This novel follows James Tiptree Jr. Award winner, Light (2002), and winner of the Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick Awards, Nova Swing (2006). It's a fitting conclusion to the overall story arch of the Kefahuchi Tract Trilogy, written in Harrison's mind-altering style, with humour, darkness, contemporary commentary, haunting imagery, and literary panache. Hard to nail down, this work crosses noir, near-future SF, space opera, and more.

Jean Le Flambeur was introduced to readers in The Quantum Thief (2010) and now he's back again, in stories within stories within strange loops, as told in Rajaniemi's latest novel. With more than a nod to the Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, the author rockets his readers a quantum leap beyond the realm of Arabian mythology into a world of nanotech, Schrödinger's Cat, string theory, and viral software that can recode the human mind.

James S.A. Corey is the pen name for collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. This book is the sequel to their first Expanse novel, Leviathan Wakes (2001). Jim Holden & his crew search for a lost child on war-torn Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets. Meanwhile, an alien protomolecule on Venus is at risk of spreading throughout the human-inhabited solar system. And on Earth, political battles threaten to erupt into the next interplanetary war.

This book is a stand-alone novel set in the same world as Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy, this time with a distinctly western flavour. Shy South had hoped her bloody past was behind her forever. But when she returns to the family farm to find the old homestead destroyed, and her brother and sister stolen away, she sets off in pursuit with her meek stepfather, Lamb. Turns out, Lamb has some bloody secrets of his own. Together they trek across barren plains, lawless frontier towns, and unmapped mountains, encountering hardened prospectors, duellists, murderers, and lawyers.

This novel represents a long-awaited stand-alone sequel to The Stress of Her Regard (1989), winner of the Mythopoeic Award and nominee for the World Fantasy Award. John Crawford, son of the protagonist from the previous novel, is drawn into struggles similar to those of his father against vampiric forces. His colleagues in this battle are the Rossetti family, including Dante (Pre-Raphaelite painter) and Christina (poet). Their enemies include the Rossetti's uncle, John Polidori, who also featured in Powers' previous work. With an atmospheric portrayal of Victorian London and a unique treatment of vampirism, there's plenty to recommend this book.

The first story of the Dragon Griaule was a novelette, "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule," in 1984. It introduced readers to a 6,000-foot long dormant dragon in a remote valley in Central America. Over the years, Shepard has revisited his Griaule world several times with renewed perspectives, writing styles, characters, and stories. The present work represents a collection of all six Griaule stories, including a brand new one. As a whole, the book is an impressive oeuvre of imaginative prose style.

This book is the first installment of a new series of interstellar adventure. The starship Sunseeker is on a decades-long trek to a new galaxy, headed for what is the most viable planet for human habitation yet detected, when an anomaly is found to be on an identical course. The anomaly is inconceivably huge. It appears to be a bowl-shaped spaceship the size of half a solar system. A landing party is sent from Sunseeker to investigate. What they discover may necessitate humanity's reassessment of their place in the universe.

This book is a return to the Malazan world, although events depicted here take place long, long before the stories already told in Erikson's Tales of The Malazan Book of the Fallen. Here we see the origins of Anomander Rake in the Age of Darkness, and the forging of a sword that will change the course of history. Civil war, family rivalries, personal betrayals, and the story of a goddess who abandoned her people.

In a bizarre homage to Melville's Moby Dick, Miéville has created a world where a vast tract of barren land, cris-crossed by a chaotic sea of rails, is inhabited by burrowing creatures like the vast (but otherwise mole-like) moldywarpe. Trains traverse this sea of rails in search of commercial opportunities, trade, salvage, and piracy. Young Sham ap Soorap signs aboard an honest, hard-working train whose captain is obsessed with finding the giant white moldywarpe who took her arm.

This is the only book that appears on both the SF Site Readers' and Editors' Top 10 lists this year. This should be an indicator that if you haven't already checked it out, perhaps you should think about it. Robinson's vision of our future includes technological advances like extended human lifespan and colonization of our entire solar system. Even on Mercury there is a human habitation, Terminator, which is a perpetually moving city designed to stay forever out of the direct sunlight that would otherwise prove deadly. In the year 2312, an unexpected death at Terminator leads a former designer of worlds, Swan Er Hong, into the discovery of a plot to destroy them.