New this week
The latest additions to The Library's collection
If you have a complete or in-progress work you’d like added to The Library or an indie-published book to include in the Buy Indie section, follow this guide, and we’ll help spread the word.
And thanks again to everyone for helping us support indie authors!
In the stacks
Contemporary
Remembrance | Sara Dietz | Sci-Fi Realism (N) (I) (F)→($)
Free through April 2024, after that, first 5 chapters will be free, rest paid
Leah Harvey has suffered migraines for years. Due to a car accident, she misses a session with her neurologist, who has enrolled her in a clinical trial for a potential new treatment. After the missed session, Leah begins to experience increasing paranoia, anxiety, and irritability. At first, she chalks it up to the residual effects of the accident or of missing her treatment, but she’s quickly drawn into a complex network of secrets threatening to burst. Not only is her view of her condition changed forever, but her understanding of her very self.
Literary
When the Place Is a Map, and the Map Is a Maze | Zoe Carada | Magic Realism (NT) (C) (F)
This is the story of a journalist who travels to an Eastern European country for a TV doc but goes down a rabbit hole and lands in his past. Or was the obscure country a place of his mind, too? The 3-part novelette builds on the theme of the invisible hero, which is here a forgotten memory, a buried sense of identity. The geographical places, Bucharest and Berlin, become places of the mind and, although the saying goes, “the map is not the place”, in this story, the place actually becomes a map. Read to find out where the map is guiding the protagonist.
Speculative
Ada's Children | Lawrence Hogue | Post-Apocalyptic (N) (I) (F)→($)
Paid but with the Prologue and first 3 chapters free
An AI tries to save humanity, even if humanity doesn't want to be saved. 2040s, Minneapolis: Carol Marsh struggles as her world falls apart—AIs take over her teaching job, a racist government deports her best friends, and climate change threatens the planet. When an artificial intelligence takes power to save both Earth and humanity, Carol doesn't protest—until she has to make a choice she could never have imagined. The far future, a place known only as the Land: Sila lives a life blessed by the Goddess Ada, Mother of the Five Peoples. As the first female hunter in her tribe’s memory, she has her pick of mates and hopes to one day become Chief of the Hunt. If only Jun, her best friend, would stop questioning the Goddess’s rules! When Sila comes to share Jun’s doubts, they set out to find the answers Ada has kept hidden: Who were the Ancient Ones, and what happened to their incredible civilization? Ada's Children is a literary post-apocalyptic novel in the tradition of William Gibson and Emily St. John Mandel, depicting a future that is at once utopian and dystopian.
The Santara Commentaries | Michael P. Marpaung | Fantasy, Military Fantasy (NA) (I) (F)
The Santara Archipelago is the homeland of the Yakobinians - the Sons of Yakob and the Chosen of El Shaddai, the God of the gods. But the Age of the Holy Kingdom is long gone. For over five centuries, the Yakobinians chafed under the dominion of distant Tionghoa. The wandering tactician Yu woke up with no memory, only to be rescued from his captors by King Aron of Dun-a-din, the last heir of the priest-kings. From there, he was wrapped up in a war for freedom. But there’s more to the Padri War than meets the eye.
A Piece Of A God | AJ Stevens | Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery (N) (I) (F)
With a cosmic alignment approaching, a fractious Pantheon must put aside its differences to preserve its dominion over the mortal races. Meanwhile, in the ancient and impenetrable city of Caran, an attempt on the life of their captain sees a grizzled company of veterans flee to the hills as deserters, seeking vengeance and an end to the self-serving rule of the nobility. They find help from within the city in the form of Flint, an assassin pre-disposed to self-preservation, and Elania Gallyn, Champion of Caran and the finest swordsperson in living memory. niece to a murderous uncle who now sits at the head of the noble house she once belonged to. As the attack begins and Flint's loyalties are called into question, Elania must come to terms with her treachery as she prepares to bring civil war down on the city she calls home. As Caran tears itself asunder, a secret is revealed, one the gods have worked for millennia to keep hidden. Amid the petty quarrels of mortals, an older, deadlier battle begins that threatens to burn the entire city to ash.
Thriller & Mystery
The Spring | Annie Wilson | Crime Procedural (N) (I) (F)
November 1, 2014: The discovery of a body at a sacred spring in The Presidio of San Francisco launches an investigation that crosses federal and city jurisdictions. Was it teenagers getting rowdy on Halloween or something more nefarious? US Park Police Officer Paco Mayfield is joined by FBI Agent Mark Greenberg and SFPD rookie officer Jeannie Hagen to help solve the question of what happened to the victim, a teen girl. The three investigators form an unlikely team, venturing into the world of elite prep schools and affluent families where truths and consequences are difficult to unravel. Inspired by the natural landscape of The Presidio in San Francisco as well as classic British procedurals, The Spring is a serialized novel with new chapters published on Tuesdays and Fridays. Text is entirely free.
Are you publishing a book, comic, or story/poetry collection on Substack that you’d like to add to The Library? Send it our way!
Buy Indie
Speculative
Ada's Children | Lawrence Hogue | Post-Apocalyptic (N)
An AI tries to save humanity, even if humanity doesn't want to be saved. 2040s, Minneapolis: Carol Marsh struggles as her world falls apart—AIs take over her teaching job, a racist government deports her best friends, and climate change threatens the planet. When an artificial intelligence takes power to save both Earth and humanity, Carol doesn't protest—until she has to make a choice she could never have imagined. The far future, a place known only as the Land: Sila lives a life blessed by the Goddess Ada, Mother of the Five Peoples. As the first female hunter in her tribe’s memory, she has her pick of mates and hopes to one day become Chief of the Hunt. If only Jun, her best friend, would stop questioning the Goddess’s rules! When Sila comes to share Jun’s doubts, they set out to find the answers Ada has kept hidden: Who were the Ancient Ones, and what happened to their incredible civilization? Ada's Children is a literary post-apocalyptic novel in the tradition of William Gibson and Emily St. John Mandel, depicting a future that is at once utopian and dystopian.
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From the Archive
Featuring a different, randomly selected book every week
Emrys the Fool | radicaledward | Science Fiction, Fantasy (N) (I) ($)→(F)
First chapter is free, but each subsequent chapter is paid only for the first two weeks, and then is made free
Bastard son of the Lord of Clan Matauc, Emrys's greatest desire is to go to Morrigan University and study the great mechanical giants discovered buried beneath the earth. Emrys the Fool is a steampunked mix of Harry Potter and Gundam.
Thanks for including me!
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