These are the finalists for the 2021 Nebula Awards. Winners to be announced in May. Put on by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. https://nebulas.sfwa.org/
See Also:
New & Best List
A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking
Author(s):
Description:
Fourteen-year-old Mona isn't like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can't control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt's bakery making gingerbread men dance. But Mona's life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona's city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona's worries...
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Kin
See Also:
New & Best List
Birds Of Prey And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn
Author(s):
Description:
A twisted tale told by Harley Quinn herself, as only Harley can tell it. When Gotham's most nefariously narcissistic villain, Roman Sionis, and his zealous right-hand, Zsasz, put a target on a young girl named Cass, the city is turned upside down looking for her. Harley, Huntress, Black Canary and Renee Montoya's paths collide, and the unlikely foursome has no choice but to team up to take Roman down.
Format:
DVD
Call Number:
Action
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man's mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.
Format:
Audiobook
Call Number:
FIC Roa
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
"Imagine an America very similar to our own. It's got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream. There are some differences. This America has been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day. Seventeen-year-old Elatsoe ("Ellie" for short) lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered, in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect façade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family" -- Publisher description.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Lit
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
"When an elderly customer at a Swedish big box furniture store slips through a portal to another dimension, it's up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company's bottom line. Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but those two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago. To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture spokespeople, and the deep resentment simmering between them. Can friendship blossom from the ashes of their relationship? In infinite dimensions, all things are possible." --Publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Cip
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
Based on Matt Ruff's novel, this series follows Korean war vet Atticus Freeman, his friend Letitia and his Uncle George on a journey across 1950's Jim Crow America where they face racist terrors and the terrifying monsters of an H.P. Lovecraft paperback.
Format:
DVD
Call Number:
Horror
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemi Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She's not sure what she will find--her cousin's husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemi knows little about the region. Noemi is also an unlikely rescuer: She's a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she's also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin's new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemi; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi's dreams with visions of blood and doom. Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family's youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemi, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family's past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family's once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemi digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Mor
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
"You know that feeling when you're at work, and you've had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot. Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you'll read this century. When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action. Drastic action it is, then" --Amazon.com.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Wel
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
"Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-- a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known" -- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Cla
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
"Tarisai has always longed for the warmth of a family. She was raised in isolation by a mysterious, often absent mother known only as The Lady. The Lady sends her to the capital of the global empire of Aritsar to compete with other children to be chosen as one of the Crown Prince’s Council of 11. If she’s picked, she’ll be joined with the other Council members through the Ray, a bond deeper than blood. That closeness is irresistible to Tarisai, who has always wanted to belong somewhere. But The Lady has other ideas, including a magical wish that Tarisai is compelled to obey: Kill the Crown Prince once she gains his trust. Tarisai won’t stand by and become someone’s pawn—but is she strong enough to choose a different path for herself?" --Amazon.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Ifu
See Also:
New & Best List
Ring Shout : Or, Hunting Ku Kluxes In The End Times
Author(s):
Description:
"In this dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up. Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?"-- Publisher's description.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Cla
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
"Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world. When Kev is incarcerated for the crime of being a young black man in America, Ella-through visits both mundane and supernatural-tries to show him the way to a revolution that could burn it all down"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Ony
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
Sheetal Mistry, a rising high school junior who is half-star, half-human, must win a competition in the starry court to save her human father.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Tha
See Also:
New & Best List
The City We Became By N. K. Jemisin.
Author(s):
Description:
Every great city has a soul. But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs in the halls of power, threatening to destroy New York and her six newborn avatars unless five residents can stop it for good.
Format:
Audiobook
Call Number:
FIC Jem
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
"Wind: To match one's body with one's heart. Sand: To take the bearer where they wish. Song: In praise of the goddess Bird. Bone: To move unheard in the night. The Surun' do not speak of the master weaver, Benesret, who creates the cloth of bone for assassins in the Great Burri Desert. But Uiziya now seeks her aunt Benesret in order to learn the final weave, although the price for knowledge may be far too dear to pay. Among the Khana, women travel in caravans to trade, while men remain in the inner quarter as scholars. A nameless man struggles to embody Khana masculinity, after many years of performing the life of a woman, trader, wife, and grandmother. As the past catches up to the nameless man, he must choose between the life he dreamed of and Uiziya, and Uiziya must discover how to challenge a tyrant, and weave from deaths that matter" --Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Lem
See Also:
New & Best List
The Good Place. The Final Season Universal Television Llc.
Author(s):
Description:
Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason are four cosmically bound friends in the fight for their eternity, alongside their former torturer, Michael. Michael, in a fit of panic, had relinquished his role as the Architect to Eleanor, so that she and the gang could help four new residents become better people. Unfortunately, the Bad Place doesn't exactly make their task easy, and its latest move places Chidi in a dire situation, putting his relationship with Eleanor and the others in jeopardy.
Format:
DVD
Call Number:
Comedy
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
"Beatrice Clayborn is a sorceress who practices magic in secret, terrified of the day she will be locked into a marital collar that will cut off her powers to protect her unborn children. She dreams of becoming a full-fledged Magus and pursuing magic as her calling as men do, but her family has staked everything to equip her for Bargaining Season, when young men and women of means descend upon the city to negotiate the best marriages. The Clayborns are in severe debt, and only she can save them, by securing an advantageous match before their creditors come calling. In a stroke of luck, Beatrice finds a grimoire that contains the key to becoming a Magus, but before she can purchase it, a rival sorceress swindles the book right out of her hands. Beatrice summons a spirit to help her get it back, but her new ally exacts a price: Beatrice's first kiss . . . with her adversary's brother, the handsome, compassionate, and fabulously wealthy Ianthe Lavan. The more Beatrice is entangled with the Lavan siblings, the harder her decision becomes: If she casts the spell to become a Magus, she will devastate her family and lose the only man to ever see her for who she is; but if she marries--even for love--she will sacrifice her magic, her identity, and her dreams. But how can she choose just one, knowing she will forever regret the path not taken?"--Amazon.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Pol