Desolation Road

10 best books like Desolation Road (Ian McDonald): Red Moon, To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Permafrost, Perihelion Summer, A Little Hatred, English History Made Brief, Irreverent and Pleasurable, Under the Net, Terminal World, The Conception of Terror: Tales Inspired by M. R. James - Volume 1, Ancient Civilizations of North America

Red Moon

Author	Kim Stanley Robinson
ISBN	0316262374

American Fred Fredericks is making his first trip, his purpose to install a communications system for China's Lunar Science Foundation. But hours after his arrival he witnesses a murder and is forced into hiding.

It is also the first visit for celebrity travel reporter Ta Shu. He has contacts...

To Be Taught, If Fortunate

Author	Becky Chambers
ISBN	0062936018

In her new novella, Sunday Times best-selling author Becky Chambers imagines a future in which, instead of terraforming planets to sustain human life, explorers of the solar system instead transform themselves.

Ariadne is one such explorer. As an astronaut on an extrasolar research vessel,...

Permafrost

Author

Alastair Reynolds

Fix the past. Save the present. Stop the future. Alastair Reynolds unfolds a time-traveling climate fiction adventure in Permafrost.

2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch...

Perihelion Summer

Author	Greg Egan
ISBN	1250313783

Greg Egan's Perihelion Summer is a story of people struggling to adapt to a suddenly alien environment, and the friendships and alliances they forge as they try to find their way in a world where the old maps have lost their meaning.

Taraxippus is coming: a black hole one tenth the mass of the sun...

A Little Hatred

Author

Joe Abercrombie

The chimneys of industry rise over Adua and the world seethes with new opportunities. But old scores run deep as ever.

On the blood-soaked borders of Angland, Leo dan Brock struggles to win fame on the battlefield, and defeat the marauding armies of Stour Nightfall. He hopes for help from the...

English History Made Brief, Irreverent and Pleasurable

Author	Lacey Baldwin Smith
ISBN	0897335473

Here at last is a history of England that is designed to entertain as well as inform and that will delight the armchair traveler, the tourist or just about anyone interested in history. No people have engendered quite so much acclaim or earned so much censure as the English: extolled as the Athenians of...

Under the Net

Author	Iris Murdoch
ISBN	0140014454

Jake Donaghue, garrulous artist, meets Hugo Belfounder, silent philosopher.

Jake, hack writer and sponger, now penniless flat-hunter, seeks out an old girlfriend, Anna Quentin, and her glamorous actress sister, Sadie. He resumes acquaintance with formidable Hugo, whose ‘philosophy’...

Terminal World

Author	Alastair Reynolds
ISBN	0575088508

Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different - and rigidly enforced - level of technology. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television...

The Conception of Terror: Tales Inspired by M. R. James - Volume 1

Author

M.R. James

A collection of four ghostly tales inspired by M. R. James.

Casting the Runes - adapted by Stephen Gallagher

When academic Jo Harrington (Anna Maxwell Martin) is sent a paper - The Truth of Alchemy, by Anton Karswell - for peer review, she pulls no punches. It has no place in a serious...

Ancient Civilizations of North America

Author

Edwin Barnhart

For the past few hundred years, most of what we've been taught about the native cultures of North America came from reports authored by the conquerors and colonizers who destroyed them. Now - with the technological advances of modern archaeology and a new perspective on world history - we are finally...

The Missing Girl

Author	Shirley Jackson
ISBN	0241339286

Penguin seems to release a new range of dinky paperbacks every year now for one flimsy reason or another. This Penguin Modern series is to celebrate Penguin Modern Classics’ 50th Anniversary or something - meh. I guess these tiny books do serve as fairly decent amuse-bouches of a writer’s style...

Waste Tide

Author	Chen Qiufan
ISBN	0765389312

Mimi is a 'waste girl', a member of the lowest caste on Silicon Isle.

Located off China's southeastern coast, Silicon Isle is the global capital for electronic waste recycling, where thousands like Mimi toil day and night, hoping one day they too will enjoy the wealth they’ve created for...