An investigation into nonhuman minds using cephalopods—especially octopuses—as a case study.

A single unicorn, convinced she is the last of her kind, leaves the safety of the forest to discover what happened to other unicorns.

A recently bereaved woman moves into a large London house to escape her marriage and start over, but strange occurrences and a séance convince her that the house may be haunted.

An ordinary-seeming encounter between strangers escalates into a plotted decision about murder and consequence. The setup focuses on characters who trade confidences and proposals that test ethics and self-interest, then follow the fallout as allegiances and truth become unreliable.

A hard-science space mission encounters an inexplicable extraterrestrial signal and assembles a specialized crew to investigate. The narrative orients around scientific inquiry into alien minds, neurologically informed speculation, and the practical hazards of human contact with a fundamentally other intelligence.

Set in a near-future Orange County, the novel follows an undercover narcotics agent embedded in a household of drug users while concealing his identity from both the police and his targets.

Set in a damaged near-future world, the narrative follows humans and lifelike androids whose similarities prompt tests of empathy and legal distinction. The central pressure is whether artificially created beings should be treated as persons and how human identity holds up under scarcity, grief, and imitation.

A linked-memoir of personal essays in which the author recounts growing up Vietnamese American, arriving as a refugee, and navigating family, race, and literary ambitions.

Set on a future Mars, the story follows a lowborn miner who infiltrates the ranks of the ruling elite by assuming a false identity.

A short, focused novel that follows a small group of characters as they face a pressure introduced by a speculative technological or environmental condition.

A first-person memoir by Qian Julie Wang about arriving in the United States as a child with her parents and living undocumented. The narrative follows her family's struggle with poverty, precarious work, and the constant fear and limitations that come with noncitizen status.

A young woman from a rural background enters a prestigious military academy and becomes entangled in larger national conflicts where shamanic magic and worship of powerful deities influence warfare.

A scientific investigation and public argument about the ecological and human harms of widespread synthetic pesticide use, with sustained attention to DDT.

An expansive non-fiction survey of the ocean that traces its origins, physical processes, and living systems while explaining scientific findings in accessible, often lyrical language.

A contemporary story about witches and everyday life that places supernatural elements inside familiar social settings. The central pressure comes from a character's collision with witchcraft and its consequences for relationships, reputation, and safety within a community.

Two adults in a contemporary urban setting become entangled with a dangerous werewolf presence that complicates their intimate relationship and daily lives.

An unnamed Black narrator recounts his journey through segregated American life, encountering institutions, movements, and people that test his sense of self.

A mid-1970s novel by Ramsey Campbell that stages a creeping, uncanny threat within intimate domestic spaces.

In a near-future coastal setting, scientists discover a hyper-intelligent octopus species and confront what that intelligence means for ethics, exploitation, and human self-understanding. The discovery triggers corporate and political interests, forcing choices about study, containment, and contact.

A novel that frames an alleged demonic possession as a matter for testing and judgment: characters confront religious belief, evidence, and moral responsibility as the question of Satan’s presence is treated almost legally.

Philip Marlowe, a laconic private detective, is hired by an elderly wealthy client to look into a potentially embarrassing or criminal affair involving her family.

Philip Marlowe, a private investigator in mid‑century Los Angeles, becomes entangled with a damaged newcomer and the consequences of that friendship. The novel follows Marlowe’s investigation and its social fallout while using detective work to probe characters’ motives and the city’s moral landscape.

Set in a richly imagined fantasy world inspired by Indigenous mythic traditions, the novel focuses on an approaching solar eclipse that catalyzes political and prophetic forces.

An investigative nonfiction account tracing the life of Henrietta Lacks and the origin of the HeLa cell line, focusing on how her cells were taken, used in scientific research, and the ethical, racial, and personal consequences for her family.

This book looks closely at how people behave in major disasters, arguing against the idea that chaos and panic are the default. Using historical episodes and reporting, it shows recurring patterns of spontaneous cooperation, improvisation, and mutual aid that form temporary communities in the wake of catastrophe.

Set just after the First World War, the novel follows a country-house household when a wounded officer returns from the trenches with severe mental shock and memory loss.

Set against Cold War anxieties, the story follows characters entangled in a conspiracy that links wartime experience, political ambition, and psychological manipulation. The central pressure arises from a plot involving covert conditioning and an assassination scheme that threatens public life and private loyalties.

Four investigators — a parapsychology-minded scientist, his wife, and two mediums — spend a week inside the most notorious haunted house to test whether life after death or malignant forces linger there.

After a pandemic that leaves civilians transformed into violent, vampiric beings, a lone survivor inhabits a ruined Los Angeles and endures daily assaults on sleep, sanity, and shelter.

A contemporary mystery shaped by a group of older neighbors who meet regularly and become involved in solving a local murder. The setup follows their informal investigations and interpersonal exchanges as they piece together clues and test suspects, with the crime driving social interaction and group dynamics.

Nine Americans with distinct backgrounds develop deep, formative relationships to trees; the separate life strands are arranged in a deliberately non-linear, mosaic structure that brings the characters together around forest destruction and conservation.

Richard Wright's Black Boy is a memoir of his childhood and early adulthood, following life in the segregated American South and his later move to Chicago where he begins a writing career and political engagement.

Set on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s, the novel follows Bigger Thomas, a young Black man shaped by crushing poverty and social isolation.

A modern adolescent discovers a tie to the old Greek gods and is thrust into a quest that mixes mythic monsters with contemporary urban life. The immediate pressure is a mission across landmarks to resolve a theft and personal mystery while learning who to trust.

Set aboard a generation ship, the novel follows life inside a rigidly stratified vessel where social caste, inherited servitude, and systemic racism govern daily existence.

Set in a world dominated by ocean and contested waterways, the novel follows communities that build and sail ships made from the bones of giant sea creatures. Central pressure comes from maritime conflict and the need to maintain crews, craft, and traditions while confronting threats that imperil seafaring life.

A first-person account of Juan "Johnny" Rico's progression through the Mobile Infantry, set against an interstellar war between humans and an alien species.

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 sequence of exploratory trips beneath landscapes — caves, catacombs, glacial moulins and other underground sites — that probe how subterranean spaces hold memory, burial, and signs of human activity across deep time.

A family rents an isolated summer house to get away from city life, only to encounter a series of unusual experiences and unsettling personality changes among its members.

An interdisciplinary nonfiction collection that interweaves Indigenous wisdom, ecological science, and personal memoir to reconsider how humans relate to plants and land.

A collection of reflective natural-history essays focused on mosses and their place in forest ecosystems. The book links careful field observation of bryophytes to explanations of their biology and roles in plant ecology, while connecting those details to cultural and life-history perspectives about plants.

A contemporary romantic comedy that follows characters navigating a close, deliberately intimate arrangement while dealing with personal boundaries, career questions, and the messy consequences of getting emotionally involved.

A first-person memoir that links the author's history of sexual trauma to long-term weight gain and the ways her body has been treated by herself and others. The book focuses on physical hunger and its emotional roots while situating those experiences within social reactions, stigma, and personal coping.

A live-in nanny takes a job at a remote, high-tech Scottish house and later finds herself accused of a murder that occurred there.

A seasoned mechanic with a criminal past tries to keep his family and failing auto shop afloat by attempting one last heist; the job brings him back into violent, high-risk territory and forces urgent choices about loyalty, survival, and identity.

Two aging ex-con fathers unite after their sons — a married interracial couple — are murdered, and they set out to find the killers. The immediate pressure is violent revenge complicated by grief, entrenched prejudices, and the challenge of protecting the son's infant.

A first-person memoir of Saeed Jones' adolescence and young adulthood, focused on his efforts to find safety, desire, and selfhood as a young Black gay man in 1990s Texas.

Two young people from different social backgrounds form a fraught, recurring relationship from secondary school into university.