Angry Robot Books, which is owned by Osprey Publishing Group, has just announced that their YA imprint, Strange Chemistry is closing. Here's why that's terrible news.

Lagoon, Nnedi Okorafor's latest novel, is a swirling writhing cross section of life in Lagos, Nigeria as aliens make contact for the first time ever. It doesn't go smoothly — a fact which allows Okorafor to bring to life a fascinating view of Lagos in all its contradictions.

Alternate histories – with their roads not taken and mix of real and supposition – can be dreams come true for junkies of world-building — and Ramona Wheeler's Three Princes might contain enough awesome to make you overdose.

Very soon, in the never ending debate about whether or not info dumps can be compelling, someone will point out that Andy Weir made some 300 or more pages of info dumps nail-bitingly thrilling in The Martian. To which someone else will reply, 'Well yeah, but that's only because Mark Watney's life hung in the balance…

A Highly Unlikely Scenario, by Rachel Cantor, takes place in a world where computer programs walk among us, the police wear Chipmunk Patrol sashes, and quasi-religious philosophical groups battle for converts via fast food restaurants.

Three young-adult novels that made a splash in 2012 are back for another helping. But now that so many YA books are spawning trilogies, septologies and sequels, how do these second installments keep your interest? By throwing their protagonists for loops, and revealing some dark truths about their respective…

I am not a vampire person. It’s not that I don’t get the allure of the vampire story — I’ve just always found the metaphors for sexuality, power and old money's exploitation of youth too obvious and overblown. So I was pleasantly shocked that I pretty much loved Holly Black’s newest YA novel, The Coldest Girl in…

Jon Skovron’s newest YA novel, Man Made Boy, follows his protagonist on a journey of self-discovery across America. He has some adventures, falls in love, gets a job and learns a thing or two about family and responsibility—but it's complicated by the fact that he’s also the son of Frankenstein’s Monster and his…

Kim Stanley Robinson is known for his meticulous worldbuilding. So when Robinson heads to neolithic Europe for his newest novel Shaman, Robinson creates a world that has familiar outlines — but resists both clichés and lazy assumptions about prehistoric life.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that every interstellar colony in search of good fortune must be in need of a banker." If that line makes you giggle, feel free to rush out and purchase Charles Stross’s newest novel Neptune’s Brood, a comedy of banking and manners with some chase scenes and explosions thrown in…

It’s not every author who could put together an entire book of Hugo and Nebula award-winning short stories, but Connie Willis can and does in her fantastic story collection, The Best of Connie Willis.

Max Barry’s 2003 novel Jennifer Government was a spectacular, and terrifyingly possible, near-future dystopia of corporate overreach and government impotence. And his latest novel, Lexicon is a worthy followup — a crazily inventive conspiracy thriller about the abuse of language as a weapon.

Fans of Neil Gaiman's dark, mythology-soaked fantasy will rush out to buy his first adult book in years, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. But for people who haven't yet delved into Gaiman's massive body of work, this slim volume is an excellent starting place.

The 5^th Wave may be the summer’s most buzzed about YA book — but it really does deserve a lot of praise. Rick Yancey’s alien invasion novel plays around with more than a few tropes of the genre, elevating them with dashes of lyrical prose and a plot that just doesn’t stop. Spoilers ahead...

The Urwald could be the dark forest of any fairytale — provided that dark forest is filled with ogres, murderous trees, trolls, witches who travel by butter churn, firebirds, dragons, and weres (wolves, bears and chipmunks). In Sage Blackwood's thrilling new middle grade novel Jinx, nothing is ever quite as simple as…

When my husband and I heard the Brooklyn Academy of Music was having a Miyazaki retrospective, we rushed to get our tickets, picking something that didn’t conflict with my babysitting schedule and that had subtitles. We both prefer the original voice work in anime and we kind of figured it would reduce the number of…

Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince takes place in Palmeres Tres, a far-future Brazilian city ruled by women, where every five years a Summer King is elected to help rule for a year. Feted like a rock star, at the end of the year the Summer King selects a new Queen and is killed to guarantee his selection is…