Collection: Science Fiction

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight

Two months since the stars fell...

Two months of silence, while a world held its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist--an informational topologist with half his mind gone--as an interface between here and there.

Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.

A gorgeously packaged boxed set featuring mass market paperback editions of books five through eight in Diana Gabaldon's New York Times bestselling and hit Starz television Outlander series.

The epic tale of Claire Randall and Jamie Fraser and their daring adventures across centuries has mesmerized legions of Outlander fans for decades. Now, for the first time, readers can enjoy the next grouped installment of the saga that sparked a sensation together in one beautiful package displaying stunning art from the television series. Featuring The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood, this boxed set picks up where the first set--which included books one through four--left off, continuing the enthralling legend. Whether you're a fan of the Starz hit show based on the books, a dedicated Outlander collector, or a reader eager to find out what's next in store for everyone's favorite time-traveling duo, this is the collection for you.

The first three novels in James S. A. Corey's New York Times bestselling epic science fiction saga the Expanse -- now a major television series.

"Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written." -- George R.R. Martin

Humanity has colonized the solar system, but two hundred years after migrating into space, mankind is in turmoil.

When a reluctant ship's captain and washed-up detective find themselves involved in the case of a missing girl, what they discover brings our solar system to the brink of civil war, and exposes the greatest conspiracy in human history.

Could you survive as a fugitive in a world where tyranny rules, not even knowing why they're hunting you?

May 2492

It's been years since democracy died. America is no more, each state broken up into their own separate countries ruled mostly by cruelty and oppression. New York City is at the summit, having crushed those who opposed them, destroyed those who resisted.

Fifteen-year-old Talon lives alone in a sector known as Drudgen, just another place in what used to be The Bronx. He wants to keep it that way. Any family he's ever had... it's all led to grief... tragedy... torment. He can't let it happen again.

But his reclusive life is shattered when the tyrannical governor of New York sends his most dangerous assassin to kill Talon for unknown reasons.

Just when all seems lost, he is rescued by two kids his age: Castor and Amber, who live on an aircraft dubbed The Independence. They explain that they believe the reason behind his attempted assassination might have ties to his lineage... that his parents could've been a part of something dangerous to the government... something bigger than themselves.

They set out to crack the clues, to discover what his parents were involved in, what they might have kept secret from Talon all along. But, when they finally solve the mystery, he knows they can't stay silent. He knows they must continue what his parents started, even if it means death.

But... when Talon discovers newfound care for Castor and Amber... when he realizes he's forming a bond... he understands he has to make a choice: risk losing them or overcome his fear of loss.

Two teens must master the "art of killing" in this New York Times bestselling, Printz Honor-winning series from Neal Shusterman.

Thou shalt not kill:

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life--and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice with a scythe--a role that neither wants. These teens must master the "art" of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

When they try to break free of their roles, the two apprentices discover those in power will not peacefully relinquish their control. Can Citra and Rowan change things for the better without being silenced themselves?

This collectible boxed set includes paperback editions of:
Scythe
Thunderhead
The Toll

Portia Hastings has spent her life rescuing her younger sister from one scrape or another. Now, she has to step through time to do it, following Miranda from the nineteenth century to the eighteenth. Almost immediately, Portia is beset by highwaymen, which might be the most exciting thing to happen to her in a long time, even if she'd never admit it.

When one of the highwaymen is injured, Portia makes the inexcusable mistake of helping him-she is trained as a doctor after all. Her travel companions abandon her, and she's left at the mercy of a highwayman who demands she continue tending to his compatriot's wounds.

Portia soon finds herself at a crumbling castle inhabited by the destitute Earl of Ravensford. Benedict Sterling is in desperate need of money, and his solution is a ball, where a wealthy bride will win the title of countess, even if it does come with one thunderously ill-tempered earl.

Portia agrees to a scheme to help Benedict look like a slightly more appealing bridegroom, while she continues to search for Miranda. Then there's the small matter of the castle, complete with a ghost intent on driving her out. But once Portia sets her mind on something, she's not going anywhere.

This richly imaginative, immersive, and "electrifyingly relevant" (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author) debut novel follows a shocking disappearance amid the climate crisis of our near future--perfect for fans of Station Eleven and The Last Thing He Told Me.

Emi Vargas, whose parents helped save the world, is tired of being told how lucky she is to have been born after the climate crisis. But following the public assassination of a dozen climate criminals, Emi's mother, Kristina, disappears as a possible suspect, and Emi's illusions of utopia are shattered. A determined Emi and her father, Larch, journey from their home in Nuuk, Greenland to New York City, now a lightly populated storm-surge outpost built from the ruins of the former metropolis. But they aren't the only ones looking for Kristina.

Thirty years earlier, Larch first came to New York with a team of volunteers to save the city from rising waters and torrential storms. Kristina was on the frontlines of a different battle, fighting massive wildfires that ravaged the western United States. They became part of a movement that changed the world---The Great Transition--forging a new society and finding each other in process.

Alternating between Emi's desperate search for her mother and a meticulously rendered, heart-stopping account of her parents' experiences during The Great Transition, this novel beautifully shows how our actions today determine our fate tomorrow. A triumphant debut, The Great Transition is "a book for the present and the future--read this and you will be changed" (Michelle Min Sterling, New York Times bestselling author).

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "If Michael Crichton had written a superhero novel, it would look a lot like Upgrade."--The New York Times Book Review

"You don't so much sympathize with the main character as live inside his skin."--DIANA GABALDON, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander series

"Mysterious, fascinating, and deeply moving--exploring the very nature of what it means to be human."--ALEX MICHAELIDES, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient and The Maiden

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, She Reads

The mind-blowing new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion--currently in development as a motion picture at Steven Spielberg's Amblin Partners

"You are the next step in human evolution."

At first, Logan Ramsay isn't sure if anything's different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can't deny it: Something's happening to his brain. To his body. He's starting to see the world, and those around him--even those he loves most--in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan's genome has been hacked. And there's a reason he's been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what's happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large--at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan's the one person in the world capable of stopping what's been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he'll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he's fighting, he can't help wondering: what if humanity's only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man's thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity--and our boundless potential.

Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like "jewelry, living jewelry" to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young "Burmie" she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival.

"Brilliantly imaginative . . . in a terrifying way" (Annie Proulx), Blue Skies follows in the tradition of T. C. Boyle's finest novels, combining high-octane plotting with mordant wit and shrewd social commentary. Here Boyle, one of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction, transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family--including her eco-warrior parents, Ottilie and Frank; her brother, Cooper, an entomologist; and her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd--are struggling to adapt to the "new normal," in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.

But there's more than meets the eye to this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the banal façade of twenty-first-century Californians and Floridians attempting to preserve normalcy in the face of violent weather perturbations is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planet's future. From pet bees and cricket-dependent diets to massive species die-off and pummeling hurricanes, Blue Skies deftly explores the often volatile relationships between humans and their habitats, in which "the only truism seems to be that things always get worse."

An eco-thriller with teeth, Boyle's Blue Skies is at once a tragicomic satire and a prescient novel that captures the absurdity and "inexpressible sadness at the heart of everything."

An absolute delight of a madcap story for the young (and young-at-heart) by New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with equal parts pirates and piranhas, adventure and aliens, oddity and love.

"I bought the milk," said my father. "I walked out of the corner shop, and heard a noise like this: t h u m m t h u m m. I looked up and saw a huge silver disc hovering in the air above Marshall Road."

"Hullo," I said to myself. "That's not something you see every day. And then something odd happened."

Find out just how odd things get in this hilarious story of time travel and breakfast cereal, expertly told by Newbery Medalist and bestselling author Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Skottie Young.

A Time Magazine 100 Best YA Books of All Time Selection

The tour de force that set the gold standard for dystopian YA fiction -- in a compelling paperback edition.

For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon -- a chance to party during spring break. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its ever-present ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. M. T. Anderson's not-so-brave new world is a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.

Experience the #1 New York Times bestselling Star Wars Legends trilogy that introduced the menacing Grand Admiral Thrawn--now in a complete three-book set.

Following the events of Return of the Jedi: Star Wars: Episode VI, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia find themselves once again at the center of rebellion.

Five years after the Death Star was destroyed and Darth Vader and the Emperor were defeated, the galaxy is struggling to heal the wounds of war, Leia and Han are married and expecting twins, and Luke has become the first in a long-awaited line of new Jedi Knights.

But thousands of light-years away, the last of the Emperor's warlords--the brilliant and deadly Grand Admiral Thrawn--has taken command of the shattered Imperial fleet, readied it for war, and pointed it at the fragile heart of the New Republic.

Meanwhile, Han and Lando Calrissian race against time to find proof of treason inside the highest Republic Council--only to discover instead a ghostly fleet of warships that could bring doom to their friends and victory to their enemies.

Yet most dangerous of all is a new Dark Jedi, risen from the ashes of a shrouded past, consumed by bitterness, and scheming to corrupt Luke to the dark side.

A New York Times Bestseller

In this "unequivocally hilarious and delightful" (Kirkus Reviews) young adult romp for fans of Recommended for You and A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, a teen girl has the worst Valentine's Day ever--only to relive it over and over again.

After living through a dumpster fire of a Valentine's Day, Emilie Hornby escapes to her grandmother's house for some comfort and a consolation pint of Ben & Jerry's. She passes out on the couch, but when she wakes up, she's back home in her own bed--and it's Valentine's Day all over again. And the next day? Another horrendous V-Day.

Emilie is stuck in some sort of time loop nightmare that she can't wake up from as she re-watches her boyfriend, Josh, cheat on her day after day. In addition to Josh's recurring infidelity, Emilie can't get away from the enigmatic Nick, who she keeps running into--sometimes literally--in unfortunate ways.

How many times can one girl passively watch her life go up in flames? And when something good starts to come out of these terrible days, what happens when the universe stops doling out do-overs?

The fourth book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Cibola Burn sees the crew of the Rocinante on a new frontier, as the rush to colonize the new planets threatens to outrun law and order and give way to war and chaos. Now a Prime Original series.

HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES

Enter a new frontier.
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"An empty apartment, a missing family, that's creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell everyone to leave."

The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonize has begun. Settlers looking for a new life stream out from humanity's home planets. Ilus, the first human colony on this vast new frontier, is being born in blood and fire.

Independent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage, and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world. The struggle on Ilus threatens to spread all the way back to Earth.

James Holden and the crew of his one small ship are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the midst of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fail.

And the whispers of a dead man remind him that the great galactic civilization that once stood on this land is gone. And that something killed it.

The Expanse
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban's War
Abaddon's Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon's Ashes
Persepolis Rising
Tiamat's Wrath
​Leviathan Falls

Memory's Legion

The Expanse Short Fiction
Drive
The Butcher of Anderson Station
Gods of Risk
The Churn
The Vital Abyss
Strange Dogs
Auberon
The Sins of Our Fathers

This out-of-this-world kit for sci-fi lovers is loaded with special effects! It includes: -3-inch diameter spaceship, equipped with a hinged cockpit dome from which a curious alien peers, and featuring multiple light and sound effects:

• By opening the cockpit dome and pressing the alien's head, sound of spaceship engine plays, followed by eerie pre-abduction music. Six blue lights around the spaceship flash in rotation. Additionally, two bright LED lights beneath the ship glow, casting a beam of light in search of a specimen to abduct.
• When the spaceship is hovered in close proximity to the cow, a magnetically powered "abduction" occurs which simultaneously prompts new light and sound effects. Lights beneath the ship flash and music changes to a pulsating sound with intermittent cow mooing.
• When cow is abducted and alien head is pressed again, sound of the spaceship flying away plays, concluding your invasion and shutting off the spaceship.

-Miniature cow and faux grass mound -Transparent display stand to hover spaceship over cow when not invading the countryside -32-page book, The Cow Abduction Chronicles, featuring full-color illustrations

Midoriya inherits the superpower of the world's greatest hero, but greatness won't come easy.

What would the world be like if 80 percent of the population manifested superpowers called "Quirks"? Heroes and villains would be battling it out everywhere! Being a hero would mean learning to use your power, but where would you go to study? The Hero Academy of course! But what would you do if you were one of the 20 percent who were born Quirkless?

In the aftermath of the sports festival, the Class 1-A students begin their internships. Midoriya goes to study under Gran Torino, who was once All Might's mentor. Gran Torino appears to be a washed-up nutjob, but the old hero still has more moves than a football team, and Midoriya has a lot to learn! Elsewhere, the League of Villains enacts another sinister plot and unleashes a terrifying new enemy!