2025 Chicago Public Library Best of the Best BooksA heartfelt coming-of-age story about music, family, and friendship—perfect for fans of Roller Girl and New Kid.For twelve-year-old Lucy Carver, music isn’t just a way of life, it’s an escape from homework and home life with her alcoholic father. When Lucy starts seventh grade at Windley School of the Arts, with its high academic standards and even higher artistic expectati...

A reluctant medium, an entitled ghost, and a dead body at the bottom of the stairs.Suri Mudge is having a bad day.Plagued by headaches and with an attitude to match, Surly — as she’s known to the odd-ball locals in her Oregon Coast community — stumbles across a murder victim while out for a stroll. Strange things are common in Naghatune Bay, but this is the first murder by magick, though the straight-laced deputy sheriff isn’t convinced. Su...

Sometimes the further you distance yourself, the closer you are to the truth.What starts out as a simple trip around India soon becomes a psychological journey into the darkness of Sam's past. One he knows there's no running from.When Sam decides to give up his mundane life and travel to India he has no idea what he'll do when he gets there and it isn't long before his lack of preparation takes its toll.Vulnerable and alone, Sam is haunted by memories of his childho...

Science fiction icon Connie Willis brilliantly mixes a speculative plot, the wit of Nora Ephron, and the comedic flair of P. G. Wodehouse in Crosstalk—a genre-bending novel that pushes social media, smartphone technology, and twenty-four-hour availability to hilarious and chilling extremes as one young woman abruptly finds herself with way more connectivity than she ever desired.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPRIn the ...

A remarkable collection, Robots through the Ages includes stories from some of the best writers of science fiction, both old and new.This anthology, with an introduction by Robert Silverberg, offers a sweeping survey of robots as depicted throughout literature. Since the Iliad—in which we are shown golden statues built by Hephaestus “with minds and wisdoms”—humans have been fascinated by the idea of artificial life. From the Argonautica t...

Using the written word as her witness statement, Jessica Willis Fisher gives a lacerating portrait of a girl finding her voice after years of being silenced and an unforgettable story of risk and faith.Growing up the eldest daughter in a large, highly controlled, fundamentalist Christian household, Jessica Willis was groomed to perform, and to conform to her father's disturbing and chaotic teachings. Cut off from anything unapproved by her father, Jessica was persi...

Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit.“A tour de force.”—The New York Times Book ReviewFor Kivrin, preparing to travel back in time to study one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alib...

***SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 STEPHEN LEACOCK MEMORIAL MEDAL FOR HUMOUR* *LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE* *LONGLISTED FOR THE FOREST OF READING EVERGREEN AWARD* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 ALBERTA LITERARY AWARDS GEORGES BUGNET AWARD FOR FICTION*“A sharp, funny take on capitalism, climate change, and our lifelong mission to be loved.” —PeopleA funny, poignant, and page-turning debut novel that skewers billionaire-funded space travel i...

Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place, with scores of time-traveling historians being sent into the past. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Me...

Radiant in her white satin wedding gown, Patricia Blakley was living a dream come true. At last, she was marrying the man she loved, Ted Kimble—a fellow Christian and son of a local preacher. But little did she realize her new husband had a dark side. Shock waves rocked the small, North Carolina town of Pleasant Garden when Patricia's charred body was discovered inside the Kimble's burned-out home. Soon family and friends learned an even worse truth—Patricia had died from a bullet wound to...

“Willis effortlessly juggles comedy of manners, chaos theory and a wide range of literary allusions [with a] near flawlessness of plot, character and prose.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel.Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He’s been shuttling between the twenty-first century and...

One of those rare, unforgettable novels that are as chilling as they are insightful, as thought-provoking as they are terrifying, award-winning author Connie Willis's Passage is an astonishing blend of relentless suspense and cutting-edge science unlike anything you've ever read before.It is the electrifying story of a psychologist who has devoted her life to tracking death. But when she volunteers for a research project that simulates the near-death experience, sh...