The New York Times bestselling novelist Neal Shusterman's ambitious and captivating novel about a young American football player trapped into a succession of parallel lives. Ash is used to absorbing big knocks as a great player on his high school American football team. But that one run in his last game must have jarred him, for his life no longer appears to be as he recalls it. As Ash travels across realms that are almost but not quite his own, he begins to doubt everything, even his own views and role in his own reality.

All it takes is one hit on the football field, and Ash's life is no longer what he recalls. He's been thrown into another dimension—impossible as it may appear—and continues to bounce across universes that are almost but not quite his own. The alterations begin slowly but gradually escalate as Ash slips between realities where he has everything he's ever desired, realms where civilization is locked in the past...universes in which he finds himself seeing life through completely different lenses.

Detailed information:

Author: Neal Shusterman
First published: 09/02/2021

Genre: Speculative fiction

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50357937

The Handmaid's Tale is a 1985 book by Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood about a dystopian future. It takes place in a near-future New England, under a fiercely patriarchal, totalitarian theocracy called the Republic of Gilead, which has deposed the United States government. The principal character and narrator is a woman called Offred, who is one of a group known as "handmaids", who are forced assigned to bear offspring for the "commanders", Gilead's ruling class of males.

The novel delves into the topics of oppressed women in patriarchal societies, the loss of female agency and uniqueness, the restriction of women's reproductive rights, and the different ways in which women fight and strive to gain individuality and independence. The title alludes to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, which is a collection of interconnected stories. It is also a reference to the fairy tale tradition in which the principal character relates their story.

Detailed information:

Author: Margaret Atwood

Language: English
Genre: Dystopian novel, Speculative fiction

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38447

Never Let Me Go is a dystopian science fiction novel by British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro published in 2005. It was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2005 (which Ishiguro had already won for The Remains of the Day in 1989), the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2006, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2005. Time magazine named it the best novel of 2005, and it was included in its list of the "100 Best English-language Novels Published Since 1923—the Beginning of TIME". In addition, it got an ALA Alex Award in 2006. Mark Romanek directed a film adaption, which was broadcast in 2010; a Japanese television drama aired in 2016.

Ishiguro's sixth novel is Never Let Me Go. This tale is set in an alternate world in England in the 1990s. Human cloning was legalized and practiced at the time. Never Let Me Go was initially named "The Student's Novel" when Ishiguro began writing it in 1990.

Detailed information:

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Language: English
Genre: Dystopian science fiction, speculative fiction

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6334

They Both Die at the End is a young adult novel written by American author Adam Silvera and published by HarperTeen on September 5, 2017. It's Silvera's third novel, and it's about two teenage boys, Mateo and Rufus, who discover they only have one day to live. The book's popularity underwent a rebirth in April 2020, because of #booktok, a popular hashtag for readers on social media site TikTok, and it was once again included on The New York Times Best Seller list.

In this heartbreaking yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change in one unforgettable day, Adam Silvera reminds us that there is no life without death and no love without loss. On September 5, just after midnight, Death-Cast phones Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to inform them that they would die today. Mateo and Rufus are strangers, yet they're both seeking a new companion on their End Day for different reasons. The good news is that there is an app for it. It's called the Final Friend, and it's going to bring Rufus and Mateo together for one last amazing adventure—living a lifetime in a single day.

Detailed information:

Author: Adam Silvera
Language: English
Genre: Young Adult, speculative fiction

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33385229

Scythe is the first book in Neal Shusterman's Arc of a Scythe series, published in 2016. It is set in the far future when natural death has been nearly eradicated due to technological developments, and society is ruled by a sophisticated computer system known as the "Thunderhead". Thunderhead is a type of artificial intelligence that does not make mistakes or regrets. The Thunderhead, on the other hand, can converse with others. As overcrowding has remained a concern, the Scythedom is a distinct entity from the Thunderhead entrusted with selecting who must die.

Scythes, who are those who "glean"—or permanently kill—people, must glean a certain number of people each month. The novel follows two teenagers, Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch, who undergo training as they are recruited into the scythedom by Scythe Faraday.

A feature-length cinematic adaptation is now in the works. The script was written by Sera Gamble, but a fresh draft is being written by Gary Dauberman. In 2017, the book was named an Honor Book for the Michael L. Printz Award for YA fiction.

Detailed information:

Author: Neal Shusterman
Language: English
Genre: Science fiction, biopunk, adventure, speculative fiction

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28954189

Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, and philosopher wrote the novel Foucault's Pendulum. It was initially published in 1988, and William Weaver's English translation came a year later.

The 10 Sefiroth symbolize the ten parts of Foucault's Pendulum. The satirical novel has so many arcane references to Kabbalah, alchemy, and conspiracy theory that critic and author Anthony Burgess argued it needed an index. The title alludes to a genuine pendulum constructed by French physicist Léon Foucault to illustrate the rotation of the Earth, which has symbolic meaning in the story. Some see it as a reference to Michel Foucault, citing Eco's connection with the French philosopher, although the author "clearly rejects any deliberate allusion to Michel Foucault"—this is viewed as one of his sly literary jokes.

Detailed information:

Author: Umberto Eco
Language: Italian
Genre: Speculative fiction, Secret history

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17841

2150 AD is a novel copyrighted by Don Plym and Thea (Alexander) Plym and originally published in 1971. In 1976, it was modified and re-published by Thea Alexander. The story concerns the character of Jon, who travels between his world of 1976 and the future world of 2150, where the Macro Society dominates the Earth. The world of 1976 is referred to by the inhabitants of 2150 as the pinnacle of micro-society.

This book is based on the journal of Jon Lake, a psychiatrist who worked in the 1960s and 1970s. His soul was deemed advanced, or Macro, enough to go to 2150, where his twin soul, Lea Nine, and soul partner, Carol Three, dwelt, because of his life experiences and accepting world perspective. His astral form moved to 2150, where he resided while his 1970s body slept, then returned during his waking hours.

The book focuses on Macro Philosophy and topics such as reincarnation, karma, twin souls and soul mates, and macro and micro constraints. Shortly before the book's publication, Thea Alexander began a workshop for studying Macro Philosophy; this information is on the back cover of the book.

Detailed information:

Author: Thea Alexander
Language: English
Genre: Philosophical, speculative fiction

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/915664

Margaret Atwood's book Oryx and Crake was published in 2003. She has referred to the work as speculative fiction and adventure romance, rather than pure science fiction, because it does not deal with things "we can't yet do or begin to do", but it goes beyond the degree of realism she associated with the novel form. It follows Snowman, a lone figure who finds himself in a gloomy circumstance with only Crakers to keep him company. The reader learns about his background as a young kid named Jimmy, as well as genetic testing and pharmacological engineering that took place under the supervision of Jimmy's friend, Glenn "Crake".

McClelland and Stewart was the first to publish the book. It was nominated for both the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction. The MaddAddam trilogy begins with Oryx and Crake, followed by The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013).

Detailed information:

Author: Margaret Atwood
Language: English
Genre: Speculative fiction

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46756

Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino, published in 2000, is about the experiences of a man named Baudolino in the known and legendary Christian world of the 12th century. With dazzling digressions, outrageous tricks, extraordinary feeling, and vicarious reflections on our postmodern age, Baudolino is Eco the storyteller at his brilliant best.

William Weaver translated Baudolino into English in 2001. The novel presents a variety of unique translation challenges, not the least of which is that it is written in a made-up language that is a mash-up of Latin, medieval Italian, and other languages (intended to reconstruct how a barely-literate Italian peasant boy of the 12th century would have tried to write in the vernacular). Saint Baudolino, a historically-attested hermit from the eighth century, is the Patron Saint of Alessandria, hence a child born there would naturally take his name.

Detailed information:

Author: Umberto Eco
Language: Italian
Genre: Historical novel, speculative fiction

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10507

The Year of the Flood is the second book in Canadian author Margaret Atwood's dystopian trilogy and was released on September 22, 2009, in Canada and the United States, and on September 7, 2009, in the United Kingdom. The work was listed in a number of newspaper review pieces predicting important fiction in 2009.

The story focuses on the God's Gardeners, a religious cult comprised of survivors of the same biological disaster detailed in Atwood's earlier work Oryx and Crake. The organization was mentioned briefly in the previous novel. The story is narrated through the perspectives of the protagonists' Ren and Toby, with Oryx and Crake, as well as Jimmy and Crake, playing minor parts. Atwood continues to investigate the impact of science and technology on this afflicted planet, focusing on the issue of religion through the God's Gardeners, an ecologically minded religious movement.

It addresses several of Oryx and Crake's questions, develops and expands on some of the characters from the previous novel, and exposes the identity of the three human figures that appear at the close of the first book. This is the second novel in Margaret Atwood's trilogy, the third being MaddAddam. However, Atwood considers them 'simultaneous', with the three novels all taking place at the same time and not in chronological order.

Detailed information:

Author: Margaret Atwood
Language: English
Genre: Speculative fiction

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6080337