Brave New Books and a Grammar Giveaway!
With the New Year and a new decade starting this week, Fulton County Libraries is happy to present our readers with five new visions of the future this week. Two are tales of the internet gone amok, two are post-apocalyptic visions, and one is a projection of the future from a world with an alternate timeline.

For those who would like to consider planning for a more realistic future, the library catalog is loaded with resources that can help! From books on eating a healthy diet to financial planning, the library offers diverse resources online and at our branches to help with your New Year's resolutions.
Welcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determines the social advantages and career opportunities of every member of society. An automated matchmaking service knows the best partners for everyone and helps with the break up when your ideal match (frequently) changes. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop, know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it.

In QualityCity, Peter Jobless is a machine scrapper who can't quite bring himself to destroy the imperfect machines sent his way, and has become the unwitting leader of a band of robotic misfits hidden in his home and workplace. One day, Peter receives a product from TheShop that he absolutely, positively knows he does not want, and which he decides, at great personal cost, to return. The only problem: doing so means proving the perfect algorithm of TheShop wrong, calling into question the very foundations of QualityLand itself.

Qualityland, Marc-Uwe Kling's first book to be translated into English, is a satire in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Aldous Huxley that offers an all-too funny glimpse at a near future. HBO will be adapting this book into a series, so be the first of your friends to read this European hit by reserving a copy in hardcover, ebook, or mp3 audio.
The author of Here and Now and Then is back with another science fiction thriller sure to be a favorite with Fulton County Libraries.

Six years after a global pandemic wiped out most of the planet's population, the survivors are rebuilding the country, split between self-governing cities, hippie communes and wasteland gangs. In post-apocalyptic San Francisco, former pop star Moira has created a new identity to finally escape her past--until her domineering father launches a sweeping public search to track her down.

Desperate for a fresh start herself, jaded event planner Krista navigates the world on behalf of those too traumatized to go outside, determined to help everyone move on--even if they don't want to.

Rob survived the catastrophe with his daughter, Sunny, but lost his wife. When strict government rules threaten to separate parent and child, Rob needs to prove himself worthy in the city's eyes by connecting with people again.

Krista, Moira, Rob and Sunny are brought together by circumstance, and their lives begin to twine together. But when reports of another outbreak throw the fragile society into panic, the friends are forced to finally face everything that came before--and everything they still stand to lose.

Orla Cadden is a budding novelist stuck in a dead-end job, writing clickbait about movie-star hookups and influencer yoga moves. Then Orla meets Floss--a striving, wannabe A-lister--who comes up with a plan for launching them both into the high-profile lives they dream about. So what if Orla and Floss's methods are a little shady! Their legions of followers can't be wrong.

Thirty-five years later, in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, a woman named Marlow discovers a shattering secret about her past. Despite her massive popularity--twelve million loyal followers--Marlow dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything to keep her on-screen. When she learns that her whole family history is based on a lie, Marlow finally summons the courage to run in search of the truth, no matter the risks.

Followers traces the paths of Orla, Floss and Marlow as they wind through time toward each other, and toward a cataclysmic event that sends America into lasting upheaval. At turns wry and tender, bleak and hopeful, this darkly funny story reminds us that even if we obsess over famous people we'll never meet, what we really crave is genuine human connection.

Follow the rising star of first-time novelist Megan Angelo by reserving Followers in hardcover, ebook, or mp3 audiobook format.
Bestselling author Charlaine Harris returns with the second of the Gunnie Rose series, in which Lizbeth is hired onto a new crew, transporting a crate into Dixie, the self-exiled southeast territory of the former United States. What the crate contains is something so powerful, that forces from across three territories want to possess it.

Dixie is just about the last part of the former United States of America Lizbeth Rose wants to visit. But what seemed like a straight-forward job turns into a massacre as the crate is stolen. Up against a wall in Dixie, where social norms have stepped back into the last century, Lizbeth has to go undercover with an old friend to retrieve the crate as what's inside can spark a rebellion, if she can get it back in time.

The author of the Sookie Stackhouse series is at her best here, building an alternate history of the United States where magic is an acknowledged but despised power. Check out the first title in the series, An Easy Death, or jump right in to Lizbeth's adventures with A Longer Fall in hardcover, or ebook. When title is available to libraries in audio format, we'll be sure to add it to our collection.
The first novel in an exciting new series has three authors and cover art in classic pulp fiction style.

Thirty years ago, the world ended. Giant electrovoric ants and pterodons came through a rift in space-time, millions of humans died, and that was that. Without electricity, human ingenuity has provided some creative work-arounds to the energy problem, but most people survive at subsistence level.

For Chuck Gordon, the simple life of a rancher was enough. But then he met a mysterious dying stranger and now he's on the road of destiny across America accompanied by a warrior monk, a beautiful dragon tamer, a runaway cultist, and a mystic drunken lecher-- all searching for the key to reclaiming humanity's past--and future. 

Get your genre fix with Gunpowder and Embers in hardcover only - this title is not yet available in downloadable format for libraries to purchase.
NEW BOOK NEWSLETTER GIVEAWAY

Step into the new decade by updating your grammar with this fun and informative guide to the history and possible future of pronouns in the English language.

Like trigger warnings and gender-neutral bathrooms, pronouns are suddenly sparking debate, prompting new policies in schools, workplaces, even prisons, about what pronouns to use. Colleges ask students to declare their pronouns; corporate conferences print name tags with space for people to add their pronouns; email signatures sport pronouns along with names and titles. Far more than a byproduct of campus politics or culture wars, gender-neutral pronouns are in fact nothing new. Renowned linguist Dennis Baron puts them in historical context, demonstrating that Shakespeare used singular they; that women evoked the generic use of he to assert the right to vote (while those opposed to women's rights invoked the same word to assert that he did not include she), and that self-appointed language experts have been coining new gender pronouns, not just hir and zie but hundreds more, like thon, ip, and em, for centuries. Based on Baron's own empirical research, What's Your Pronoun? tells the untold story of gender-neutral and nonbinary pronouns.

You can win a print galley (a paperback used to promote the book before official release) of this title by emailing us within 24 hours of the New Books Newsletter email. Just put "Pronouns" in the subject line of your email to Collection.Development@fultoncountyga.gov. We'll pick a winner at random from messages received between 8:30am Monday, 12/30/19 and 8:30am Tuesday, 12/31/19.

The winner will be notified via email and must be able to pick the book up at an AFPLS branch within one month. Just in case you aren't chosen, why not click here to reserve a copy with Fulton County Libraries?
Fulton County Library System | afpls.org