Worlds Away Book Club Reading List

Escape the ordinary and plunge into the unique, alternate worlds depicted in science fiction and fantasy genres.

Thursday, July 3, 2025

The Sunlit Man / Brandon Sanderson

Running. Putting distance between himself and the relentless Night Brigade has been Nomad’s strategy for years. Staying one or two steps ahead of his pursuers by skipping through the Cosmere from one world to the next.

But now, his powers too depleted to escape, Nomad finds himself trapped on Canticle, a planet that will kill anyone who doesn’t keep moving. Fleeing the fires of a sunrise that melts the very stones, he is instantly caught up in the struggle between a heartless tyrant and the brave rebels who defy him.

Failure means a quick death, incinerated by the sun… or a lifetime as a mindless slave. Nomad must fight not only for his survival―but also for his very soul.

Thursday, August 7, 2025

The Tainted Cup / Robert Jackson Bennett

In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible.

Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

Thursday, September 4, 2025

Starter Villain / John Scalzi

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place.

Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

Thursday, October 2, 2025

The Road to Roswell / Connie Willis

Francie is a reluctant Maid of Honor, for several reasons. The first is that her friend Serena has terrible taste in men. Previous fiancés have included a storm-chaser, a shaman and a kamikaze base-jumper. This is the closest a wedding has come to happening, and it's to a UFO-chaser. The second is that, as a result, the wedding is being held in New Mexico. In Roswell. During the UFO festival.

After a series of travel disasters that end with her car sharing with another wedding guest - who also happens to be an FBI agent - a wedding due to take place in the UFO Museum, conducted by a high priest from the Church of Galactic Truth, and a frankly repellent bridesmaid dress, the alien abduction is actually a high point of Francie's day.

Thursday, November 6, 2025

Sea of Tranquility / Emily St. John Mandel

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of her best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

Thursday, December 4, 2025

The Lies of Locke Lamora / Scott Lynch

An orphan’s life is harsh—and often short—in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But young Locke Lamora dodges death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist.

As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman Bastards, Locke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly.

Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game—or die trying.

Thursday, January 8, 2026

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy / Douglas Adams

It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien.

After that, things get much, much worse.

With just a towel, a small yellow fish, and a book, Arthur has to navigate through a very hostile universe in the company of a gang of unreliable aliens. Luckily the fish is quite good at languages.

Thursday, February 5, 2026

Maximum Ride: the Angel Experiment / James Patterson

Maximum Ride and her "flock," Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman and Angel, are ordinary kids—only they have wings and can fly. It may seem like a dream come true to some, but while they’re on the run from the “School” that cruelly experimented on them, their lives can morph into a nightmare at any time.

When Angel, the youngest member of the flock, is kidnapped and taken back to the School, her friends set off to rescue her, facing off against the half-human, half-wolf "Erasers” designed to stop them. Their journey takes them closer and closer to the secrets of their past…and their future—one where Max is responsible for saving the world.

Thursday, March 5, 2026

I, Robot / Isaac Asimov

They mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarked on perhaps its greatest adventure: the invention of the first positronic man. It was a bold new era of evolution that would open up enormous possibilities—and unforeseen risks.

For the scientists who invented the earliest robots weren't content that their creations should ' remain programmed helpers, companions, and semisentient worker-machines. And soon the robots themselves; aware of their own intelligence, power, and humanity, aren't either.

Thursday, April 2, 2026

Dogs of War / Adrian Tchaikovsky

My name is Rex. I am a good dog.

Rex is also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multiform Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, south-eastern Mexico.

Rex is a genetically engineered Bioform, a deadly weapon in a dirty war. He has the intelligence to carry out his orders and feedback implants to reward him when he does. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies.

Thursday, May 7, 2026

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Liz Moore

By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep.

Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected.

Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and “retire” them. But when cornered, androids fight back—with lethal force.

Thursday, June 4, 2026

Timeline / Michael Crichton

In an Arizona desert, a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world, archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology.

Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened up to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival -- six hundred years ago.

Connect with us