Deschutes Public Library

A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space, its destination unknown and its purpose a mystery. One man wakes up wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger. All he has are questions--Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to the woman he loved? What happened to Hull 03?

To prove that the massive symbionts, named Leviathans, that inhabit Jupiter's atmosphere possess intelligence, physicist Grant Archer readies a deep-pressure manned probe for immersion in the giant planet's deadly cloud cover. Equally anxious to thwart his attempt, millionaire Katherine Westfall seeks to outmaneuver Archer in her bid for the top spot in the International Astronautical Authority (IAA) by any means possible--including murder.

Global warming has transformed the Earth and the Arctic ice cap has all but melted. The international community is racing to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean. The two founders of the Gaia Corporation have come up with a plan to roll back global warming. They plan to terraform Earth to save it from itself--but in doing so, they may have created a superweapon. Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the underfunded United Nations Polar Guard. She's intent on capturing a smuggled nuclear weapon that has made it into the Arctic Circle. Now she finds herself caught up in a plot by a cabal of military agencies and corporations who want the Gaia Corporation stopped. When Gaua Corp loses control of their superweapon, it will be Anika who has to decide the future of the world.

When a Kibou-daini cryocorp--an immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown future--attempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran Empire, Emperor Gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter Miles Vorkosigan to check it out.

"The Alliance woke Captain John "Black Jack" Geary from cryogenic sleep to take command of the fleet in the century-long conflict against the Syndicate Worlds. Now Admiral Geary's victory has earned him the adoration of the people--and the enmity of politicians convinced that a living hero can be a very inconvenient thing. The war may be over, but Geary and his newly christened First Fleet have been ordered back into action to investigate the aliens occupying the far side of Syndic space and to determine how much of a threat they represent to the Alliance. And while the Syndic Worlds are no longer united, individually they may be more dangerous than ever before. Geary knows that members of the military high command and the government question his loyalty to the Alliance and fear his staging a coup--so he can't help but wonder if the fleet is being deliberately sent on a suicide mission.."-- Provided by publisher.

"Ready Player One takes place in the not-so-distant future--the world has turned into a very bleak place, but luckily there is OASIS, a virtual reality world that is a vast online utopia. People can plug into OASIS to play, go to school, earn money, and even meet other people (or at least they can meet their avatars), and for protagonist Wade Watts it certainly beats passing the time in his grim, poverty-stricken real life. Along with millions of other world-wide citizens, Wade dreams of finding three keys left behind by James Halliday, the now-deceased creator of OASIS and the richest man to have ever lived. The keys are rumored to be hidden inside OASIS, and whoever finds them will inherit Halliday's fortune. But Halliday has not made it easy. And there are real dangers in this virtual world. Stuffed to the gills with action, puzzles, nerdy romance, and 80s nostalgia, this high energy cyber-quest will make geeks everywhere feel like they were separated at birth from author Ernest Cline."--Chris Schluep, Amazon Best Book of the Month

When Captain Jim Holden's ice miner stumbles across a derelict, abandoned ship, he uncovers a secret that threatens to throw the entire system into war. Attacked by a stealth ship belonging to the Mars fleet, Holden must find a way to uncover the motives behind the attack, stop a war and find the truth behind a vast conspiracy that threatens the entire human race.

Many years have passed since civilization's brush with apocalypse. The world's greatest threats have all been silenced. There is no anger, no hatred, no war. There is only perfect peace... and fear. But a terrible secret has been closely guarded for centuries: Every single soul walking the earth, though in appearance totally normal, is actually dead, long ago genetically stripped of true humanity. Fleeing pursuit, with only moments to live, a young man named Rom stumbles into possession of a vial of blood and a piece of cryptic writing. When consumed, the blood will bring him back to life. When decoded, the message will lead him on a perilous journey that will require him to abandon everything he has ever known and awaken humanity to the transforming power of true life and love. But the blood will also resurrect hatred, ambition, and greed.

"In the near future, humankind has mastered the arts of peace, tolerance, and acceptance. At least, that's what we claim."--P. [4] of cover.

"The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we had created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives--the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will [come] out, even if it kills them."--P. [4] of cover.

Araminta becomes the target of a galaxywide search by a government agent seeking to prevent the pilgrimage of a cult into the heart of the Void, while Edeard, the Waterwalker, finds himself faced with powerful new enemies.

On a colonized planet called Hellhole, defeated and exiled rebel General Tiber Adolphus continues his honorable opposition to the political scheming and selfish machinations of the Crown Jewel worlds and grandmotherly Diadem Michella Duchenet. Adolphus and his companions work in secret to undermine the royal space travel monopoly and form a coalition of Deep Zone planets.

Marketing manager Katherine "Kitty" Katt steps into the middle of a domestic dispute, but things get ugly when the man turns into a winged monster and goes on a killing spree. In the middle of the chaos a handsome hunk named Jeff Martini appears, sent by the "agency" to perform crowd control. He's Kitty's kind of guy, no matter what planet he's from.

"Set in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event. Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. Silas lives and breathes genetics; his designs have led the United States to the gold in every previous event. But the other countries are catching up. Now, desperate for an edge in the upcoming Games, Silas's boss engages an experimental supercomputer to design the genetic code for a gladiator that cannot be beaten. The result is a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. Not even Silas, with all his genius and experience, can understand the horror he had a hand in making. And no one, he fears, can anticipate the consequences of entrusting the act of creation to a computer's cold logic. Now Silas races to understand what the computer has wrought, aided by a beautiful xenobiologist, Vidonia Joao. Yet as the fast-growing gladiator demonstrates preternatural strength, speed, and--most disquietingly--intelligence, Silas and Vidonia find their scientific curiosity giving way to

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.

Seven days, six characters, three interconnected story strands, one central common core--the eponymous dervish house, a character in itself--that pins all these players together in a weave of intrigue, conflict, drama and a ticking clock of a thriller.

In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.

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.

Imprisoned for life aboard a zeppelin that floats high above a fantastic metropolis, the greeting-card writer Harold Winslow pens his memoirs. His only companions are the disembodied voice of Miranda Taligent, the only woman he has ever loved, and the cryogenically frozen body of her father Prospero, the genius and industrial magnate who drove her insane.

Broken free from a nightmarish distant-future prison by a mysterious woman who offers him his life back if he will complete the ultimate heist he left unfinished, con man Jean le Flambeur is pursued in worlds where people communicate through shared memories.

"The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future. The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them"-- Provided by publisher.

America, 2036. Powerful magnate Hiroshi Nakamura needs ex-cop Nick Bottom's services, and, in particular, his memories. As head of the original investigation into the murder of Nakamura's son, Bottom's flashbacks hold the key to solving what was the toughest case of his career. But as Nick delves deeper, the harder it becomes to trust those around him. And when he uncovers a connection to his wife's death, it is not only Hiroshi Nakamura who wants answers.

When his own high-tech start up turns into a Fortune 500 computer gaming group, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa family who has amassed an illegal fortune, finds the line between fantasy and reality becoming blurred when a virtual war for dominance is triggered.

Recently unemployed journalist Mickey Wade lucked into a rent-free apartment--his sick grandfather's place. The only problem: It's in the lousy neighborhood where Mickey grew up. The one he was so desperate to escape. Just when he thinks he's reached rock bottom, Mickey wakes up in the past. Literally. At first he thinks it's a dream, but as he digs deeper into the past, serarching for answers about the grandfather he hardly knows, Mickey meets the twelve-year-old kid who lives in the apartment below. The kid who will grow up to someday murder Mickey's father.

A master sergeant prowling the back country of the Balkans and a firearms instructor and former Marine find themselves at the center of a growing network of resistance against an invading force of alien, carnivorous Shongari intent on annihilating the human race.

When a time-travel lab suddenly cancels assignments for no apparent reason and switches around everyone's schedules, time-traveling historians Michael, Merope, and Polly find themselves in World War II, facing air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history--to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control.

When three Oxford historians become unexpectedly trapped in 1940, they struggle not only to find their way home but to survive as Hitler's bombers attempt to pummel London into submission. Meanwhile, in 2060 Oxford, the historians' supervisor and seventeen-year-old Colin Templer are engaged in a frantic and seemingly impossible struggle to find them.

Two decades into the future humans are battling for their very survival when a powerful AI computer goes rogue, and all the machines on earth rebel against their human controllers.