"1984 isn't just a novel; it's a key to understanding the modern world. George Orwell's final work is a treasure chest of ideas and memes--Big Brother, the Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, 2+2=5--that gain potency with every year. Particularly in 2016, when the election of Donald Trump made it a bestseller ("Ministry of Alternative Facts," anyone?). Its influence has morphed endlessly into novels (The Handmaid's Tale), films (Brazil), television...

""GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY. . ." So dawns a new day in Soft City, where pill-stuffed citizens sit in traffic, march off to work at Soft Inc., zone out in front of the TV news, and shop, shop, shop. The only graphic novel by the legendary Norwegian pop artist Hariton Pushwagner-- completed in 1975, lost for decades, and never before published in the United States--is a scathing masterpiece in the tradition of Brazil and A Brave New World but with an...

"Eight years ago an earthquake--the Big One--hit along the Cascadia fault line, toppling cities and changing landscapes all up and down the west coast of the United States. Life as we know it changed forever. But for Vietnamese American Virginia Crane, life changed shortly after the earthquake, when her mother left and never came back. Ginny has gotten used to a life without her mother, helping her father take care of her two younger brothers, Wes...