Science Reading Lists
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Fiction
The Angel Experiment by James Patterson (F Patterson) – Maximum Ridge #2 - After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the "birdkids," who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose.
The Beasties by Sleator (F William Sleator ) - When fifteen-year-old Doug and his younger sister Colette move with their parents to a forested wilderness area, they encounter some weird creatures whose lives are endangered.
The Carbon Diaries by Lloyd Saci (F Saci) - England becomes the first nation to introduce carbon dioxide rationing in a drastic bid to combat climate change, sixteen-year-old Laura documents the first year of rationing as her family spirals out of control.
The Carbon Diaries 2017 by Lloyd Saci (F Saci) - In 2017, two years after England introduces carbon dioxide rationing to combat climatic change, eighteen-year-old Laura chronicles her first year at a London university as natural disasters and political upheaval disrupt her studies.
Chimera by Rob Thurman (F Thurman) - While raiding a secret facility for genetically modifying and training children to be deadly assassins, Stefan Korsak, a young bodyguard for the Russian mafia, finds a boy who strongly resembles his younger brother, Lukas, kidnapped 10 years before. Now the protective, wisecracking, strangely naïve big brother and the brainwashed killer teen are on the run from the man who transformed the boy from gentle child to lethal property.
The Clone Codes by Patricia McKissack (F Mickissack) - On the run from a bounty hunter who arrested her mother for being part of a secret society devoted to freeing clones, thirteen-year-old Leanna learns amazing truths about herself and her family as she is forced to consider the value of freedom and what it really means to be human in 2170 America.
The Cobra Events by Richard Preston (F Preston) - Dr. Alice Austen, an officer with the Epidemic Intelligence Service branch of the Centers for Disease Control, goes to New York to investigate thehideous and mysterious death of a seventeen-year-old girl, and uncovers a terrorist plot involving the use of biological weapons.
Contagious by Scott Sigler (F Sigler) - While a mysterious, alien virus sweeps across America, transforming people into raging killers, a small group gathers to fight back, but their time is running short, and the infected are forcing the President of the United States to consider releasing nuclear weaponry
Darwin’s Children by Greg Bear (F Bear) - Scientists Kaye Lang and Mitch Rafelson, parents of Stella, a genetically-enhanced child born as a result of mutations in the human genome caused by the SHEVA virus, lose the struggle to keep their daughter safe from a repressive government that wants to control the virus children by isolating them from the general population.
Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear (F Bear) - Molecular biologist Kay Lang, a specialist in retroviruses, teams up with virus hunter Christopher Dicken and anthropologist Mitch Rafelson in an attempt to trace the ancient source of a flu-like disease that is killing expectant mothers and their offspring and threatening the future of the human race.
The Double Helix by nancy Werlin (F Werlin) - Eighteen-year-old Eli discovers a shocking secret about his life and his family while working for a Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose specialty is genetic engineering
Dune by Frank Herbert (F Herbert) - The sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire. Arrakis is the sole source of Melange, the "spice of spices." Melange is necessary for interstellar travel and grants psychic powers and longevity, so whoever controls it wields great influence.
Firestorm by David Klass (F Klass) - After learning that he has been sent from the future for a special purpose, eighteen-year-old Jack receives help from an unusual dog and a shape-shifting female fighter.
Flush by Carl Hiaasen (F Hiassen) - With their father jailed for sinking a river boat, Noah Underwood and his younger sister, Abbey, must gather evidence that the owner of this floating casino is emptying his bilge tanks into the protected waters around their Florida Keys home.
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut (F Vonnegut) - Leon Trout, the ghost of a decapitated shipbuilder, narrates the humorous, ironic and sometimes carping decline of the human race, as seen through the eyes and minds of the survivors of a doomed cruise to the Galapagos Islands
Hoot by Carol Hiaasen (F Hiaasen) - Roy, who is new to his small Florida community, becomes involved in another boy's attempt to save a colony of burrowing owls from a proposed construction site.
Infected by Scott Sigler (F Sigler) - Perry Dawsey, an ex-football player, wakes up infected by a strange disease and hearing voices, while CIA agent Dew Phillips and CDC epidemiologist Margaret Montoya try to find and analyze a live victim of the parasite that is turning the people of the U.S. into murderers
Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney (F Finney) - Dr. Miles Bernell is horrified to discover alien life forms have taken over the bodies of his neighbors, friends, and family members in the small, peaceful town of Mill Valley, California.
The Island of Dr. Moreau (F. H. G. Wells) -
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (F Crichton) - A technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Creatures extinct for eons now roam Jurassic Park, and all the world can visit them. Then something goes wrong.Lucy : a Novel by Laurence Gonzales (F Gonzales) - Primatologist Jenny Lowe gets caught in the middle of a civil war in the jungles of the Congo and runs to the camp of a colleague, where, finding everyone dead except for the daughter of a fellow scientist, she grabs the girl and the notebooks of her father, only to learn later that Lucy is the result of an experiment--she is half ape and half human.
Mount Dragon by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (F Preston) - Guy Carlson, a scientist at a biotechnology company, volunteers to work at a secret facility where researchers are working on a cure for the flu, but it does not take him long to discover that something is terribly wrong with the project, and the results could be deadly.
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult (F Picoult) - Thirteen-year-old Anna, conceived specifically to provide blood and bone marrow for her sister Kate who was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia at the age of two, decides to sue her parents for control of her body when her mother wants her to donate a kidney to Kate.
Never Let Me Go byKauzo Ishiguro (F Ishiguro) - Thirty-one-year-old Kathy, along with old friends from Hailsham, a private school in England, are forced to face the truth about their childhood when they all come together again.
Next by Michael Crichton (F Crichton) - Interweaves the stories of various human and animal characters with genetic abnormalities, including a boy who has chimpanzee chromosomes, a parrot that was injected with human genes and can figure out mathematical equations, and an orangutan that can talk, and the complications that are associated with their existence.
Saving the World and other Extreme Sports by James Patterson (F Patterson) – Maximum Ride #3 - The time has come for Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, and Angel to face their ultimate enemy and, despite many obstacles, try to save the world from a sinister plan to re-engineer a select population into a scientifically superior master race.
School’s Out Forever by James Patterson (F Patterson) – Maxium Ride Series #1 - After a short stay with an FBI agent who gives them a chance to attend school and live a normal life, the six genetically-altered, winged youths head toward Florida and Max's ultimate destiny--to save the world, whether she wants to or not.
Sick Puppy by Carl Hiassen - Short-tempered environmentalist Twilly Spree, having sought retaliation against litterer Palmer Stoat by loading Stoat's Range Rover with a horde of hungry dung beetles, realizes he has hit the jackpot when he discovers Stoat is one of the movers and shakers in a plan to build a mall on a pristine Gulf Coast island.
State of Fear by Michael Crichton (F Crichton) - The author presents a thriller that takes the reader to glaciers in Iceland, volcanoes in the Antarctic, the Arizona desert, through the jungles of the Solomon Islands, the streets of Paris, and the beaches of Los Angeles.
The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block (F Block) - Two men---Seth Walker, a teenager trying to understand the genetic nature of his mother's early onset Alzheimer's, and Abel Haggard, an elderly hunchback who spends his days alone on the family farm thinking about the past--are linked by their mothers' stories of a fantasy world in which the lack of memory is a blessing.
Throat Culture by Christopher Golden (F Golden) - Jenna Blake tries to find out who is responsibly for spreading a very dangerous and contagious virus in the Boston area.
Timelock by David Klass (F Klass) - Jack discovers that the only way to protect the Earth from ecological disaster at the hands of the Dark Army is to lock time, and he must choose between staying in the present or returning to the future world from which he came.
The Watchers by Dean Koontz (F Koontz) - Relates the adventures of two creatures which have escaped from a secret, sinister government laboratory where experiments in genetic engineering are conducted.
Whiteout by Ken Follett (F Follett) - As a Christmas Eve blizzard blows through Scotland, several people from a medical research firm converge on a remote family house, where they learn that a canister containing a deadly virus has disappeared from the lab, and that someone among them will risk anything to keep the crime a secret.
Non Fiction
Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials (809.3 Bar) - In his classic guide, Wayne Douglas Barlowe's brilliant portraits bring to life 50 aliens from science fiction literature: Larry Niven's Thrint and his Puppeteer, Arthur C. Clarke's Overlord, Frank Herbert's Steersman, Robert Silverburg's Sulidor and more. Humanoids, insectoids, reptillians-even protoplasmic, gaseous, and crystalline life forms-are all faithfully and naturalistically depicted so that you can now visualize what could only before be imagined
Bonobo Handshake: A Story of Love and Adventure in the Congo by Vanessa Woods (599.88 Woo) - Australian journalist Vanessa Woods provides an account of her work with her fiancé, scientist Brian Hare, at the Lola Ya Bonobo Sanctuary in the Congo with the purpose of reintroducing the primates to the wild.
Coal: A Human History (333.8 Fre) - Traces the history of coal, discussing how it has been used in different cultures, how it is mined, what negative effects it has had on people, economics, and the environment and the role it has played in world history and development
Coyote at the Kitchen Door by Stephen DeStefano (599.75 Des) - Examines the ways in which urban and suburban development has affected the lives of wild animals, many of which are drive out or killed off by advancing civilization, and discusses species that move right in among the houses, following a female coyote as she survives and flourishes in the suburbs.
The Devil’s Teeth: A True Tale of Obsession and Survival Living Among the Great White Sharks ( 597.3 Cas) - Presents the author's first-hand account of her stay on the Farallon Islands--in the shark infested waters thirty miles west of San Francisco--and includes information on the sharks behavior and scientists who study them.
Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (333. 7 Ste) - Explains how the environment has played a key role in virtually every social, economic, and political development in America since the beginning of time.
Food, Inc. by Karl Weber - Examines the debate over genetically modified food, seeking to uncover the truth behind the promises made by biotech corporations, as well as the warnings issued by anticorporate ecologists who fear the effects of transgenics
Hot Zone by Richard Preston (614.5 Pre) - Tells the dramatic story of U.S. Army scientists and soldiers who worked to stop the outbreak of a deadly and extremely contagious virus in 1989.
The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston (616.9 Pre) - Chronicles the reaction of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) to the September 11 attacks and the October 2001 anthrax attacks, focusing on USAMRIID's top virologist, Peter Jahrling, and his work to combat the possible development of a superpox virus by terrorists worldwide.
Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science by Richard Preston (616.02 Pre) - Richard Preston shares true stories of some of the more disturbing and bizarre illnesses and plagues in the world and the scientists who are working to understand them, including the phenomenon of "self-cannibals," the Ebola virus, and others.
Sensuous Seas: Tales of a Marine Biologist (577.78 Kap) - Presents a memoir and a collection of essays from marine biologist Eugene Kaplan that describes various sea creatures that inhabit the oceans, and contains 150 illustrated drawings.
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (632 Car) – describes how pollutants are destroying the earth. The classic book that began the environmental movement.
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (917.404 Bry) – This book is hilarious. Stretching from Georgia to Maine, the Appalachian Trail offers some of America's most breathtaking scenery. After living for many years in England, Bill Bryson moved back to the United States and decided to reacquaint himself with his country by taking to this uninterrupted "hiker's highway." Before long, Bryson and his infamous walking companion, Stephen Katz, are stocking up on insulated long johns, noodles and manuals for avoiding bear attacks as they prepare to set off on a walk that is both amusingly ill-conceived and surprisingly adventurous