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Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005
Friends from an English boarding school slowly learn what their lives are for.
Shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize. Source: Wikipedia
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The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969
An envoy on a frozen planet where people have no fixed sex.
Medium length, about 286 pages
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Kindred
Octavia E. Butler, 1979
A Black woman in 1970s California is pulled back again and again to a plantation in Maryland.
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The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood, 1985
A woman in a near-future theocracy is kept for one purpose, and remembers her life before.
Governor General's Award, 1985.Clarke Award, 1987.
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Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel, 2014
A travelling theatre troupe keeps Shakespeare alive after a pandemic ends the old world.
Medium length, about 336 pagesClarke Award, 2015.
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Piranesi
Susanna Clarke, 2020
A man lives alone in an endless house of halls and statues, and keeps careful notes.
Women's Prize for Fiction, 2021.
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Frankenstein
Mary Shelley, 1818
A young scientist makes a living creature, then runs from what he has made.
How we pick. A person picks every book here, not an algorithm, and each one says why. No ads, affiliate links or paid placement.