Edda

Edda
Conor Kostick
Fiction K848ed 2012

When your whole world is virtual, what is reality?

Everyone in the universe of Edda is made of pixels—except for Penelope. While her body is kept alive in a hospital bed, her avatar runs free, able to go anywhere and do anything, including create deadly weapons for Edda’s ruler, her guardian Lord Scanthax. When Scanthax decides to invade another virtual world, Erik/Cindella from Epic and Ghost from Saga become part of the story—and soon the virtual universes are alive with fighting, alight with bombs, and brought together by three teenagers who want peace and understanding.

(From publisher.)

Saga

Saga
Conor Kostick
Fiction 848s 2009

Ghost is part of an anarcho-punk airboard gang who live to break the rules. And there's a good reason--their world, Saga, has a strict class system enforced by high-tech electronics, armed guards, and a corrupt monarchy.

But something is changing within Saga. Strangers are appearing and disappearing on the streets, like some kind of special effect. Soon Ghost and her gang learn the complicated truth. Saga isn't actually a place; it's a sentient computer game. The strangers are "playing" from their home on New Earth, and access to Saga works on them like a drug. The Dark Queen who rules Saga is trying to enslave the people of New Earth by making them Saga addicts.

And she will succeed unless Ghost and her friends -- and Erik, from Epic, and his friends -- figure out how to stop her in time.

(From publisher.)

The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean telt by hisself

The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean, telt by hisself
David Almond
Fiction Aℓ68t

Billy Dean is a secret child. He has a beautiful young mother and a father who arrives at night carrying the scents of candles and incense and cigarettes. Birds fly to his window. Mice run out from his walls. His world is a carpet, a bed, pictures of the holy island, and a single locked door. His father fills his mind and his dreams with mysterious tales and memories and dreadful warnings. But then his father disappears, and Billy’s mother brings him out into the world at last. He learns the horrifying story of what was saved and what was destroyed on the day he was born, the day the bombers came to Blinkbonny. The kind butcher, Mr. McCaufrey, and the medium, Missus Malone, are waiting for him. He becomes The Angel Child, one who can heal the living, contact the dead, bring comfort to a troubled world. But there is one figure who is beyond healing, who comes looking for Billy himself — and is determined on a kind of reckoning.

(From publisher.)

These Broken Stars

These Broken Stars
Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
Fiction K162t

It’s a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes.

The massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone.

Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they’re worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help.

Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other’s arms. Without the hope of a future together in their own world, they begin to wonder—would they be better off staying here forever?

Everything changes when they uncover the truth behind the chilling whispers that haunt their every step. Lilac and Tarver may find a way off this planet. But they won’t be the same people who landed on it.

(From publisher.)

Champion

Champion (A Legend Novel)
Marie Lu
Fiction L9650c

He is a Legend.
She is a Prodigy.
Who will be Champion?

June and Day have sacrificed so much for the people of the Republic—and each other—and now their country is on the brink of a new existence. June is back in the good graces of the Republic, working within the government’s elite circles as Princeps Elect while Day has been assigned a high level military position. But neither could have predicted the circumstances that will reunite them once again. Just when a peace treaty is imminent, a plague outbreak causes panic in the Colonies, and war threatens the Republic’s border cities. This new strain of plague is deadlier than ever, and June is the only one who knows the key to her country’s defense. But saving the lives of thousands will mean asking the one she loves to give up everything he has.

(From publisher.)

The Circle

The Circle
Dave Eggers
Fiction Eg33c

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. 

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in America—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

(From publisher.)