National Network for Equitable Library Service

In this visionary novel by Larissa Lai--her first in sixteen years--a community of parthenogenic women, sent into exile by the male-dominated Salt Water City, goes to war against disease, technology, and powerful men that threaten them with extinction. Kirilow is a doctor apprentice whose lover Peristrophe is a "starfish," a woman who can regenerate her own limbs and organs, which she uses to help her clone sisters whose organs are failing.

It's the year 2135, almost four decades since the Water Wars ended. Much of the continent is a desert wasteland, and the powerful Consortium rules Adanac, one of the few habitable areas remaining, with an iron fist. Cee and Dee, 16-year-old twins who share a special, almost psychic bond, are runaways from a Consortium workhouse. The twins are tested to their limits as they confront the demons of their past and try to save the future, for themselves and all of Adanac.

In near-future America, sleep has been banned. Our unemployed, dream-prone narrator finds himself following Chevauchet, a diplomat from Onirica, a foreign republic of dreams, to resist the prohibition. On a mission to combat the state-sponsored drugging of citizens with uppers for greater productivity, they traverse an eerie landscape in an everlasting autumn, able to see inside other people's nightmares and dreams. When Chevauchet, the old radical, disappears, our narrator must take up Chevauchet's dictum that "daydreaming is directly subversive" and forge ahead on his own.

Watershed is a contemporary dystopian novel set in a near-future southern Alberta, which has been ravaged by desert-like conditions, as opposed to the northern part of the province, which is warm as well as green and lush thanks to a water pipeline from the ocean. The province's former oil and gas pipelines are being converted to carry desalinated sea water, and the north and south are at odds because of it. The protagonist, Wilma, is desperately trying to hold onto her dying family farm, while her son, Daniel, takes a job for the enemy: the big water pipeline corporation.

Radicalized is a timely collection consisting of four SF novellas connected by social, technological, and economic visions of today and what America could be in the near, near future. Canada Reads 2020. Bestseller. 2019.

Following the events of Pulse Point, 12-year old Ama and the other Underlanders living in a world of darkness dig for brine, the City's real energy source. Underland is a dangerous place: cave-ins, starvation and illness are constant threats. When their leader deserts them, Ama goes looking for him and stumbles on two Citizens. Neither knew the other existed. 18-year old Sari lives in the City, blissfully unaware of what goes on beneath her feet. The disappearance of her best friend, Kaia, has left her feeling isolated.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the "Transition." Now, eating human meat--"special meat"--is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he's given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality.

Best friends exploring the Louvre in Paris find themselves in a time loop searching for answers in this "exhilarating" novel "for fans of Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind" (The Millions)."What do you get when you take Groundhog Day, add a dash of the apocalypse, a little French obsession, and mix in female friendship and romantic entanglement? This firecracker of a book." -Good Housekeeping. Bertie and Kate have been best friends since high school. Bertie is a semi-failed cartoonist, working for a prominent Silicon Valley tech firm.

A riveting story of survival and hope, set in the not-too-distant future, about a young man forced to flee the United States and seek refuge across the Atlantic. As fires devastate most of the United States, Lark and his family secure a place on a refugee boat headed to Ireland, the last country not yet overrun by extremists and rumored to be accepting American refugees. But Lark is the only one to survive the trip, and once ashore, he doesn't find the safe haven he'd hoped for.

After nuclear disaster, Rowenna and her young son are among the rare survivors in rural north-west Wales. Left alone in their isolated hillside cottage, after others have died or abandoned the towns and villages, they must learn new skills in order to remain alive. With no electricity or modern technology they must return to the old ways of living off the land, developing new personal resources.