science fiction

The Membranes

Best Translated Book of 2021, a Reviewer's Choice Best Book of 2021, & a Book of the Year 2021 selection

“An extraordinary novella . . . at last available in English in a brilliant translation by Ari Larissa Heinrich. At just 134 pages, its scope is dazzling. Now, from the vantage point of the future, its playful and unsettling insights into digital saturation, the traps of consciousness and labor, and the fugitive fabulations of identity and the self, have only grown more profound.” (The Paris Review Daily)

It is the late 21st century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.

First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes—heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies—into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader’s own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation brings Chi’s hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

“[T]his captivating novel is rich and rewarding.” ―Publishers Weekly

”A mind-blowing book . . . I have NEVER read anything like it.” ―Literary Infatuation

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Funventions

Included with Kindle Unlimited

Written by one of the most important voices of modern Ecuadorian literature. “If you like Borges, Casares, and Cortasar, buy it with your eyes closed!” —Xenia Germeni

While every year there appear scientific and technological advances to puzzle and dazzle us, people keep on loving one another, feeling fear, thinking, searching, working, walking the paths of life. The more things change, the more they stay the same: it's this paradox that Ubidia evokes so well in these stories. He fuses exotic themes, such as edible books, miniature humans proliferating in laboratories, and a crystal city with the quotidian reality of contemporary Latin America. Mixing the actual and the imaginary, he takes us beyond the limits of science and technology and into the labyrinths of the human soul.

Entertaining and profound. In each of these beautiful stories, Ubidia insists that despite its flights of fancy—including art and science—the human mind cannot go far beyond its own fears, desires, and uncertainties.

“Each story, a world. My favorite storyteller of all time.” —Stef León

“Beautifully written. The author has the gift of building exquisite phrases for the delight of the reader…Abdon uses fantasy as an excuse to explore human nature. This is the type of fantasy that succeeds in delivering not only stories to entertain, but also reflections for the reader on key matters about our humanity.” —Isidro

“Abdon Ubidia is regarded in Latin America and elsewhere as one of the most representative and relevant voices of modern Ecuadorian literature.” —Ecuador Fiction

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The Wall

While vacationing in a hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains, a middle-aged woman awakens one morning to find herself separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall. With a cat, a dog, and a cow as her sole companions, she learns how to survive and cope with her loneliness.

Allegorical yet deeply personal and absorbing, The Wall is at once a critique of modern civilization, a nuanced and loving portrait of a relationship between a woman and her animals, a thrilling survival story, a Cold War-era dystopian adventure, and a truly singular feminist classic.

“Haushofer’s thought-provoking masterpiece stands as a touchstone for popular literary post-apocalypses by such authors as Emily St. John Mandel and Ling Ma and is certain to be a life-changing read for many.” —Library Journal

”A cult classic!” —The New Yorker

''The minimalist plot is enhanced by rich description and wise insight, and the translation succeeds in capturing the author's fluid, lyrical style. Recommended for general readers. —Library Journal

A haunting feminist sci-fi masterpiece and international bestseller that is “as absorbing as Robinson Crusoe” —Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize winner

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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Migrations

Amazon Editors' Pick for Best Book of the Year in Fiction

Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, traveling ever further from shore and safety. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool—a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime—it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds. When Franny's dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption?

Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and galvanizing, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is an ode to a disappearing world and a breathtaking page-turner about the possibility of hope against all odds.

“Visceral and haunting” (NY Times Book Review) · “Hopeful” (Washington Post) · “Powerful” (Los Angeles Times) · “Thrilling” (TIME) · “Tantalizingly beautiful” (Elle) · “Suspenseful, atmospheric” (Vogue) · “Aching and poignant" (Guardian) · “Gripping” (The Economist)

“At times devastating and, at others, surprisingly, undeniably hopeful...Brimming with stunning imagery and raw emotion, Migrations is the incredible story of personal redemption, self-forgiveness and hope for the future in the face of a world on the brink of collapse.” —Shelf Awareness

Note: Great on audio!

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The Lost Children of Paradise

A self-driving cargo container crashes in rural Pakistan. Inside are 46 kidnapped street children. A traditional who-done-it mystery, set against the unique backdrop of a futuristic Pakistan with two great main characters in a fun, engrossing read…

As a grizzled, semi-retired policewala (police officer) living in rural twenty-second century Pakistan, Officer Nawaz had long ago substituted any notions of heroism with a pretty impressive drinking habit. But when he comes across a crashed cargo container near his hometown carrying kidnapped street children, curiosity drives him to investigate. Fate pairs him up with Adil Khan, a young, idealistic, and rather annoying space cadet from the global Confederation. While most of the developed world looks to the stars, Pakistan finds itself embroiled in age-old problems. The two officers must face challenges at once unique and timeless in order to untangle the mystery of the kidnapped container children.

“What a gem! One rarely encounters a genuinely strong book on [US] Kindle Unlimited. This is one of them. The narrative, the characters, the plot, and the setting create a beautifully realized world that is both recognizable and strange. This is imaginative fiction at its best!” —Chandos

“Sparkling character development and world building—noir from a Pakistan several centuries ahead. Love the dialogue, love the plot.” —Dr. Bruce

“A refreshingly unique premise with excellent pacing. A thoughtful imagining of the Third World in the future.” —Hammond

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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Stars Uncharted

In this rip-roaring space opera, a ragtag band of explorers are out to make the biggest score in the galaxy.

On this space jump, no one is who they seem . . .

Captain Hammond Roystan is a simple cargo runner who has stumbled across the find of a lifetime: the Hassim, a disabled exploration ship–and its valuable record of unexplored worlds.

His junior engineer, Josune Arriola, said her last assignment was in the uncharted rim. But she is decked out in high-level bioware that belies her humble backstory.

A renowned body-modification artist, Nika Rik Terri has run afoul of clients who will not take no for an answer. She has to flee off-world, and she is dragging along a rookie modder, who seems all too experienced in weapons and war.

Together, this mismatched crew will end up on one ship, hurtling through the lawless reaches of deep space with Roystan at the helm. Trailed by nefarious company men, they will race to find the most famous lost world of all–and riches beyond their wildest dreams.

“A fun adventure novel with an irresistible ragtag crew.” —The Washington Post

“An absorbing space opera, in the tradition of The Expanse and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.” —Charles Stross, award-winning author

“[A] brilliant female-driven tale…Readers of Asimov, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga, or Anne McCaffey’s Pern series will enjoy this story.” —Booklist (starred review)

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Terms of Enlistment

The year is 2108 and the Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world . . . or you can join the service.

With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth. But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that the good food and decent health care come at a steep price . . . and that the settled galaxy holds far greater dangers than military bureaucrats or the gangs that rule the slums.

“There is nobody who does [military SF] better than Marko Kloos. His Frontlines series is a worthy successor to such classics as Starship Troopers, The Forever War, and We All Died at Breakaway Station.” —George R. R. Martin

“Military science fiction is tricky because it either intends to lampoon the military industrial complex or paints it in such a way that you must really have to love guns to enjoy the work. Terms of Enlistment walks that fine line by showing a world where the military is one of the few viable options off a shattered Earth and intermixes it with a knowledge of military tactics and weapons that doesn’t turn off the casual reader.” —Buzzfeed

“Much like Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and its sequels, Terms of Enlistment and Lines of Departure are combat-grade military SF, and should come with an addiction warning.” —io9

“Frontlines is earnest, optimistic, and fun, even as it deals with subject matter that’s intrinsically grim. It’s a story that strikes the perfect balance between escapism and serious reflection, and it’s the perfect military sci-fi series to escape into for a week or two.” —The Verge

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Before the Coffee Gets Cold

A quirky, sigh-inducingly satisfying read that is now an international bestseller

If you could go back, who would you want to meet?

In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.

Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.

Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?

“An affecting, deeply immersive journey into the desire to hold onto the past. This wondrous tale will move readers.” —Publishers Weekly

“Perfect for anyone who wants to feel connected right now.” —Book Reporter

Note: We’ve also found the book to be great on audio.

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All Our Wrong Todays

Winner of le Prix Bob-Morane (a French sci-fi literary award) for best international novel

You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we’d have? Well, it happened. In 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed . . . because it wasn’t necessary.

Except Tom Barren just can’t seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that’s before his life gets turned upside-down. Blindsided and heartbroken by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland.

But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and—maybe, just maybe—his soul mate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? Tom’s search for the answer takes him across countries, continents, and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be. 

“Entertainingly mixes thrills and humor.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Belongs in a burgeoning genre of books like Andy Weir’s The Martian that wrap self-deprecating humor around unabashedly nerdy science...Refreshing.” —GQ

“A thrilling tale of time travel and alternate timelines with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity’s future.” —Andy Weir, bestselling author of The Martian

“Instantly engaging.…A timeless, if mind-bending, story about the journeys we take, populated by friends, family, lovers, and others, that show us who we might be, could be—and maybe never should be—that eventually leads us to who we are.”—USA Today

“On top of this brilliant philosophical premise of parallel versions of one’s life and the people in it—of what might have been had history unfolded different—Mastai’s language is also rife with an infectious humor you won’t be able to stop reading.”—Harper’s Bazaar

Note: Great on audio too.

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Spaceman of Bohemia

“A love song to Prague....Funny, humane and oddly down-to-earth in ways that its scenario cannot possibly convey. With its lessons in Czech history/culture and interplanetary shenanigans, this zany satirical debut is bursting at the seams and should win many fans.” (Guardian)

Orphaned as a boy, raised in the Czech countryside by his doting grandparents, Jakub Prochvozka has risen from small-time scientist to become the country's first astronaut. When a dangerous solo space mission offers him both the chance at heroism he's dreamt of, and a way to atone for his father's sins as a Communist informer, he ventures boldly into the vast unknown. But in so doing, he leaves behind his devoted wife, Lenka, whose love, he realizes too late, he has sacrificed on the altar of his ambitions.

Alone in deep space, Jakub discovers a possibly imaginary giant alien spider, who becomes his unlikely companion. Over philosophical conversations about the nature of love, life and death, and the deliciousness of bacon, the pair form an intense and emotional bond. Will it be enough to see Jakub through a clash with secret Russian rivals and return him safely to Earth?

Rich with warmth and suspense and surprise, Spaceman of Bohemia is an exuberant delight from start to finish. Very seldom has a novel this profound taken readers on a journey of such boundless entertainment and sheer fun.

”In Kalfar's zany novel . . . the spaceman, the alien, and the rest of the book's extravagant conceptual furniture are merely metaphors for the human-scale issues that are its real concerns, in particular the collapse of Jakub's marriage. That's not to say Kalfar hasn't done his research. There are lovingly detailed passages on life in zero gravity, but all the whizzy space business is harnessed to the basic question of what it means to leave and whether it's possible to come back. The alien acts as a Proustian trigger for Jakub's memories . . . But for all the strangeness of outer space, it is the writing about his home, the place to which he longs to return and perhaps never can, that beats strongest in this wry, melancholy book.” —NY Times Book Review

”The best, most enjoyably heartbreaking, most fun book you'll read this year. On the surface, you'll see affinities with Gary Shteyngart, with The Martian, with Kelly Link. But Jaroslav Kalfar's voice is entirely his own. I beg you: take this strange, hilarious, profound, life-affirming trip into literary outer space.” —Library Journal

(A special thank you to book club member, Elke Richelsen for the suggestion.)

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Future Home of the Living God

[As a holiday present to the club, we decided to read an indigenous author from the North America region as there has been a great deal of excitement re: these authors.]

After voting, the following novel was chosen, a book written by a member of the Turtle Mountain Band, a tribe of the Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwe and Chippewa):

Louise Erdrich, the NY Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author paints a startling portrait

The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself affecting every living creature on earth while woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. 32-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.

Though she wants to tell her parents, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.

There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of informants and keep her baby safe.

Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time.

“Masterful…a breakout work of speculative fiction…enters the realm of The Handmaid’s Tale…A suspenseful, profoundly provoking novel of life’s vulnerability and insistence…with a bold theme, searing social critique, and high-adrenaline action.” —Booklist

“Smart and thrilling…Erdrich’s storytelling is seductive.” —Vanity Fair

(A special thank you to book club member, Julie Jacobs for the suggestion.)

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Zoo City

Multi-award winner including the Arthur C. Clarke Award & Publisher's Weekly Best of the Year Sci Fi & Fantasy among others

A unique cyberpunk/urban fantasy mash-up set in an alt Johannesburg where murderers and other criminals have magical animals mystically bonded to them for their crimes.

Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit, and a talent for finding lost things. When a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, Zinzi’s forced to take on her least favorite kind of job—missing persons.

Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a teenybop pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions live in the shadow of hell’s undertow. Instead, it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she’ll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives including her own.

“This book is a must read for lovers of South African fiction and urban fantasy alike. It is edgy and pacey. Like a rollercoaster ride, it sweeps you up, spins you around, turns you upside down and dumps you out on the other end, heady and breathless and yearning for more.” —Exclus1ves

"At times, the witty and lyrical prose is sheer magic, the story captivating and the characters exotic, cruel and beautiful while the backdrop of Johannesburg seethes with hidden, lurking dangers around every corner, Zoo City is quite simply captivating.” —SciFi & Fantasy Books

"Beukes’s future city is as spiky, distinctive and material a place as any cyberpunkopolis, and quit a bit fresher. The narrative is brisk and well turned, but the great achievement here is tonal: atmospheric, smart and memorable work.” —Locus

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Moxyland

Lauren Beukes’s frighteningly persuasive, high-tech fable follows four narrators living in a dystopian near-future.

Kendra, an art-school dropout, brands herself for a nanotech marketing program. Lerato, an ambitious AIDS baby, plots to defect from her corporate employers. Tendeka, a hot-headed activist, is becoming increasingly rabid. Toby, a roguish blogger, discovers that the video games he plays for cash are much more than they seem.

On a collision course that will rewire their lives, these characters crackle with bold and infectious ideas, connecting a ruthless corporate-apartheid government with video games, biotech attack dogs, slippery online identities, a township soccer school, shocking cell phones, addictive branding, and genetically modified art. Taking hedonistic trends in society to their ultimate conclusions, Lauren Beukes spins a tale of a utopia gone wrong, satirically undermining the idea of progress as society’s white knight.

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Obsidian Worlds

Jason Werbeloff’s short stories have been downloaded over 50,000 times. Obsidian Worlds brings together his 11 best-selling sci-fi shorts into a mind-bending philosophical anthology.

In Your Averaged Joe, a man’s headache is large enough to hold the multiverse. Q46F is an obsessive-compulsive android who finds love in a zombie-embroiled apocalypse. The end of the world isn’t all that bad – The Experience Machine will fulfill your every desire (and some you hadn’t considered). A sex bot dares to dream of freedom in Dinner with Flexi. But mind what you eat, because The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost. Don’t fret though: The Cryo Killer guarantees that your death will be painless, or your money back when you’re thawed. Unless, that is, you’re The Man with Two Legs.

Plug into Obsidian Worlds for these and other immersive stories, including the hilarious Time-Traveling Chicken Sexer.

Your brain will never be the same again.

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Panic in Paris

“It all begins innocently enough when the corpse of a London boxer is discovered at sunrise on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. But the man was reportedly seen in London only a couple of hours earlier...

A great English detective and France's leading investigative reporter team up to solve a baffling mystery that will ultimately take them to a network of vast caverns under Paris inhabited by prehistoric monsters, waiting to be released…

Jules Lermina's Panic in Paris (1910) combines the tradition of utopian fiction with both the scientific advances of the 19th century and the pseudoscientific trappings of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race (1871).

It also features some intriguing anticipations of two key works by Arthur Conan Doyle, prefiguring both The Lost World (1912) and The Poison Belt (1913). This volume also includes Lermina's classic vampire novella, The Elixir of Life (1890).”

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Voyage to Venus

“Published the same year as Jules Verne's classic From the Earth to the Moon and Henri de Parville's An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars, Achille Eyraud's Voyage to Venus (1865) was the first novel to describe an interplanetary rocket-powered spaceship.

Eyraud supports his design with an elaborate (but ultimately flawed) pseudo-scientific argument and describes its cosmic voyage in a logical manner. Once on Venus, his protagonists discover a utopian society in which the sexes are equal and solar-powered robots toil in the fields.

Voyage to Venus has often been mentioned in many histories of space travel and science fiction, although the difficulty of obtaining the original text until now meant that few have read it.

This ground-breaking work is at last available in English in its first annotated translation by award-winning author Brian Stableford.”

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Ortog

“These two classic French fantasy novels, written in 1960 and 1969, star Knight-Navigator Dal Ortog of Galankar who lives on a 50th century Earth where space travel cohexists with a medieval society.

First, Ortog is sent by Sopharch Karella to the far reaches of space to find a cure for the slow death that is killing humanity after a devastating interplanetary war. Ortog returns with a cure, but too late to save his love, Karella's daughter, Kalla.

In the sequel, Ortog and his friend, Zoltan Charles Henderson de Nancy, embark on a quest through the dimensions of Death to find Kalla's soul and bring her back to Earth.

’Kurt Steiner’ is the pseudonym of André Ruellan, one of France's best-known science fiction and horror writers, as well as one of its most distinguished film writers. Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 60 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books.”

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The Mote in Time's Eye

“20,000 years from now, a space ship from the human colonies of the Lesser Magellanic Clouds accidentally falls into a time trap set up by two unimaginably powerful rival empires from millions of years in the future. The ship is thrown back 200 million years into the past. Will its Captain, the heroic Varun Shangrin, succeed in returning to their own time? And how did the accident affect the time war between the two shadowy cosmic combatants?

Gérard Klein is a distinguished economist and one of France's best known science fiction writers. He also edited the prestigious science fiction imprint Ailleurs et Demain for 40 years. This new edition of this classic SF novel from 1965 also includes four short stories translated by SF Grand Master Damon Knight, and an introduction and bibliography by Jean-Marc Lofficier.”

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Phaedra

“Wake the living Galleons at your peril…

The Elder Race once ruled the entire Alastor cluster. Fierce predators, they tore suns from the sky, leaving the worlds of their enemies to freeze in the dark. Now only the Galleons are left: living ships that sail the world river which girds Phaedra: Alastor 824.

After the death of his father, Gunnar arrives on that ancient world, trying to find a new home. Having two girlfriends sounds like a good start, but Lavoine is the deeply tricky daughter of the last Voodoo queen, and Semele a fierce huntress who has sworn never to kiss a boy until she Walks with the Galleons. And now Lavoine is trying to wake up the Galleons and bring back the Elders.

On the Paladins of Vance label, Spatterlight publishes original works by authors who have given their own imagination free rein in the many wonderful worlds of the Grandmaster of fantasy & sci-fi, Jack Vance. Tais Teng is a Dutch fantasy and science fiction writer, illustrator, and sculptor who has won the Paul Harland Award—the Dutch Hugo Award—four times.”

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Planet of the Apes

“If you've seen the cheesy Planet of the Apes movies, you may be shocked to learn the first movie was adapted from an intelligent, ironic, & literate novel. You'll be less surprised when you learn the original novel Planet of the Apes was written by Pierre Boulle, author of The Bridge over the River Kwai.

Boulle called on his own experiences as a prisoner of war in South-east Asia during the Second World War, using the relationship between man and apes as a metaphor for the treatment handed out to prisoners by brutish Japanese guards. The subtext is strongly anti-slavery, anti-racist and anti-war.” - Observer

“In the not-too-distant future, three astronauts land on what appears to be a planet just like Earth, with lush forests, a temperate climate, and breathable air. But while it appears to be a paradise, nothing is what it seems.

They soon discover the terrifying truth: On this world, humans are savage beasts, and apes rule as their civilized masters. In a novel of nonstop action and breathless intrigue, one man struggles to unlock the secret of a terrifying civilization, all the while wondering: Will he become the savior of the human race, or the final witness to its damnation? In a shocking climax, Boulle delivers the answer in a masterpiece of adventure, satire, and suspense.”

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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