A Memory Called Empire

Arkady Martine

Mahit Dzmare is abruptly ordered to report for duty as the new ambassador to the Teixcalaan empire—with no word as to what might have happened to her predecessor.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Susanna Clarke

When young Jonathan Strange sets it upon himself to become a magician, he ends up as Mr. Norrell’s only pupil—but it’s a dry sort of magic Norrell preaches, absent any of the mystery or terror of the old days.

Down Girl

Kate Manne

Kate Manne’s core premise is this: sexism is a set of beliefs that positions women as inferior to men, while misogyny is the system that enforces and polices women’s subordination.

The Book of Lamps and Banners

Elizabeth Hand

Cass Neary needs to get home, but a string of suspicious deaths has accumulated behind her, and she isn’t sure where is safe.

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

“I was in a house with many rooms. The sea sweeps through the house. Sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved.”

Staying with the Trouble

Donna Haraway

“Staying with the trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future,” declares Donna Haraway in the opening paragraph of this astonishing book.

What Can a Body Do?

Sara Hendren

Among the core premises of this provocative and deeply humane book is this: disability is in part a product of the intersection of a body and the built world, where the latter often presumes there is only one way a body can be.

Alone

Richard E. Byrd

In 1934, Richard Byrd—famous for a previous expedition to the Antarctic—decided to over winter on the ice near the South Pole, alone.

Vesper Flights

Helen Macdonald

The titular essay in this collection concerns the flight of swifts: twice a day, at twilight, they fly high up into the sky, a movement Macdonald describes as both a devotion and a kind of planning.

The Memory Police

Yoko Ogawa

Objects are disappearing: not the things themselves, although that is soon to follow, but the memory of them, the recognition and understanding of what they are and have been.

Harrow the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir

In this sequel to the completely badass Gideon the Ninth, Harrow has become an immortal lyctor by consuming Gideon’s soul. Or has she?

The Invincible

Stanislaw Lem

Arriving on a distant planet in search of a sister ship that has disappeared, the crew of The Invincible discover a new form of life: tiny, autonomous robots that seem to have evolved into expert killing machines.

Beyond Survival

Ejeris Dixon & Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Featuring essays and interviews from grassroots activists and practitioners of transformative justice, this collection offers clear, practical, and brave advice about how to respond to violence and crises in your community.

Terra Nullius

Claire G. Coleman

In Australia, a young boy escapes from the settler-run school where he and other children are trained for a life of enslavement.

Memoir of a Race Traitor

Mab Segrest

“I have written this treatise on the souls of white folks with an urgency that it be exemplary, a template into which white readers can read themselves,” begins Mab Segrest, in this rare and fearless book.

Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel

Decades after a pandemic has ravaged the planet, a roving group of actors and musicians called The Symphony return to a small town and find that things are not as they were before.

The End of Policing

Alex S. Vitale

A clear and thorough indictment of every part of the institution that is policing—and an urgent call to end it.

The Shadow King

Maaza Mengiste

Set in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, The Shadow King centers Hirut, an orphan living as a servant in the home of Kidane, and his wife, Aster.

A Paradise Built in Hell

Rebecca Solnit

Starting with the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, Solnit tours through one disaster after another, including the Halifax explosion, Mexico City’s earthquake, 9/11 in New York, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

The City We Became

N. K. Jemisin

This latest tome from N. K. Jemisin tells the story of New York—specifically, of the six people who must become the city of New York in order to save themselves and their city from destruction.