Helen Plum Library

"In 2007, the Center for Automation in Nanobiotech (CAN) outlined the hardware and software platforms that would one day allow robots smaller than human cells to make medical diagnoses, conduct repairs, and even self-propagate. In the same year, the CBS network re-aired a program about the effects of propranolol on sufferers of extreme trauma. A simple pill, it had been discovered, could wipe out the memory of any traumatic event. At almost the same...

"A hopeful climate crisis novel exploring the possibilities of our near future and humanity's capacity for change, about one family trying to protect each other and the place we all call home"--

"Tomorrow, the funk descends on Manhattan, a noxious cloud which separates the island from the rest of the world and mutates the population. Some generations on, the surviving population exists amid the rubble of modernity, wearing our cast-off clothing, worshipping celebrities as dim gods and using emojis in place or written language. The Island exists in a state of uneasy peace, with each neighborhood an independent fiefdom, protecting itself with...

"Everyone hopes for a letter--to attend the Estuary, the Glades, the Meadows. These are the special places where only the best and brightest go to burn even brighter. When Eleanor is accepted at the Meadows, it means escape from her hardscrabble life by the sea, in a country ravaged by climate disaster. But despite its luminous facilities, endless fields, and pretty things, the Meadows keeps dark secrets: its purpose is to reform students, to condition...

"For 400 years, the world has been a barren wasteland. The few humans that survive scrape together an existence in the cruel city of Pocatel--or go it alone in the wilderness beyond, filled with wandering spirits and wyrms. They don't last long. 13 year-old pickpocket Leandro and his sister Gabi do what they can to forge a life in Pocatel. The city does not take kindly to Cascabel like them--the descendants of those who worked the San Joaquin Valley...

It's been two years since the world collapsed in a sheet of light, obliterating everything on Earth...but not quite everyone. Saved from the apocalypse by three mysterious beings, sisters Hannah and Amanda Given were marked with silver bracelets, along with four other survivors from their native world, and transported to an entirely different Earth, a place where the fabric of time is manipulated by common household appliances. Afflicted with time-bending...

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans-- though no one calls them that anymore. First an infectious virus made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the "Transition." Now, eating "special meat" is legal. Then one day he is given a live specimen of the finest quality. Though aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little Marcos starts...

"Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive