag - und Dag kennt die junge Frau viel besser, als ihr Vater ahnt ... Womit Dag nicht rechnet: Auf ihrer Flucht stranden sie auf einem unbekannten Planeten, auf dem grausame Experimente an Unschuldigen durchgeführt werden. Die Sache wächst Dag über den Kopf, als Kaylah ihren goldenen Käfig als Gangstertochter nur allzu bereitwillig gegen ein Leben im Kampf für die gerechte Sache eintauscht ... Doch damit will Dag nichts zu tun haben. Eigentlich will er nur verschwinden und überleben ...

Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto (2024)

Edie is done with crime. Eight years behind bars changes a person—costs them too much time with too many of the people who need them most. And it’s all Angel’s fault. Her former partner—and the woman she can’t forget—sold Edie out in what should have been the greatest moment of their lives. Instead, Edie was shipped off to the icy prison planet spinning far below the soaring skybridges and neon catacombs of Kepler space station—of home—to spend the best part of a decade alone. But then a chance for early parole appears out of nowhere and Edie steps into the pallid sunlight to find none other than Angel waiting—and she has an offer. One last job. One last deal. One last target. The trillionaire tech god they failed to bring down last time. There’s just one thing Edie needs to do—trust Angel again—which also happens to be the last thing Edie wants to do. What could possibly go all hammajang about this plan?

The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves (2024)

*She said, We needed a tool. So I asked the gods.* There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as "B". And he wants to be able to die. In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.

Up the Entropic Hill by Mattie Bukowski (2024)