Notes: In this dazzling debut novel, the protagonist is the lone female elevator inspector in a city almost like our New York but not quite. Whitehead’s incredible fictional world is built from the bottom up on the precepts that there are two kinds of elevator inspectors, Empiricists and Intuitionists, and the extraordinary elevator mystery the protagonist uncovers.”

Notes: Recent superhero and other speculative hero adventures from today's best known African American authors.

Notes: This anthology surveys science fiction of the African diaspora, including short stories and literary criticsm

Notes: A young woman with a bright future is plagued by visions of her long-dead grandmother. Are they indications that she is mentally ill or is she traveling back in time to experience what her grandmother did?

Notes: In this comic sci fi novel, two oafish roommates in a future Canada cast about until a mysterious (and maybe not-quite human) woman shows up and brings with her a whole mess of trouble.

Notes: In this departure from his Easy Rawlins books, Mosley presents a series of interlocking narratives in a grim, technologically advanced future where streetwise misfits and crafty outcasts explore the bounds of their world.

Notes: In Barnes’s alternate America, white European slaves labor on plantations run by African imperial governors. This novel of political suspense and adventure keeps surprising readers until the end.

Notes: This reinvention of the classic ghost story follows a family—and its spirits—from New Orleans to Washington State, where the latest generation must contend with the sins of their ancestor, who abused her vodou powers

Notes: Hopkinson takes familiar Caribbean folklore to new and surprising places, including an alien planet, a futuristic Canada, a speculative Jamaica, and a distant dystopia, in this collection of stories that blend fable, fantasy, science fiction and folk tales.

Notes: Babel-17 follows a female starship captain (and her crew of genetic misfits) whose remarkable linguistic discoveries are the only defense against a strange and powerful weapon that may destroy them all.