Item category 1: Science Fiction

Humanity has endured centuries of plague and a brutal interstellar war, but there is still no time for peace and quiet. Stirred from aeons of sleep, the Inhibitors - ancient alien killing machines - have begun the process of ridding the galaxy of its latest emergent intelligence.

Tanner Mirabel was a security specialist who never made a mistake, until the day a woman in his care was blown away during an attack by a vengeful young postmortal named Argent Reivich.

50 years ago, human intervention triggered an ancient alien system designed to warn of the emergence of intelligence in this sector of the galaxy. For aeons the Inhabitors have waited. Now the response is on its way.

Set in a California where civilisation has all but broken down and poverty and unspeakable violence are the norm, this is a horrifying vision of what might be. Teenage Lauren knows there must be a better way to live and invents a new religion.

Connie Ramos, 37, Mexican-American, unfairly incarcerated in a mental hospital, is the enduring central character in a novel about differing visions of the future.

Leto Atreides understands the future, he alone knows with a terrible certainty that the evolution of his race is at an end unless he can breed new qualities into the species. This is the fourth Dune novel.

The long-established galactic order is passing. The Honoured Matres, ruthless and all-conquering, have destroyed the planet Dune. In opposition, hard-pressed but still fighting back, the Bene Gesserit sisterhood co-ordinate their resistance from their as-yet undiscovered home world, Chapter House.

In the fifth novel in the Dune sequence, the people of the Scattering are returning. Among them, mysterious and threatening, are the women who call themselves the Honoured Matres, adepts of an ecstatic cult.

The fifth novel of the galaxy-spanning 'Sun Eater' series merges space opera and epic fantasy, as Hadrian Marlowe continues down a path that can only end in fire.

War ranged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. The Idirans fought for their faith, The Culture for its moral right to exist. There could be no surrender.