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Reading recommendations for fiction, nonfiction, and audiobooks across all reading levels.
Author
Series
Dire earth cycle volume 2
Pub. Date
2013
Description
Aliens have built a second space elevator in Brazil and it's up to scavenger crew captain Skyler Luiken and brilliant scientist Dr. Tania Sharma to solve the puzzle of these Builders' master plan ... before it's too late for the last vestiges of humanity.
Author
Series
Appears on list
Description
During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she's delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move. As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn't at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human. While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth...
Author
Series
Imperial Radch volume 5
Publisher
Orbit
Pub. Date
2023.
Formats
Description
"When Enae's grandmaman passes away, Enae inherits something entirely unexpected: a diplomatic assignment to track down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. No one actually expects Enae to succeed; it's an empty assignment meant to keep her occupied. But Enae has never had a true purpose--no one ever expected her to do more than care for grandmaman--so she is determined to accomplish this task to the best of her ability. Reet knows...
Author
Series
Appears on these lists
Description
"THE NEW NOVEL FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF READY PLAYER ONE It's just another day of high school for Zack Lightman. He's daydreaming through another boring math class, with just one more month to go until graduation and freedom--if he can make it that long without getting suspended again. Then he glances out his classroom window and spots the flying saucer. At first, Zack thinks he's going crazy. A minute later, he's sure of it. Because the UFO...
Author
Formats
Description
When Arthur, a writer-turned-journalist, meets a mysterious and alluring woman, he is drawn into the world of the Fourth Dimensionists, a societal faction that uses political power to break down traditional values in the name of expedience. As Arthur's obsession with the woman grows, he yearns to capture her attention and her affections, only to learn that he has been brutally used and, as a result, has betrayed those who are closest to him.
One of...
Author
Formats
Description
A new exposé of the twentieth century's extraterrestrial visitations (and cover-ups) by distinguished UFologist Timothy Good. This volume tells the story of contact between aliens and humans from all across the globe, dating back to 1932, including meetings with military personnel and American presidents such as Eisenhower and Kennedy. --From publisher description.
Author
Series
Dire earth cycle volume 3
Description
"The hunt is on for the mysterious keys left by the alien Builders. While Skyler's team of immune scavengers scatters around the disease-ravaged globe in search of the artifacts, Skyler himself finds much more than he expected in the African desert, where he stumbles upon surprising Builder relics-- and thousands of bloodthirsty subhumans. From the slums and fortresses of Darwin to the jungles of Brazil and beyond, Skyler and company are in for a...
Author
Series
Gideon Crew volume 4
Description
That thing is growing again. We must destroy it. The time to act is now... With these words begins Gideon Crew's latest, most dangerous, most high-stakes assignment yet. Failure will mean nothing short of the end of humankind on earth. Five years ago, the mysterious and inscrutable head of Effective Engineering Solutions, Eli Glinn, led a mission to recover a gigantic meteorite--the largest ever discovered--from a remote island off the coast of South...
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Formats
Description
"Two Ships. One Chance To Save The Future. Fleeing the final days of the generations-long war with the alien Felen, smuggler Jereth Keeven's freighter the Jonah breaks down in a strange rift in deep space, with little chance of rescue--until they encounter the research vessel Gallion, which claims to be from 152 years in the future. The Gallion's chief engineer Uma Ozakka has always been fascinated with the past, especially the tale of the Fortunate...
Author
Series
Appears on these lists
ATL Staff Picks: November & December
ATL's Favorite Reads of 2023
Bedford Public Library Most Checked Out of 2023
Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
ATL's Favorite Reads of 2023
Bedford Public Library Most Checked Out of 2023
Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Description
"With the scope of Dune and the commercial action of Independence Day, this near-future trilogy is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience this multple-award-winning phenemonenon from China's most beloved science fiction author. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the...
11) Embassytown
Author
Description
Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist on a distant planet populated by the Ariekei, sentient beings famed for their unique language, returns to Embassytown after many years of deep space exploration to find she has become a living simile in the Ariekei language even though she cannot speak it, and she is torn by competing loyalties when hostilities erupt between humans and aliens.
Author
Formats
Description
An alien ship rests over Water Island. For five years the people of the US Virgin Islands have lived with the Ynaa, a race of superadvanced aliens on a research mission they will not fully disclose. They are benevolent in many ways but meet any act of aggression with disproportional wrath. This has led to a strained relationship between the Ynaa and the local Virgin Islanders and a peace that cannot last. A year after the death of a young boy at the...
13) The hive
Author
Series
Second Formic War volume 2
Description
A second prequel to Ender's Game continues the sci-fi history of the Formic Wars and finds the warring nations and corporations of Earth struggling to set aside their differences to defend against an imminent alien invasion.
Author
Appears on these lists
Description
"While we live, the enemy shall fear us. Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity. They are what's left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a...
Author
Formats
Description
When a mysterious signal arrives from outer space, first seen as a symbol of hope, three people, forced to reckon with its aftermath, begin to feel the weight of past mistakes in order to move towards the future.
"A debut novel subverting a classic sci-fi trope set in gentrified Chicago, the tech boom corridors of Silicon Valley, and across the vastness of the cosmos. 'The Weightless World' follows a revolving cast of characters after a mysterious...
16) The swarm
Author
Series
Second Formic War volume 1
Description
The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces, and the Chinese army, but China has been devastated by the Formics' initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China struck fear into the other nations of the planet; that fear blossomed into drastic action when scientists determined that the single ship that wreaked such damage...
17) Exordia
Author
Formats
Description
"Anna Sinjari--refugee, survivor of genocide, disaffected office worker--has a close encounter that reveals universe-threatening stakes. Enter Ssrin, a many-headed serpent alien who is on the run from her own past. Ssrin and Anna are inexorably, dangerously drawn to each other...While humanity reels from disaster, Anna must join a small team of civilians, soldiers, and scientists to investigate a mysterious broadcast and unknowable horror. If they...
Author
Series
Old Man's War universe volume 6
Publisher
TOR, a Tom Doherty Associates book
Pub. Date
2015.
Description
"Humans expanded into space...only to find a universe populated with multiple alien species bent on their destruction. Thus was the Colonial Union formed, to help protect us from a hostile universe. The Colonial Union used the Earth and its excess population for colonists and soldiers. It was a good arrangement...for the Colonial Union. Then the Earth said: no more. Now the Colonial Union is living on borrowed time--a couple of decades at most, before...
Author
Series
Daniel X volume 1
Description
Fifteen-year-old Daniel has followed in his parents' footsteps as the Alien Hunter, exterminating beings on The List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma, but when he faces his first of the top ten outlaws, the very existence Earth and another planet are at stake.
Author
Formats
Description
A tale of first contact follows a range of characters as they question their place in the universe and what it means to be human when spaceships arrive at Earth and then depart just as suddenly.
When the spaceships arrive-- and then depart suddenly without a word-- it creates many forms of uncertainty on our planet. When his kids blithely ponder skinning people to see if they're aliens, Blaine begins to crack. Half a continent away, Heather watches...