National Network for Equitable Library Service

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This exciting collection presents two previously unpublished stories by SF legend Butler.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.

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.

After years of struggle by Blanchfleur to maintain its independence, the idyllic walled city of Aahimsa, a community of girls and women dedicated to making a life of peace free of the brutality and aggression of outsiders, and its prospering Manuhome, are suddenly victims of a brutal surprise attack by the forces of The World Federation of City States. Mabon and Nora are in hiding outside the city where they witness all the horrors of the assault. Adam, their adoptive son, is no longer with them, having been placed under the protection of Doctor Ueland at the Manuhome.

The eighth novel in James S. A. Corey's New York Times bestselling Expanse series--now a major television series. Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper. In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed, and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable.

The Martian meets Interstellar in the new sci-fi thriller from A.G. Riddle, the worldwide bestselling author with over four million copies sold and translations in two dozen languages. A new ice age on Earth. A mysterious object in space. And a desperate mission to save humanity from extinction. Each month, Earth grows colder. Snow falls in summer. Glaciers trample cities across North America, Europe, and Asia. Chaos erupts. Around the world, people abandon their homes, fleeing the cold, flocking to regions where they can survive the new ice age.

Corey J. White concludes his pulse-pounding space opera in Static Ruin. As the most wanted voidwitch in the galaxy has no place left to run-except back to those who created her. She killed the man who trained her. She killed the fleet that came for her. She killed the planet that caged her. Now she must confront her father. Mars Xi is on the run, a bounty on her head and a kill count on her conscience. All she has left are her mutant cat Ocho and her fellow human weapon Pale, a young boy wracked by seizures who can kill with a thought.

Environmental devastation has left Earth a wasteland, but an even more nightmarish fate looms if the woman known as H124 can't stop an extinction-level asteroid from destroying the planet. The Skyfire Saga On the run from a dangerous media empire, H124 places her hope in learning more about the Rovers, the last bastion of humans to embrace science as a solution to Earth's ongoing environmental catastrophe.

"Amanda Bouchet blasts off with a series that's full of heart, humor, romance, and action."-Jennifer Estep, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Kill the Queen Tess Bailey: the galaxy's Most Wanted. Captain Tess Bailey is in deep trouble. She and her crew are on the run, pursued by a tyrant who'll take them dead or alive. Tess's best hope is a tall, dark, and much-too-appealing stranger, Shade Ganavan, who says he can help her. But his motivations are far from clear... Shade Ganavan: arrogance, charm...and that special something that makes you want to kick him.

The breathtaking debut from acclaimed short story writer Derek Kunsken. Belisarius is a quantum man, an engineered Homo quantus who fled the powerful insight of dangerously addictive quantum senses. He found a precarious balance as a con man, but when a client offers him untold wealth to move a squadron of warships across an enemy wormhole, he must embrace his birthright to even try. In fact, the job is so big that he'll need a crew built from all the new sub-branches of humanity.