The novel “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi was published for the first time in 2023. It won the Alex Award as one of the novels of the year written for adults that have special appeal to young adults ages 12 through 18.

Charlie Fitzer has gone through several personal and professional hardships with the result that he lives with his cats with the meager salary of a substitute teacher in the house of which his father left him the right to live. He’d like to turn his life around by taking over a pub whose owner intends to retire but his hopes of obtaining a loan from the bank seem slim to none.

While he’s mulling over his options, Charlie is informed of the death of his uncle Jake, with whom he hadn’t had contact for many years following a huge fight with his father. Jake’s assistant Mathilda Morrison asks him to speak at his uncle’s funeral in exchange for an inheritance. At the funeral, Charlie finds strange people who only want to make sure that Jake is really dead. Things get even stranger when Charlie’s house is blown up and Morrison tells him to follow his cat Hera.

The novel “Anathem” by Neal Stephenson was published for the first time in 2008. It won the Locus Award as the best science fiction novel of the year.

Fraa Erasmas of the Concent of Saunt Edhar spends his life following the discipline of the avout, the intellectuals who isolate themselves from the outside world renouncing the use of almost all technologies. Also thanks to the guidance of his mentor Fraa Orolo, he tries to assimilate the teachings of the great Saunts of the past.

The activity of the concent is disturbed for reasons Fraa Erasmas doesn’t understand, with important consequences on several avouts. When he discovers that Fraa Orolo was keeping an eye on something in the sky, he ends up involved in a story that will have an impact that needs to be thoroughly assessed and that goes far beyond the planet Arbre.

The novel “The Lost Colony” by A.G. Riddle was published for the first time in 2019. It’s the third book in The Long Winter trilogy and follows “The Solar War”.

A group of survivors try to create a new city where human civilization can be reborn. Some environmental problems must be addressed and the mystery of what happened to the humans who had already attempted to create a colony remains, as they seem to have disappeared into thin air.

James Sinclair searches for traces of the missing colonists but finds spheres buried underground. Is there a connection between the spheres and the lost colony? His search is made more difficult by the fact that he doesn’t know how much he can trust the android Arthur, especially when the answers it provides are far from clear.