There's a finger on the floor of the housewares department, in the aisle with the slow cookers. The unnamed narrator, who works the overnight shift at a massive discount store, picks it up and slips it into his jacket pocket. In Charles Yu's latest collection of brainy stories, titled Sorry Please Thank You, strange things like this happen. Yu presents his characters in such a matter-of-fact, deadpan way that he lets us believe anything. The finger belongs to a zombie woman, "maybe early thirties, missing a little bit of her face, but otherwise sort of pretty in a melancholy way." Oh, and she seems to want the narrator's opinion on which shade of lipstick to wear.

For many readers, the term "science fiction" is an immediate turn-off, and that's really too bad. Sorry Please Thank You has a kind of geeky humor that is provocative and emotionally rich. Like a deadpan Kurt Vonnegut, Yu writes fiction that is informed by science, without getting lost in the gee-whiz-we're-in-a-time-machine details that plague much of the genre.

These characters live in the kind of world that we know, but the kind in which ordinary bounds of physics don't exactly apply. Take, for example, the idea that there may be an infinite number of parallel, alternative universes. Now, imagine that you can suddenly communicate with many alternate versions of you. Or, imagine discovering in the middle of an epic battle that you are a character in a first-person shooter video game. "Maybe Frëd is just Fred. Maybe we have been praying to a nine-year-old whose mom keeps yelling at him to clean up his room." Trippy! But deep, too. Because our hero decides to go on fighting, even though his world may not have true meaning, even though his creator's intentions cannot be known. "That doesn't make it any less real. That doesn't mean we should give up down here."

However inventive their surroundings, at their core these are stories about humans searching for meaning and identity and connection. There are characters that work in a call center in India, literally suffering on behalf of rich customers who can afford to outsource their emotions. "I get to work three minutes late and already there are nine tickets in my inbox. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, open the first ticket of the morning: I'm at a funeral. Feeling grief. Someone else's grief." At the end of the day, when this character gets off work, how can he experience love? Or his own grief?

Sorry Please Thank You is funny and moving, and perfectly in tune with our times. Behind emerging technologies such as social media and virtual reality, we can't seem to run away from our human nature. Maybe, Yu seems to be saying, it's time to turn toward it, instead.

With buzz building for the movie release of Cloud Atlas, anyone who hasn't yet read David Mitchell's epic tale is quickly coming under its spell. The book, first published in 2004, received endless praise and cemented Mitchell's place as one of the great contemporary British novelists.

In Cloud Atlas, six distinct narratives, each set in a different time period, are intricately pieced together by Mitchell's artful hand. When reading Cloud Atlas -- which refers to the name of a score written by a character in the novel -- Mitchell seems to be more of a conductor than a writer as he pulls and prods the instruments of storytelling. Time, history, narrative, point of view, and even language are carefully manipulated to fit Mitchell's own melodious score.

At times, admittedly, this complex journey can leave the reader feeling confused. Each story is cut off in the middle, only to be concluded in the second half of the book. If you take as long as I did to read Cloud Atlas, you'll no doubt lose sight of what happened in previous chapters, and need to look back to remind yourself. Yet you can't help but feel that this is all part of Mitchell's master plan. While he keeps time moving forward in his narrative, each world seems to regress, until finally, in the last opus, civilization falls back to its primitive beginnings. Mitchell isn't shy about telling us how he thinks humans will finally destroy themselves. As one character in Cloud Atlas exclaims, "Our will to power, our science, and those v. faculties that elevated us from apes, to savages, to modern man, are the same faculties that'll snuff out Homo sapiens."

This destructive human impulse for power and control is a theme that weaves each of the six vignettes together. Power struggles, both large and small, are at play. In "Letters from Zedelghem," Robert Frobisher, a fledgling musician, goes to work for the famous yet aging composer Vyvyan Ayrs. Frobisher tries to take credit for parts of a score he has written with Ayrs, but Ayrs, unwilling to pass the torch to the next generation, instead stifles Frobisher in order to retain some form of control. Fast-forward centuries later to the apocalyptic future in "An Orison of Sonmi-451" where "purebloods," or humans, are waging genocide against clones called "fabricants," in the name of an oppressive government called Corpocracy.

There are, of course, several other major themes at work in Cloud Atlas as Mitchell pushes the reader to think about what truly connects us -- is it the search for power? Is it where we come from and what we believe in? Or is it just the shared experience of being human? With so much to chew on, I am excited -- and slightly nervous -- to see how the movie adaptation deals with these issues that are larger than life, and yet so fundamental to our existence.

Whatever happens in theaters, there is no doubt that Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is a ride unlike any other, one that breathes strange new life into what we think of as fiction. As Robert Frobisher says, "One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so," and Mitchell has certainly done so in this remarkable book.

"Cloud Atlas" opens in theaters Friday, October 26, 2012.

I will admit right up front that I rarely read dystopian young adult books. I've read The Hunger Games series, but the sea of paranormal, dystopian, and fantasy books that crowd bookstore shelves these days leaves me cold. I blame this on a combination of factors: no longer being a teen myself; a preference for wistful, angsty contemporary fiction; and a genuine fear of the dark future world depicted in many of these books. But when I realized that a book we were publishing was written by a local Southern California author, a book I had heard much internal buzz about already, I decided to give it a try. I'm so glad that I did, because Starters, by debut author Lissa Price, is a fast-paced thrilling book that I read in just one sitting.

Set in the near future, after everyone but the very young and the very old have been killed in a bio-warfare attack, the book opens with Callie, a teenager, deciding to "rent" her body to wealthy seniors wanting to be young again, through the shadowy and mysterious organization called Prime Destinations. Needing the money they promise her to care for her sickly younger brother, Callie agrees to the "rentals." During a routine rental, however, a neurochip malfunction leads to Callie waking up. At first, Callie relishes her temporary life, living in a mansion, driving a flashy car, and befriending other Enders in young rented bodies at special nightclubs. But when she realizes that her Ender has a deadly plan for Callie's body to carry out, she must decide who she can trust: her Ender, Prime Destinations, or her own survival instincts.

Starters is a must-read for teens or adults looking for a worthy successor to Suzanne Collins' books. It's exciting and funny, with a strong female heroine, a hint of romance, and a touching brother/sister relationship. Fans will have to wait to see what happens to Callie after the book's cliff-hanger conclusion, when Enders, the sequel, is published (coming soon!).

This post originally ran on Random Acts of Reading.

Before I talk to you about my latest book, I have a confession to make: I love ebooks. As an author, I know that I'm supposed to prefer the heft and feel and "bookishness" of print books -- and I don't dislike them by any stretch of the imagination. But as ebooks have grown in popularity, I've had to ask myself what exactly is most important to me about books, and the only answer is: the words. Separating words from pages and covers can be liberating. The words feel more like ideas that way: spontaneous, flowing, easily accessible. I still buy print books, and I miss spending time in bookstores since there are fewer of them around, but the truth is that thanks to the ready availability of ebooks I'm reading a whole lot more than I used to. So, fellow ebook lovers, here's to the easy and open exchange of ideas!

My new book, The Paladin Prophecy, is the first in a trilogy. This story has been trying to break out of me for years, and when it finally did it took me over two years to put it on its feet. The Paladin Prophecy represents a vision of everything I loved about the sci-fi and fantasy adventures that thrilled my younger self. Authors built worlds, peopled them with characters I wanted to know -- or wanted to be -- and then sent them on journeys to places deep in the heart of the human mystery we're all living. I believe in the power of mystery and the evolutionary purpose of it in our lives, particularly in that perilous passage between childhood and the grown-up world, when everything still feels possible.

Many of those stories that I loved as a kid relied on myths from other cultures, but after 250 years, we have American mythologies of our own that need exploring. In The Paladin Prophecy you'll find frontiers and pioneers, the West, the East, Native Americans, technology, futurism, progress, the myth of exceptionalism, and the pitfalls of imperial power. All in a contemporary setting that's hurtling toward an exciting but uncertain fate. Put a group of interesting young people in a setting like that, give them unimaginable dangers to confront and enough talent and skill to feel they have a chance against them, then take them on a ride that wraps our past, future, and present into a mind-bending experience. That's what The Paladin Prophecy is all about. I hope you enjoy!

The Maze Runner is the first book in a trilogy by James Dashner that is one of the finest young adult Dystopian series I have read in ages. The story is completely engrossing and with the turn of each page the action intensifies. One day, a boy named Thomas wakes up alone in a strange elevator shaft, knowing only his name but nothing of where he came from. He has been delivered to a community referred to as "The Glade" where a group of fifty teenage boys live. All of the boys were delivered in the same fashion as Thomas, and no one knows who they are, where they came from, or how they got there.

Through the same shaft, residents of The Glade receive daily food and supplies from those the boys refer to as "The Creators," though that is all they know. The teens are surrounded by a maze that is crawling with sinister half-machine monsters known as "The Grievers" that hunt anyone who attempts to venture into the maze to find a way out. The day after Thomas arrives, a girl is delivered with the note: "She is the last." Soon, supplies stop arriving and Thomas finds himself appointed as the leader to get everyone out of The Glade and survive without getting attacked by the merciless metal monsters.

I finished this novel in two days (in an attempt to savor the reading experience), though it can easily be read in a few intense hours. Dashner's next two books in the trilogy, The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure, continue Thomas' survival story. Dashner has also written a prequel to The Maze Runner series, entitled The Kill Order, which explores the back story of the world before Thomas ever entered it, and humanity’s fight against a new mutating disease.

Hollywood has happily taken an interest in the series and in late 2010 it was announced that Catherine Hardwicke (who is best known as the "Twilight" saga's first filmmaker) is attached to direct a theatrical adaptation of The Maze Runner.

If you enjoyed Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games and are looking for a similar, thrilling new series, I highly recommend you start with The Maze Runner.

Editor's Note: James Dashner is the award-winning author of the young adult sci-fi trilogy The Maze Runner, comprised of The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, and The Death Cure. Now, Dashner has written The Kill Order, an exciting new prequel to the trilogy. Here, he talks about the inspiration for his characters (both old and new) and the process of creating the back story of how the world in his books got so wrecked in the first place.

I'll never forget the night that most of the ideas that would become The Maze Runner trilogy first came to me. I'd gone to bed, and as I often do, my mind went nuts, brainstorming. I pictured a bleak future where a bunch of teenagers were put into an experiment. A maze came to mind. Then things really kicked into high gear and I had to run downstairs to record my thoughts.

A lot of the meat of the trilogy came to me that night. And I knew that the magic of the story would be in the mystery of it all, revealing what's behind the scenes piece by piece, discovering them along with the main character, Thomas. Another key element was his memory loss, and the here-and-there nature of some of those memories coming back to him.

It struck me, even on that first night, that a prequel would be really cool after the trilogy was complete. A prequel doesn't always work, but I thought for this trilogy is just might. Of course, that was really looking far ahead, so I shelved the idea and started working hard on the first book.

Jump ahead many years. The Maze Runner and its sequels had been written and released and seemed to be well-received and selling. All of which made me a very happy man and a full-time author. And, naturally, thoughts of doing that prequel came back strongly. I'd mentioned it to my publisher here and there, and they were strongly on board.

Here's the interesting part. I'd always assumed the prequel would tell the story of Thomas and Teresa and how they ended up with WICKED, and the things they did leading up to entering the Maze. But when I had the first discussions with my editor, Krista Marino, she strongly disagreed. She felt that so much of that had been revealed throughout the three books, and that by the end we knew that story very well. I couldn't believe how right she was! If I'd gone that route, I think my fans would have been excited to read it at first, but then felt a little disappointed and anticlimactic.

So we decided to go back even further and tell the story of how the world got so messed up in the first place, making the events of the trilogy necessary. Although it was a challenge, I had a lot of fun creating all-new characters and witnessing the sun flares and the unleashing of the Flare virus through their eyes. I hope my readers enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

In Cinder, Marissa Meyer has concocted a genre-blender that will have you steeped in nerdy fangirl glee for hours. An amalgamation of a reinterpreted fairy tale, dystopian sci-fi, and a space opera, this book managed to hit every note that made my middle-school years sing. Think Joss Whedon's "Firefly" meets the anime "Cowboy Bebop" meets elements of I, Robot.

This young adult novel, book one of The Lunar Chronicles, follows the story of Linh Cinder, a talented mechanic peddling her trade in New Beijing. It is a future city crowded with humans and androids, living under the ever-present fear of leutomosis, a mysterious disease that has ravaged the population.

As with most heroines, Cinder possesses a past and a uniqueness that separates her from the rest. She is a cyborg -- with mechanical parts composing nearly a third of her body. Thus, she's a second-class citizen reviled by many in society, including her stepmother. But when the dashing Prince Kai pays a visit to Cinder's mechanical shop, she suddenly finds herself caught at the center of planetary politics, conspiracies, and intrigue. Cinder must navigate these dangers that will eventually bring answers to the many mysteries of her own past. And, oh yes, there is romantic entanglement, too.

More than a prototypical fairy-tale retelling, Cinder is a clever, original homage to one of the most popular anime series of all time, "Sailor Moon." And it is written as only a tried and true fan of that storyline could: a missing lunar princess, a noble earthling prince, and a dangerous otherworldly empress plotting her malicious designs against two worlds.

To love this book is to have a penchant for sci-fi. But not just any type of sci-fi; it helps to love imagining a future where Asian and Western influences fuse into a hybrid culture -- where technological advances make robots sentient, space travel normal, and magic seem scientific.

And finally to love this book is to appreciate a fairy tale made for the postmodern gadget girl. For once, Cinderella is not a victim of circumstance or a passive pawn in greater schemes. She's scrappy, smart, and can fix your car as quickly as she can attract a prince.

Ernest Cline's adrenaline-rush novel, Ready Player One, fills the void for those who long for 1980s nostalgia. However, though the story is full of pop-culture references from that decade, it's actually set in the year 2044. Wade Watts escapes his grim reality by plugging into a virtual world where he competes with thousands on a quest for ultimate power and riches. But to win, he must sacrifice his ideal virtual world and confront the reality he is desperate to leave behind. Here, Cline offers insight into "geeking out" and why '80s pop culture is still relevant today.

Everyday eBook: Since the hardcover of your debut novel Ready Player One came out last year, you've had many young readers contact you to say how much they related to the book. Why do you feel that so many readers -- some of them too young to even remember the 1980s -- have connected with Wade, Artemis, and Aech?

Ernest Cline: It might be because young readers have all been raised in a world filled with high technology, just like the characters in the book. People born during the last two decades have grown up with the Internet and handheld computers. Most of their toys contain microchips, their video games have always looked incredibly real, and they've never known a world without mobile phones. They've also grown up in the aftermath of 9/11 and the global economic collapse. For all of these reasons, I think the world described in Ready Player One is very familiar to them, and that helps them relate to the characters in it. Young readers have also lived through endless reruns and reboots of '80s movies and TV shows, so many of the touchstones of that decade are still familiar to them, even if they didn't experience them firsthand.

EE: In Ready Player One, you incorporate literally hundreds of pop culture references, many of them in ways that are integral to the book's plot. What's the first thing you remember geeking out over?

EC: "Sesame Street" and the Muppets. I thought Jim Henson ruled the universe. I even thought it was pretty cool that I shared my first name with a muppet. Until the first day of kindergarten, when I quickly learned that "Ernie" was not a cool name to have. That was about the time I segued into my next childhood obsession, "Star Wars."

EE: Like the book's hero, you possess a deep knowledge of a broad swath of pop culture. How do you have so much time on your hands?

EC: Well, I'm raising a toddler now, so I don't have as much time to geek out as I used to. I think I amassed a lot of that knowledge during my youth. Like most geeks, I was a sponge for all kinds of movies, TV shows, cartoons, and video games. Then as an adult, I worked at a long series of low-paying tech support jobs that allowed me to surf the Internet all day, and I spent a lot of my cubicle time looking up obscure pop-culture minutiae from my childhood while I waited for people to reboot their PCs. Of course, I spent most of my off hours geeking out, too. Luckily, all those hours can now be classified as "research" for my novel.

In a future not so far away, natural disasters have devastated most of the East Coast of the United States. Large parts of the West are under the rule of a repressive, merciless government that uses military force to maintain its status quo. Military leaders live like kings while the poor carve out their hopeless existence in slums, working themselves to death. Welcome to Marie Lu's young adult debut, Legend, a story that takes us into the ruins of Los Angeles, its former beauty a distant memory.

Amid shabby Quonsets, we meet fifteen-year-old Day, a modern-day Robin Hood and the country's most-wanted criminal. In the same city, but in what feels like a different world, lives June, a wealthy military prodigy blessed with extraordinary physical abilities and a sharp mind. Still just a teenager, June is already on her way to the Republic's highest military honors. Day and June's paths cross when her brother, Metias, is murdered. Day becomes the prime suspect and June is sent out to avenge her brother's death. Since primary attempts to track down Day have failed, June wants to try a different approach: She disguises herself and blends into the rogue streets of the slums.

Unfamiliar with the roughness of the outskirts, June gets herself in trouble soon enough. Faced with a desperate situation, she is saved by a boy with bright blue eyes. In this moment, June thinks he might be the most beautiful boy she has ever seen. But what she doesn't know is that her savior is actually her target and enemy, Day. The two travel together, trade food, stories, and an emotional first kiss. June is confused by her feelings. More important, living among the poor challenges everything June was told about the Republic. The world in which she grew up, a world that was built by propaganda, starts to fall apart.

Legend has plenty of action, suspense, and romance to satisfy both male and female readers. Within its three-hundred pages, Lu manages to develop authentic voices and characters readers can identify with. In this context lies the book's greatest achievement -- the slow, reluctant shift in June's convictions is the very core of this story. It is as believable as it is compelling to see how her indoctrinated worldview suffers its first cracks until it ultimately collapses like a house of cards. Marie Lu's dystopian novel is the first book of a trilogy that has what it takes to become the next big thing after The Hunger Games.

Slate recently compared Joe Spork, the protagonist of Nick Harkaway's ripping spy novel Angelmaker, to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Arthur Dent and Neverwhere's Richard Mayhew. Accurate comparisons, both. Like its spiritual predecessors, Angelmaker is a breezy read in spite of its intricate plot, which concerns a mild-mannered clockmaker (the son of one of London's most infamous gentleman gangsters) who unwittingly triggers a doomsday device. ("Whoops" doesn't quite cover the gravity of the situation.) It features a terrifying, Bond-esque villain, heaps of humor, and a moody steampunk atmosphere, not to mention some of the sharpest writing to come out of the sci-fi genre in a while.

What really sold me, however, was a relatively small moment not too long into the book. As a horror-movie aficionado, nothing grates more than seeing characters so willingly stepping up like lambs to the inevitable slaughter. "There's a horrible killer on the loose! Wait, what was that sound?" "I don't know but I'M GOING TO CHECK IT OUT!" Kids, you're going to die either way, at least let me pretend the monster is outwitting a worthy adversary. I can't root for your survival if you're not making a go of it yourself. So it was a great comfort to see the following exchange:

"You have it? Here? Now? How long do we have? Come on, man, they won’t be far behind!"
"Who won’t?" but Joe Spork is already moving, old instinct demands it: when someone says 'they’re coming' you go out the back first and get details later.

Indeed, from that moment on I knew I was in the hands of an author who gets it, who knows how to tweak the genre with one hand and pay homage to it with the other. And really, genre in the singular isn't even a fair word to apply to Angelmaker — sci-fi, steampunk, and spycraft are all at play in this engrossing work of fiction.

And as top-notch as the plotting is, the characters are the real stars of the show. From humble protagonist Joe Spork to retired spy Edie Bannister -- who stars in her own eShort prequel -- to the utterly terrifying Recorded Man, these are people you won't mind spending 496 pages with. There's little doubt that Spork and Co. will quickly enter the pantheon of great British sci-fi characters, giving Slate some fresh comparative fodder to use in future reviews.

Philip Pullman’s series, His Dark Materials -- comprised of The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass -- is already hailed as a young adult classic, a mere fourteen years after the first book was published, and with good reason. For those who love fantasy and sci-fi, this trilogy is a must, whether you are young or adult or a mix of both. Pullman creates not just one fantastical world, but many, and weaves in realistic pointed commentary on the Church and the history of Christianity.

His Dark Materials follows Lyra, a spirited orphan who lives at Oxford College, under the care of her uncle, Lord Asriel. Lyra is not alone in the world, however. She is friends with all of the neighborhood ragamuffins, serving boys, and gypsy kids. Most of all, she has her daemon, Pantalaimon, who is the closest any friend can be — he is a part of her. In Lyra’s world, everyone has a daemon, or external soul, who guides and loves her for the rest of her life. This is only one of the ways Pullman turns the traditional Christian narrative on its head: Daemons are not synonymous with Evil, just as later in the story, angels are not synonymous with Good.

If you are interested in myth, folklore, and Judeo-Christian traditional narrative, His Dark Materials will suck you in as it turns the paradigm of Eve’s fall on its head. If you’re just looking for a good fantasy story, however, this series is also for you. Lyra encounters wonderful and strange creatures on her journey, like the armored bear Iorek Byrnison and Serafina Pekkala, the wise and beautiful witch. She also travels through many worlds with the help of her alethiometer, a curious device that uses symbols to reveal any question, and which only Lyra seems to be able to read without formal training.

But even if you’re not interested in the overarching motifs and conceits of His Dark Materials, or the surreal and fantastical setting and plot, Pullman still has something for you in his books: strong, relatable characters and relationships that engross you from the get-go. If nothing else, you’ll be struck by the honest and fierce love between Lyra and her bear, Iorek, or the loyalty and teamwork between Lyra and Will Parry, whom we encounter in The Subtle Knife, but who becomes as integral to the story as Lyra herself. In the end, Pullman has much to say about the innocence of youth, the joy of experience, and the pleasures of the physical world. The brilliance of His Dark Materials comes from Pullman’s ability to take these major concepts and weave together a story about love and friendship that all ages can enjoy.

Justin Cronin broke my heart and then built it back up page by page. Don’t let The Passage fool you. It is not your typical end-of-society story, where we are being ravaged by vampires, zombies, fill-in-the-blank creatures. A government experiment gone awry (isn’t it always a government experiment?) leaves the reader in a world devastated and destroyed by vampire-like creatures referred to simply as Walkers. But what sets this book apart from others in this genre is the depth of feeling Cronin brings to the characters and the dialogue. It is easy to see why he is an award-winning author: He is a remarkably gifted storyteller with an eye for detail and beauty, even in the darkest settings.

Centered around two very pivotal events, 100 years apart, Cronin brilliantly paints a modern world crumbling around us and being reformed years later:

Meet The Twelve, death-row inmates who were experimented on and who unleashed an incomprehensible and unbiased attack on society, striking down anyone in their path.

Meet Amy, a young girl abandoned by her mother with a small task ahead of her: to save the world.

Meet FBI Agent Brad Wolgast, who forsakes everything he is and has to save her.

Meet Peter, who is waiting on the Night Watch to kill his brother.

Meet Sara and Alicia and so many others, each with their own stories and dreams, all struggling to survive and make sense of the world they live in, the new world, the World of the Walkers.

If that isn’t enough to intrigue you, Stephen King called in to "Good Morning America" when Justin Cronin appeared in June of 2009 to say: “You put the scare back in vampires,” and "I really love your book. It's terrific and I hope it sells a million copies." As Cronin's eyes got wider and wider, King continued, "It's got everything in it, wonderful characters, and it's just a terrific read from beginning to end.” But if you need more convincing, how about this -- Ridley Scott is working on the film.

For whichever reason you pick up this book, you’ll be glad you did. If you find yourself asking the question that many have -- “Where will I be when the lights go out?” -- please know that you have been warned: Wherever you are, believe me, you will be praying for them to come back on.

To quote Robert Frost:

“Some say the world will end in Fire, Some say in Ice; From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor …”

WALKERS.

The Twelve, the next book in the trilogy, is planned for release in 2012.