A human protagonist awakens into an altered world after a cataclysm and must confront external caretakers whose technological and biological interventions raise urgent moral questions.

A group of university students visits a remote island that was the scene of a gruesome mass killing months earlier; once there, ominous events begin and a sequence of murders unfolds within the isolated setting.

Three extended nonfiction essays look closely at distinct episodes where people tried to redirect, constrain, or rebuild around powerful natural forces: efforts on a major river system, responses to a volcanic eruption, and work against mountain debris flows.

A linked set of personal vignettes about Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters, arranged in distinct sections that echo a mahjong game's structure.

A first-person account by an English butler who undertakes a road trip and uses the journey to recall years of service at a great house. The narrator reconstructs past events and relationships while confronting what his lifelong commitment to duty has cost him.

Jill Ker Conway recounts her childhood on a vast sheep station in western New South Wales and the disruptions—most notably drought and her father's death—that forced her family to leave for Sydney.

Set in late-1940s Los Angeles, the novel follows Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, an unemployed Black man who takes on a missing-person job that draws him into criminal danger and complex social worlds.

A rural community is shattered by a violent incursion, pushing a group of young people onto the road under urgent threat. They become caught in a wider struggle involving an articulated system of magic, looming malevolent forces, and competing powers.

A collection of interlinked short stories drawn from Tim O'Brien's Vietnam War experience, following a platoon of American soldiers. Each chapter focuses on material items, personal recollections, or specific incidents that reveal how memory, fear, and obligation shape their daily lives and relationships.

Set during the First World War, the novel follows officers treated for shell shock at a military psychiatric hospital. The plot focuses on their therapy, conversations, and struggles to reconcile wartime experiences with civilian identities while clinicians and fellow patients negotiate guilt, duty, and recovery.

A near-future urban world where immersive virtual systems, media feeds, and software-hacking reshape identity and embodiment.

A 1991 novel by Kathe Koja that focuses on an ordinary domestic life disturbed by an uncanny, physical mystery that draws the protagonists into escalating fixation and danger.

Blanche on the Lam introduces Blanche White, an African-American domestic worker who becomes entangled in a criminal accusation and then in solving mysteries around her.

An energetic near-future story that interleaves a fast-paced real-world plot with a pervasive virtual-reality environment and a memetic/linguistic threat.

A scientist's wide-angle account of how species have originated, diversified, and occupied Earth’s ecosystems, paired with a diagnosis of contemporary biodiversity decline.

Four very different people converge in an Italian villa during the later stages of World War II: a severely burned, anonymous patient; the Canadian nurse who tends him; a Sikh sapper; and a Canadian thief.

Set at a small, elite liberal-arts college, the novel follows a tight group of Classics students whose scholarly intensity and social isolation lead to a violent rupture.

A specialist reaches an isolated planet where a virus has wiped out most men and reshaped society; she must learn local ways of living and reckon with a community rebuilt around different social norms.

Set in a near-future America broken by economic collapse, climate effects, and violence, the novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman who records her experiences and develops a practical belief system called Earthseed.

A man with a troubled past relocates with his children to his ancestral home in coastal Newfoundland and starts anew while working for the local newspaper.

An anonymous group of neighborhood boys recall and try to explain the lives and deaths of five Lisbon sisters in a 1970s Midwestern suburb. The account pieces together small scenes, neighborhood detail, and collective memory to track how ordinary suburban rhythms intersect with profound loss.

Lucy Grealy recounts her life before and after a childhood diagnosis of Ewing's sarcoma, describing the medical treatments that altered her face and the social and emotional consequences that followed.

A coded plea from deep inside frozen Russia summons a linguistically gifted outsider to infiltrate a secret research installation.

In a near-future United States where virtual reality and neural implants shape online life, former underground hacker India Carless (Trouble) reunites with her ex-lover to confront someone impersonating her identity in cyberspace.