China Miéville
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Yes, but what is Perdido Street Station about? To oversimplify: the eccentric scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is hired to restore the power of flight to a cruelly de-winged birdman. Isaac's secret lover is Lin, an artist of the khepri, a humano-insectoid race; theirs is a forbidden relationship. Lin is hired (rather against her will) by a mysterious crime boss to capture his horrifying likeness in the unique khepri art form. Isaac's quest for...
3) Embassytown
Author
Language
English
Description
Retaining a tenuous peace on a distant planet in the far future, humans and aliens work together through a mutually beneficial economic arrangement that is threatened by the arrival of a new group of humans that destabilizes the world's balance.
4) The scar
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage --and escape from horrific punishment. For she...
5) Iron council
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
A new cast of characters shares mythical adventures in the sprawling, phantasmagoric city of New Crobuzon.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A provocative new collection of short stories by the New York Times best-selling and Hugo Award-winning author of Kraken explores a range of styles and forms to explore an alternate universe where nature provocatively renders the human race an endangered species.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Two sisters sit down one morning and begin describing all of the really gross things that were in the worst breakfast they ever had, until all they can picture is a table piled sky-high with the weirdest, yuckiest, slimiest, slickest, stinkiest breakfast possible. And then they have the best breakfast ever...almost."--Back cover.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In the chaos of wartime Marseille, 1941, American engineer--and occult disciple--Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including Surrealist theorist Andre Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever. In 1950, a lone Surrealist...
Author
Pub. Date
2012
Language
English
Formats
Description
“Other names besides [Herman] Melville’s will surely come to mind as you read this thrilling tale—there’s Dune’s Frank Herbert. . . . But in this, as in all of his works, Miéville has that special knack for evoking other writers even while making the story wholly his own.”—Los Angeles Times
On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in...
On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in...
Author
Pub. Date
2016
Language
English
Formats
Description
For readers of George Saunders, Kelly Link, David Mitchell, and Karen Russell, This Census-Taker is a stunning, uncanny, and profoundly moving novella from multiple-award-winning and bestselling author China Miéville.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR
In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a profoundly traumatic event. He tries—and fails—to flee. Left alone with his increasingly...
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR
In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a profoundly traumatic event. He tries—and fails—to flee. Left alone with his increasingly...
11) Un Lun Dun
Author
Publisher
Random House Worlds
Pub. Date
2007
Language
English
Formats
Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Endlessly inventive . . . [a] hybrid of Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and The Phantom Tollbooth.”—Salon
What is Un Lun Dun?
It is London through the looking glass, an urban Wonderland of strange delights where all the lost and broken things of London end up . . . and some of its lost and broken people, too–including...
What is Un Lun Dun?
It is London through the looking glass, an urban Wonderland of strange delights where all the lost and broken things of London end up . . . and some of its lost and broken people, too–including...
12) Kraken: A Novel
Author
Publisher
Random House Worlds
Pub. Date
2010
Language
English
Formats
Description
With this outrageous new novel, China Miéville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read this—or any other—year. The London that comes to life in Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring about—or prevent—the End of All Things.
In the Darwin Centre at London’s...
In the Darwin Centre at London’s...
Author
Publisher
Del Rey/Ballantine Books
Pub. Date
c2010.
Language
English
Description
A contemporary fantasy set in present-day London finds people flocking to a British Museum exhibit of a giant squid that is stolen by magical criminals, a crime that propels young curator Billy into a supernatural underworld.
20) The Library Book
Author
Publisher
Profile Books
Pub. Date
2012
Language
English
Formats
Description
From Alan Bennett's Baffled at a Bookcase, to Lucy Mangan's Library Rules, famous writers tell us all about how libraries are used and why they're important. Tom Holland writes about libraries in the ancient world, while Seth Godin describes what a library will look like in the future. Lionel Shriver thinks books are the best investment, Hardeep Singh Kohli makes a confession and Julie Myerson remembers how her career began beside the shelves.
...