These titles were recently added to the collection of Yakima Valley Libraries
As you wake, break the shell
Chambers, Becky, author.
Life on the resource-poor planet of Fortune is challenging, but for its inhabitants, it's home. For two of them, Signy and Cora, this home might no longer be enough. Signy is a brilliant but reclusive botanist who bio-prints medicine from her small plant shop, often bending the rules to help those the system leaves behind. Her life is filled with the green of her store, the warmth of her one elderly friend, and the quiet determination to help others without putting herself in danger. Cora is a rorqual pilot, one of the few with the unique ability to navigate the massive, living ships that connect the scattered settlements of their solar system. Her bond with her rorqual, Colibri, is profound--a connection that is both her greatest gift and a threat to her career. It is that threat--the "mindbleed," a dangerous side effect of her piloting--that brings her to Signy's shop, and her appearance puts Signy in the danger she so fears. But it's soon apparent it's not just about losing her license--this delicate balance between risk and trust has the potential to change everything for them.....
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Dark reading matter
Fforde, Jasper, author.
Ex-Literary Special Ops agent Thursday Next is embarking on her eighth and final fictional adventure, and she is well aware of the fact. The problem is, others are aware of it, too. Old foes and new are plotting a terrible revenge: to disrupt the narrative and make the last Thursday Next novel, Dark Reading Matter, not just unreadable but unpublishable. Thursday can’t let that happen, and needs to use all her guile and narrative trickery to unmask the antagonists. It won’t be easy. The Martians have broken out of their H. G. Wells novel and threaten both the real world and the BookWorld. Agents from a higher reality want unfettered access to the Dark Reading Matter, the realm where deleted books and unrealized literary ideas end up. A Gateway to Hell has opened up at Wantage’s Shakesmania, the nation’s second-worst Shakespeare theme park, and the cozy world of Enid Blyton has been hijacked by ultra-right-wing nationalists. With Reality Field Distortion experiments going haywire, a partially redacted donkey, a BookWorld on the brink of losing its imaginative energy to Big Tech and a murderous stamp collector with philaticide on their mind, Thursday has to navigate a tightrope of borderline unusable narrative devices to bring the series to a satisfying conclusion. It’s a tall order, but Thursday has several secret weapons: her own adaptability; her husband, Landen; a host of stalwart friends and ultimately the most loyal compatriots she can call upon—her readers.....
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Ply
Diaz, Hernan, 1973- author.
Centuries from now, at the dawn of a historical epoch filled with both uncertainty and promise, an orphan is adrift in a city on the brink of a great transformation. The state has been dismantled, and humans are reinventing social bonds and learning new ways to coexist with nature. Following a childhood defined by loss, survival, and found family, the orphan grows up to become a "pincher," someone who steals electricity from the grid to sell it on the black market. It's a high-risk life, one that brings her into a rich art and music scene where she powers underground concerts. It also leads her to a colossal scientific invention that could change the very fabric of reality.....
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Scion
Islington, James, 1981- author.
My job, when you think about it, isn't so different from a lot of people's. The more old-fashioned crowd do still get hung up on the 'killing people' part of it, I guess, but that's a them problem: it's been perfectly legal to take out lifers for ages. Besides, once ultrawealthy morons realised they had a way to live forever--limited resources be damned--there was only ever going to be one genuinely practical deterrent. So, sure, I have to deal with a ton of boring planning. Inconvenient hours. Some pretty awkward face-to-face interactions. And like most of us, I'm really only clocking in to try to crawl out from beneath my debts. But someone's got to do it. Luckily, my genetic compatibilities make me really, really good at doing it. Still. This next job...I don't know. It's something I haven't had to deal with in years. Kind of the opposite of my regular duties. Strange, that it got thrown my way. I'm sure it'll all go totally fine though.....
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Foundling Fathers
Elison, Meg, author.
The trouble starts when a curious young man finds a smartphone in his privy. The problem is, it's supposed to be the year 1750. The Antediluvian Society -- a shadowy cabal of right-wing billionaires -- is fed up with a country they cannot fully control or understand. So they have done what any reasonable American patriots would do: Clone the Founding Fathers and raise them in secrecy. The plan, unbeknownst to the boys, is for them to restore America to its 'original glory.' Ben takes his technological discovery to his brothers, Thomas, John, and George. The boys have been raised on an isolated island plantation by Mary Libertas, a firm but kind woman, and Jeff Hancock, their de facto father. But the idyllic life is far too dull for young men. The boys have been chafing at the restrictions upon them (especially Tom, who has impregnated yet another of the servants). Hancock is complaining to the Society that it's well past the time to tell the boys where they come from and what they must do. Unfortunately for their keepers, the young men now have a phone... and many other notions. Seamlessly combining science fiction and history with sharp, witty commentary, Meg Elison has once again shown why she is one of speculative fiction's most exciting voices.....
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Voyagers : a novel
Charlton, Meg, author.
When the Signal - a mysterious transmission pulsing from the edge of the solar system - arrives, the world changes overnight. Planes are grounded, satellites fail, and speculation abounds. With many believing it could be first contact with extraterrestrial life, humanity holds its breath. But for Alex, a thirtysomething lawyer who's spent years distancing himself from the unexplainable, the Signal feels deeply personal - the opening of an old wound. Decades ago, Alex and a girl named Ana both vanished for thirty-six hours while on vacation in Palm Springs. When they returned, dazed but unharmed, the six-year-olds' account of the experience had all the hallmarks of an alien abduction. The media frenzy that followed made them famous, and the long months of child stardom, of talk shows and sitcom cameos, forged a seemingly unbreakable bond between them - until the mystery behind their disappearance began to tear them apart. Now, with the world on edge and the Signal growing stronger, Alex is drawn back to the one person who might have answers. Ana - now a professional advocate for experiencers of extraterrestrial contact - is leading a retreat near Palm Springs, a stone's throw from the site of their childhood disappearance. As the former best friends tentatively reunite, what starts as a quest to confront the reality of their original experience becomes a larger reckoning with friendship, faith, family, and truth itself - what it means to see the stories we tell ourselves for what they really are.....
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The sixth nik
Kraus, Daniel, 1975- author.
"Deep into space, far past the triworld outposts, beyond range of the lethal trollbot internet, soars The Sickness: a ship woven from biomatter and capable of reacting to every need of its human crew. Sisilla, a nine-year-old cultist with a brain enhanced by arcane tech known as 'niks,' has boarded to investigate the enigma of Fém -- a plague-riddled planet that has abruptly gone rogue. The mysterious crew includes a faceless assassin, a beautiful engineer jigsawed by plastic surgery, a peyote-addicted medic, and -- most lethal of all -- a rugged, NonModded captain with a score to settle with Sisilla. Other dangers abound. A hacked robot begins to believe Sisilla is its daughter. The Sickness itself is mutating, possibly even pregnant. And the secret of Fém is more horrific than anyone could have imagined. To survive, Sisilla will need to forsake her predetermined fate and embrace the unknown." -- Front jacket flap.....
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There is no antimemetics division : a novel
qntm (Author of science fiction), author.
Provided by publisher....
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Moss'd in space
Thorne, Rebecca, 1991- author.
"Torian Razner finally bought a starship, and contrary to Amelia's assessment, it was not 'a meteoric sign of stupidity.' Sure, the alien starship may have been abandoned for a century, and it may be covered in moss now... but it's Torian's ticket to freedom, regardless of what her ex... ah, captain... said. Except Torian's first flight reveals a surprise passenger: the moss is actually an organic computer with a snarky attitude and serious abandonment issues. The target of its loathing? The immortal alien who built it (and then parked the starship, with Moss inside, and forgot about it). The same alien who just found Torian and accused her of "stealing" the ship. It's entirely possible that Amelia was right about this meteoric stupidity"-- Provided by publisher.....
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Dead but dreaming of electric sheep : a novel
Tremblay, Paul, author.
Meet Julia Flang, a twenty-something former professional gamer, living with her retired uncle, and working two jobs she doesn't like. Out of the blue, her estranged mother, a CFO for one of the world's largest tech companies, offers her a temp job with a payday Julia can't refuse. One sham interview later, she's offered the job: to chaperone a man in a vegetative state from California to the East Coast. But he's not dead dead: he has an AI mind implanted in his head. Meet a middle-aged man who wakes within a disorienting hellscape filled with monstrous grotesqueries. Worse than the fluid, morphing reality in which he's trapped, he has no memory of who he is. He certainly doesn't remember getting the rabbit tattoo on his arm. He only knows that he must find a certain person. Who? He can't remember. Using a cell phone modeled after a video game controller, Julia fumblingly navigates the man she calls 'Bernie' from the company campus and onto planes and through one of the largest airports in America. All the while, the man endures an ever-changing and worsening nightmare that offers clues as to who he was--and who he must track down. And as their two lives intertwine, Julia and Bernie become unlikely allies and fugitives on a collision course with reality.....
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Green City wars
Tchaikovsky, Adrian.
In the solar cities of the future, the humans relax in the sun and the animals work in the shadows. Genetically engineered Little Helpers, serving humanity―unseen, unheard. Meet Skotch. Raccoon, PI―yours for a few buttons as long as the job isn't too illegal, whatever that means. A mouse has gone missing. Normally this wouldn't raise any hackles, nor any alarms, but this mouse has something that everyone seems to want, though nobody appears particularly eager to say what that something is. The fee is good―perhaps too good. Certainly not something Skotch can easily turn down. If only Skotch can work out where the mouse is hiding, what he’s hiding, and why his secrets are upsetting a lot of animals caught up in the Green City wars.....
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Babylon, South Dakota
Lin, Tom, 1996- author.
When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara. But when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu's farmland and begin building a missile silo, the inexplicable starts to occur: Mara can commune with the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America's nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of power and empire. In the years and generations that follow, increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm. ....
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Sublimation
Kim, Isabel J., author.
The border cuts you in two... When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind, an instance. One person enters their new country; the other stays trapped at home. Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten years old and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather died and her Korean instance called her home for the funeral. She doesn't know that Soyoung plans to steal her body and her life. How far would you go to live the choice you didn't make?....
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Homebound : a novel
Elan, Portia, author.
In a dazzling ode to human inventiveness and desire for meaning, four lives are entangled across time by one unfinished story, saved to a floppy disk in the 1980s and destined to ripple across the centuries... 1983. Becks is nineteen, blasting her Walkman, and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle, and the only person who understood her, is dead. Luckily, he left her a half-finished video game to complete?one last collaboration to find her way out of loneliness... 2078. Dr. Portman is working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and robotics, wrestling with her responsibility to Earth's precarious future. But increasingly, it seems the results of her work may transcend everything she believed to be possible... 2586. After decades of life on the sea, Yesiko knows a scavenger's work is rife with moral compromise. Yet when a long-lost piece of technology walks aboard her ship, she is set on a path toward a sacrifice even she may be unwilling to make. Linking these women across the centuries is a chain reaction of love, longing, and creativity that reveals our deep interconnectedness. Clear-eyed and hopeful, Homebound imagines how future generations will find meaning in the things we leave behind.....
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The last contract of Isako
Lee, Fonda, author.
LIVE BY THE CODE. DIE BY THE KNIFE... Isako is a legendary swordswoman, but every legend must come to an end. When her long-time client unexpectedly retires, she plans to follow ? to walk out into the frozen wasteland of their planet with her head held high and her family enriched by her death. But when she's offered a final mission, she can't refuse, especially when she realizes who lies at the center of it all: Martim, her last ? and worst ? apprentice, who's somehow made his way to the top. As she's thrust into a world of corporate espionage and shadowy secrets, what she uncovers could forever change humanity's existence among the stars. Set in a world where money trumps loyalty, the elite have the power to extend life or end it, and one woman in the twilight of her calling must decide what's ultimately worth living ? or dying ? for.....
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