National Network for Equitable Library Service

They look like us. Act like us. Burrt they are not human. Created to perform the menial tasks real humans detest, Synths were designed with only a basic intelligence and minimal emotional response. It stands to reason that they have no rights. Like any technology, they are designed for human convenience. Disposable. In the city of New Lyons, Detective Jason Campbell is investigating a vicious crime: a female body found mutilated and left in the streets.

A novel from the Darkover series, about a man on his first mission to the planet. What he encounters when he leaves the space station is to determine the fate of every Terran stranded there.

For Jeff Kerwin, Darkover meant home, the home he had left as a child, the home he had longed for through the many years. Yet, he was to be terribly disappointed when he finally returned. First he learned that there were not records of any kind of either his birth or childhood on Darkover. And then, after he renounced his Terran allegiance and joined the natives attempting to free Darkover from Earth's control, the Darkovans accused him of being a spy. Someone was betraying them.

Edgar Hill is thirty-five and caught in his own headlock. Overweight slob, underperforming husband, and reluctant father-for Ed, the world may as well have already ended. So when it does end in a catastrophic asteroid strike and Edgar and his family find refuge in an Edinburgh army barracks, it comes as something of a relief.But nothing's ever that simple. Returning from a salvage run in the city, Edgar finds his family gone, taken to the south coast for evacuation by an international task force.

Earth, the peaceful capital of a long-fallen interstellar empire, is confronted by deadly violence when the warships of a former colony attack, and it is up to planetary coordinator Ecktor deJanes to eliminate the menace without violating Earth's non-aggression principles.

Deep in the Caribbean Sea, a nuclear submarine is forced to suddenly abort its mission under mysterious circumstances. Strange facts begin to emerge that lead naval investigator, John Clay, to a small group of marine biologists who are quietly on the verge of making history. With the help of a powerful computer system, Alison Shaw and her team are preparing to translate the first two-way conversation with the planet's second smartest species. But the team discovers much more from their dolphins than they ever expected when a secret object is revealed on the ocean floor.

The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, five Hugo Awards and five Nebula Awards, the renowned writer Ursula K. Le Guin has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in The Birthday of the World, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.

This exciting collection presents two previously unpublished stories by SF legend Butler. "A Necessary Being" precedes the events of Survivor, Butler's third (famously disowned) installment in her Patternist series, and includes characters from it, focusing exclusively on the Kohn, aliens who build their social hierarchies on the blueness of their fur. In "Childfinder," a black woman with the gift of identifying children with latent psychic ability refuses to share her skill with an organization of white telepaths.

Moments after the inauguration of our 45th President, best friends Barack Obama and Joe Biden were escorted to a secret lab run by the world's greatest scientists. These scientists sent them back in time to change history for the better, guided by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Now Obama and Biden are leaping throughout their own lifetimes, forever hoping that their next jump in time will take them to a future that's not scary and broken, a world which they can proudly call home.

Howard is a lonely, geeky tenth-grader dealing with a father who's had some kind of breakdown, a flaky, overprotective mother and frightening waking dreams. Then he meets Cate, a strange girl who convinces him that he is an Adept, which means he can communicate through dreams with other dimensions and, under certain circumstances, travel between them. Howard discovers that our world is only one of several dimensions swirling in time and space, and that one of the others, peopled by unimaginably powerful monsters, is approaching Earth for the first time in millennia.