Staff Picks

Thought provoking and at times eerily relatable, this piece of satire walks a fine line between utopian and dystopian fiction. Young adults readers will be encouraged to ask themselves difficult questions as they read. A great choice for those who are hoping to reevaluate our connection to technology and consider what it is that makes us human.

 

Publisher's description:

For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon -- a chance to party during spring break. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its ever-present ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. M. T. Anderson’s not-so-brave new world is a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.

 

The Last Cuentista takes place in 2060 when Earth is going to be destroyed and three ships of scientists are the only humans who will leave to go settle a new world. The main character, Petra Peña, and her family are some of the people who are leaving. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes up to find that The Collective, a sinister group who believe only in sameness had taken over the ship she was on. The Collective had managed to get rid of everyone's memories -- everyone's but Petra's. Now Petra is the only one who knows anything about humanities' past, the last one who knows their stories. The Last Cuentista is probably my favorite sci-fi book and I would recommend it to anyone who thinks it looks interesting.

- Kyra, ninth-grade volunteer

 

Publisher's description: There lived a girl named Petra Peña, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra's world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children - among them Petra and her family - have been chosen to journey to a new planet. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet - and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity's past . . . [by] systematically purg[ing] the memories of all on board - or purg[ing] them altogether. Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again?

 

The Rest of Us Just Live Here is an amazing book that is centered around four people who aren't exactly the main protagonists of any other story. They aren't the chosen ones, they just happen to live in the same world that all the weird things happen in. I have never read a book like this before but Patrick Ness pulled it off well. The chapters are engaging and even tell you what is happening with the Indie kids (they are typically the ones to do all of the heroics and world saving). However the book just focuses on smaller problems in the life of Mikey and his friends.

- Kyra, ninth-grade volunteer

 

Publisher's Description:

What if you aren't the Chosen One? The one who's supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you're like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again. Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week's end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life. Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions.

 

The Lord of the Flies is an island adventure story cleverly turned on its head to illustrate Golding’s grim views on human nature through a group of boys who slowly turn away from rationality. In the opening scene, the sound of a conch shell found by the main character, Ralph, is established as the call to order, but Jack, Ralph’s competitor for power, lures the other boys toward his own camp on the far side of the island by tempting them into a life of savagery. Full of symbols and dark themes, Lord of the Flies gives a different perspective on human nature, forcing us to question whether we are as good-willed as we often think we are. 

-Jiyu K., eighth-grade teen volunteer 

Publisher's description: 

5 years after it was first published, William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary boys marooned on a coral island has been labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, and even a vision of the apocalypse. But above all, it has earned its place as one of the indisputable classics of the twentieth century for readers of any age.  

 

Find Lord of the Flies in the library's online catalog.  

What if you knew that your life was limited to only 21 years? What if Earth no longer has the resources needed to sustain a full human life? The premise of Logan's Run, a short read that contemplates a society of control rather than freedom, and possibly a foreshadowing of Earth's future state.

 

Publisher's description:

In 2116, it is against the law to live beyond the age of twenty-one years. When the crystal flower in the palm of your hand turns from red to black, you have reached your Lastday and you must report to a Sleepshop for processing. But the human will to survive is strong--stronger than any mere law. Logan 3 is a Sandman, an enforcer who hunts down those Runners who refuse to accept Deep Sleep. The day before Logan's palmflower shifts to black, a Runner accidentally reveals that he was racing toward a goal: Sanctuary. With this information driving him forward, Logan 3 assumes the role of the hunted and becomes a Runner.

 

We recommend this action-packed novel for fans of Station Eleven. Climate fiction is branching into subgenres, and one of the most interesting is eco-dystopian, which warns of dark paths society may take in the wake of climate disaster. Visit Book Riot for more great eco-dystopian titles.

 

Publisher's description:

In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is breaking ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp--but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she'll receive a home for her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself. Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, only to discover that everyone has a hidden agenda, and nothing is as it seems. Through skillfully braided perspectives, including those of a young professor longing to escape his wealthy family and an all-woman military research unit struggling for survival at a climate station, the fate of Camp Zero's inhabitants reaches a stunning crescendo. Atmospheric, fiercely original, and utterly gripping, Camp Zero is an electrifying page-turner and a masterful exploration of who and what will survive in a warming world, and how falling in love and building community can be the most daring acts of all.

 

This is a book that everyone should wake up and read now! An intense book about the climate crisis. Terrifying and a bit hopeful. The audio version is really well done with a full cast of readers.

 

Publisher's description:

In the early 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come.

 

This darkly humorous debut novel is a great pick for book clubs. From Kirkus, in a starred review: "Cauley's experience as a Manhattan antitrust lawyer infuses the office scenes with authentically cutthroat competition, and her comedy-writing chops shine in hilariously succinct characterizations."

 

Publisher's description:

In the wake of her parents' death, Aretha, a habitually single Black lawyer, has had only one obsession in life--success--until she falls for Aaron, a coffee entrepreneur. Moving into his Brooklyn brownstone to live along with his Hurricane Sandy-traumatized, illegal-gun-stockpiling, optimized-soy-protein-eating, bunker-building roommates, Aretha finds that her dreams of making partner are slipping away, replaced by an underground world, one of selling guns and training for a doomsday that's maybe just around the corner. For readers of Victor LaValle's The Changeling, Paul Beatty's The Sellout, and Zakiya Harris's The Other Black Girl, The Survivalists is a darkly humorous novel from a smart and relevant new literary voice that's packed with tension, curiosity and wit, and unafraid to ask the questions most relevant to a new generation of Americans: Does it make sense to climb the corporate ladder? What exactly are the politics of gun ownership? And in a world where it's nearly impossible for young people to earn enough money to afford stable housing, what does it take in order to survive?

 

Find The Survivalists in our online catalog.
 

The first book in the MaddAddam trilogy can easily be read as a stand alone. Oryx and Crake is a dark speculative fiction narrative that shifts between a strangely wild present and a technologically marvelous past (a past that is uncomfortably close to our own contemporary America, just a bit more slanted.) Thoroughly engaging; one doesn't want the book to end. Fortunately, there are two more books exploring the rich characters and inhabiting the strange territory of Oryx and Crake.

 

Publisher's description:

Jimmy, perhaps the last living human unaltered by science, struggles for survival in a post-apocalyptic world as he tries to make sense of how everything went wrong, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx, a girl he met through a kiddie porn website.

 

Library Journal calls HellSans "a smart and unique dystopian thriller that is especially fun for fans of graphic design and fonts." This near-future nightmare is a masterclass in using worldbuilding to cast light on social issues, in this case the marginalization of individuals with disabilities.

 

Publisher's description:

HellSans is set in a fictional UK, where HellSans is a ubiquitous typeface, enforced by the government in all communications and in all public spaces. It is the ultimate control device. The majority of the population experience bliss when they see the typeface, but there's a minority who are allergic to it. The HellSans Allergic (HSAs) are persecuted, and live on the streets or in a ghetto on the outskirts of the capital city. Jane Ward, CEO of the company that manufactures the Inex (a cyborg doll-like creature that has replaced the smart phone as the essential aid and accessory) has everything: fame and fortune, until she falls ill with the allergy and becomes embroiled in the government's internal power struggles. She loses her job and her wealth, ending up in the ghetto until she is rescued by Dr Icho Smith. Icho is a scientist who has developed a cure for the allergy, but she is on the run from the government and the Seraphs (the ghetto 'terrorist' group), who all have their own agenda for the cure. Jane and Icho work together, aiming to expose government corruption and bring the cure to the HSAs.