The Color of Magic
The worst wizard in the world, a Tourist, and Luggage walk into a bar... The Color of Magic is the first novel in a long series by Terry Pratchett, set on a flat world that rides through space on the...
View ArticleSerpent of Venice
William Shakespeare may have performed for royalty, but he wrote for the cheap seats. In The Serpent of Venice (the sequel to Fool), Christopher Moore once again follows in the Bard's bawdy footsteps....
View ArticleUmwelt
Following a freak vacation decision in 2013, I found myself hiking an Arctic glacier with other eco-tourists. In this magnificently strange environment, I learned a new and very useful word: umwelt. It...
View ArticleAuthority
Prepare yourself for another psychologically intense narrative in this second installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy. This time we are taken behind the scenes of the agency and learn many of Area...
View ArticleSleight of Hand
Not just another pretty unicorn book. Peter Beagle writes a great novel — but he's definitely at home in the short story genre. This collection is dazzling; it grabs your attention and doesn't let you...
View ArticleStories of Your Life
This stunning collection of stories brings science fiction back to its magazine-published short story roots. With Hugo and Nebula awards under his belt, Chiang manages to put the science back into...
View Article20th Century Ghosts
I picked up this collection because I had heard that one of Stephen King's sons was dabbling in the horror genre, and I wanted to see if he was, well, any good. It took roughly three pages for me to...
View ArticleAfter the Apocalypse
I'm a sucker for apocalypse and post-apocalypse stories, but McHugh's collection is something extra-special. Her protagonists differ dramatically in age, cultural background, income levels, and values,...
View ArticleMr. Mercedes
In a Midwestern city, a killer plows through an unsuspecting crowd in a Mercedes, setting in motion a terrifying chain of events. Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes is a perfect summer read — page-turningly...
View ArticleThe Girl with All the Gifts
Ten-year-old Melanie's entire world is a windowless prison. She has never seen the sky. She has only seen pictures of flowers and kittens. Melanie loves school, although sometimes students are taken...
View ArticleThe Powell’s Playlist: Daniel H. Wilson
Like many writers, I'm constantly haunting coffee shops with a laptop out and my headphones on. I listen to a lot of music while I write, and songs do eventually get tangled up with certain characters....
View ArticleThe Queen of the Tearling
For 19 years, Kelsea has lived in the forest, watched over by an older couple. But the time has come for her to be crowned as the realm's queen. Kelsea must learn how to rule her kingdom and find...
View ArticleSassy Men with Swords
It all began with a long plane flight. For years my coworker had been enthusiastically recommending Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora, the first book of the Gentleman Bastard series, and I had...
View ArticleThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Parodying practically every well-worn sci-fi plot device in existence, Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has become a classic in its own right. A hapless hero with astonishing luck? Ill-tempered...
View ArticleThe Left Hand of Darkness
Not only is The Left Hand of Darkness a masterpiece of ideas, invention, and language, but it takes conventional assumptions about gender and grinds them into a fine, powdery dust. Published in 1969,...
View ArticleSlaughterhouse-Five
What Kurt Vonnegut set out to do was write a book about war, and in particular the firebombing of Dresden in World War II. What he ended up doing was writing clean around it — traveling in and out of...
View ArticleCalifornia
California by Edan Lepucki is an intelligent, intriguing, and thought-provoking novel about what the near future may be like. Human nature and relationships are highlighted as secrets are kept, yet...
View ArticleThe Magician’s Land
The Magician's Land brings Grossman's trilogy to a triumphant conclusion. Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the land he once ruled. He sets out on new adventures with Plum, a young...
View ArticleFitz and the Fool
After 10 long years, Robin Hobb revisits two of her most beloved characters, Fitz and the Fool, with Fool's Assassin. If the ending of Fool's Fate made you want to fling the book across the room,...
View ArticlePowell’s Q&A: Richard Kadrey
Describe your latest book. The Getaway God is the sixth book in the Sandman Slim series. In it, the very unholy nephilim, James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, has made a few enemies. None, though, are as...
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