From Laila Lalami—the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a “maestra of literary fiction” (NPR)—comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most, her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.

An eloquent, restless, and enlightening memoir by one of the most thought-provoking journalists today about growing up Black and queer in America, reuniting with the past, and coming of age their own way. One of nineteen children in a blended family, Hari Ziyad was raised by a Hindu Hare Kṛṣṇa mother and a Muslim father. Through reframing their own coming-of-age story, Ziyad takes readers on a powerful journey of growing up queer and Black in Cleveland, Ohio, and of navigating the equally complex path toward finding their true self in New York City. Exploring childhood, gender, race, and the trust that is built, broken, and repaired through generations, Ziyad investigates what it means to live beyond the limited narratives Black children are given and challenges the irreconcilable binaries that restrict them. Heartwarming and heart-wrenching, radical and reflective, Hari Ziyad’s vital memoir is for the outcast, the unheard, the unborn, and the dead. It offers us a new way to think about survival and the necessary disruption of social norms. It looks back in tenderness as well as justified rage, forces us to address where we are now, and, born out of hope, illuminates the possibilities for the future.

Hugo Voter Packet version.

Fantasy and science fiction allow for limitless creation, innovation, and exploration. Yet what we actually get are Eurocentric worlds that demonize or erase people of colour. Why do authors and readers accept this? Where did it start? And going forward, how do we resist? SFF author and critic Phenderson Djeli Clark takes a look at these issues in Fantasy's Othering Fetish, the latest ebook from Media Diversified. Featuring a foreword by novelist Daniel José Older, this book discusses everything from medieval Arthurian romance to Tolkien and Game of Thrones, and provides a overview of contemporary work by global SFF authors of colour. With its sharp, insightful critique and Clark's deep knowledge of and passion for the genre, Fantasy's Othering Fetish is a much-needed antidote to the whitewashed worlds of mainstream SFF.

A young Black woman challenges the indignity of a segregated dystopian future and exposes a time-bending secret in this dark, defiant short story from P. Djèlí Clark, award-winning author of Ring Shout. The year is 2030. Annabeth works a stable job at CRONUS, a time travel company that caters to wealthy clients. Life is harsh, but she’s willing to keep her head down—until a vision of a past that never happened leads her to question everything she knows. They call it madness, but she’ll learn to call it memory. P. Djélì Clark’s Cronus is part of The Time Traveler’s Passport, an unforgettable collection of stories about memory, identity, and choice. Watch time fly as you read or listen to each short story in a single sitting.

I’m embarrassed, still, by how long it took me to notice. Everything was right there in the open, right there in front of me, but it still took me so long to see the person I had married. It took me so long to hate him. Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be. And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband. Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and both Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up. Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.